| If It is True Luke 24:1-12 Sunday, April 8, 2007 The Rev. Dr. David A. Van Dyke Easter Sunday
Prayer: Dear God, whose mighty power raised Jesus from the dead, breaking the grip of death and dissolving the terror of the grave, scatter now the darkness in our minds. Free us from all fear and lead us to the promise that one day we too, will dwell with Christ in the brightness of your glory. Open now our minds and hearts to receive the staggering claim of this day as good news for us. For we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our crucified but risen Lord. Amen.
I’m a little surprised to see you all here today since I recently heard, as I’m sure you did, that they found the bones of Jesus. It certainly forces the question: Is it true?
That “news” prompted someone at The Christian Century to recall a famous old story about the time a young seminarian supposedly rushed into the study of the great existentialist theologian Paul Tillich and announced, “Professor, did you hear that they found the bones of Jesus?” To which Tillich reportedly replied with wry sarcasm, “You mean he actually did exist?”
I suspect that the reason this day draws larger-than-normal crowds is precisely because the claim this day makes is one far beyond our ability to comprehend it or make sense of it rationally or intellectually. Namely, that Jesus, who was crucified, didn’t stay dead.
This story has always been greeted with skepticism, beginning with the women who first went to the tomb. When Mary and Joanna and the other women were told by those men in white that Jesus had risen, it seemed to them and to all they told, according to today’s text, to be an idle tale.
Each of the four gospels contains slightly different versions of what happened that morning, lending credibility to some that this whole thing—this whole story is indeed nothing more than an idle tale.
To me, however, that only lends credibility to the story. Because how can it not be told differently as it would have been experienced differently by those who encountered the news? But where the stories differ based on different people’s experiences, the accounts are similar in that that no one saw it happen. Remember the line from the old spiritual: “Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?” Well, no you weren’t. No one was. That part is at least consistent. What is also consistent is that women were the first ones told of what had happened. And finally, this too is consistent, when those women heard the news and shared it with others, it was greeted with fear and a good bit of disbelief.
Who could have imagined that the story would turn out as it did? It was, after all, still dark as Mary Magdalene and the others set out for the tomb. That’s perhaps so Pilate’s soldiers wouldn’t see them and turn them back. Jesus was dead and so they made their way to the tomb with no great expectations of what they’d find, other than that hopefully the stone would somehow have been rolled back enough so they could properly anoint his body for burial.
Jesus’ body had been quickly taken down from the cross as that Friday wore on. Even the Roman authorities sensed that it would be in incredibly bad taste for an execution to carry over into the Sabbath. So early the next morning, those women, in shock and deep grief, needed to do something. They needed to extend one last courtesy toward the Lord they loved. Perhaps they went to the cemetery the way the grieving still do, simply in order to be close to him.
In times of grief and sorrow, sometimes we need to busy ourselves with those little tasks that have a way of somehow honoring the one who died, by declaring in a way that life goes on. I remember getting the call that Peter had died. I went straight over to the house and arrived before anyone else—even before the funeral home. As I approached the door, I could hear the noise of a vacuum cleaner on the other side. I rang the bell and I heard the whine of the vacuum shut down. The widow opened the door. With a husband in the next room lying dead in the bed they had shared for 58 years, she needed to get busy—and so she busied herself doing the kind of thing she always did.
So the women go to the tomb and at first, they couldn’t believe it. When they were told by the mysterious men in dazzling clothes, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen,” they were intrigued but not convinced. Curious but not persuaded. And they considered it an idle tale. And at first blush, who could blame them?
Because more than Jesus had died that day. What also died were his hopes and dreams for a better world. So much for loving your enemies. So much for the meek inheriting the earth. So much for the power of love in the world. In that moment, reality would appear to be Good Friday. Reality would appear to be the power of darkness crucifying its best people and its best ideas, and might it be better to live into that reality and not get your hopes up for anything more? And so the words, “He is not here but has risen,” seemed to them an idle tale. And maybe for some of you, that’s the way it seems as well?
But I’d like to suggest that the world is full of truly idle tales. Consider the way people are led to believe that hard work and honest efforts will always be recognized—that you will always be rewarded the way you think you should be. Sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.
Consider what many people believe and the assumption many actually base their lives on, which is namely that money buys happiness. That the more money you have the fewer problems you’ll have. That the more comfortable you are the more content you will be. That, we know, is an idle tale.
Or consider the way in which many people believe that the best response, the only credible response to an affront or an attack is a clenched fist or a show of force. Hit me and I’ll hit back. Surely, when Jesus told us to turn the other cheek, or to love our enemies and not to persecute them, he wasn’t telling an idle tale, was he?
Or consider the way in which many people, most of us perhaps, believe that we live autonomously in this world, and that who we are—what we become is entirely up to us. That we’re entirely self made people—that the measure of success is found in our ability to be self-sufficient, and that when times get tough our only hope is found in our ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Surely that is an idle tale and the world is full of them.
And I’d further like to propose that this day is essentially about overturning the biggest idle tale of them all, namely that death has the final say about us. That death is the ultimate power—the ultimate thing we must fear. If the claim being made this day around the world is true, then consider all the presuppositions about life and death, and death in particular, that need to be overturned.
Death surely has a way of pressing our noses against the window of faith, but it does not have the final say about us. Why? How do we know that? Because it is true—because resurrection happens, and death opens the door to new life. The good news we celebrate this day is that God, who had the first word about us will also have the last word.
I don’t know what happened in the predawn of that Easter morning. Maybe his followers were in denial? Maybe they became hysterical to the point of hallucination? Maybe they got drunk and woke up thinking that it had all been a bad dream? Maybe they were such good and loyal friends, that after his death, they needed to keep his memory alive and so they concocted a story about him coming back to life?
The problem with those arguments, however, and what has never made sense to me, is that his followers—his closest friends would do all of that, and then proceed to carry out the charade to the same extent they must have concluded he did, by dying for an idea—a concept? That has never made any sense to me. That his followers would stake their lives on an idle tale—that they became the most incredible spin doctors the world has ever known, and then committed themselves to a hoax by giving their lives—that to me sounds like an idle tale.
You know, some things are true whether they happened or not. But I know this: resurrection happened. And I know that it’s true because I’ve experienced it.
As a pastor, I’ve seen families that have been fractured for years, somehow reconcile at a deathbed. Tell me that’s not resurrection.
I’ve seen situations where all hope was gone and to pretend that there was any reason to hope would have seemed naïve at best—like gullibly buying into an idle tale. And yet I’ve seen hope emerge in the darkest hour. That’s resurrection.
I’ve seen human lives that had been out-of-control-train-wrecks, suddenly and completely turn around by the power of God in their lives—and you look at them and physically, they look just the same, but they are not the same person! That’s resurrection.
Resurrection happened and it happens still. It happens all the time in classrooms of inner city schools and in bombed out neighborhoods and in chemotherapy out-patient clinics and in nursing homes and in prisons. And in whatever you’re facing in your life, it can happen there as well.
Duke Divinity School’s Richard Lischer says it this way:
The resurrection of Jesus achieves its most documentable meaning in each new community’s embrace of it. The proof of it lies just in front of our noses. When old adversaries are restored in love and kneel together at the Lord’s Table, their reconciliation testifies not to the minister’s counseling skills but to the God who raises the dead and calls into existence the things that are not. When a persecuted congregation defies the powers arrayed against it and remains faithful, Jesus is glorified once again and lifted up for all to see. We can’t make him real, any more than we can make the wind blow or create life from nothing. But we have seen the Lord (The Christian Century, 3-17-99).
So I don’t know about you, but I find it easier to believe that Jesus rose from the dead than to believe that for centuries we’ve been living our lives based on an idle tale. And I certainly find it more credible to believe in resurrection than to believe that a twenty-year old archeological discovery, that generated very little stir when it was discovered, until the producer of the movie Titanic got on board and began promoting the bones of Jesus as something more than an idle tale.
Of course Jesus’ resurrection will never be proven historically. But neither will it be disproven. And here’s something else I know, resurrection is not likely to be experienced when it is met with arms folded skeptically across the chest and treated as the last remaining obstacle to a thoroughly modern faith.
When Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me even though they die, yet shall they live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die, when he said those words, he wasn’t just talking about Lazarus whom he had raised, nor was he speaking only of himself. Jesus was making that promise to any and all who reach out to him and call on his name. That is the good news for you and for me, and for anyone whose world, for whatever reason, seems to resemble Good Friday.
That is the age old claim of this day and that is the power of resurrection. And we are called to live into that power, trusting it and claiming it as it has surely claimed us. And because I suspect we have experienced that power—because we have already experienced resurrection in our own lives, we know that it is indeed true. And so we dare to sing about it and celebrate it, and in our darkest hours, we are able to stand next to graves and the caskets of our loved ones and boldly proclaim,
Behold I tell you a mystery…we have seen the Lord!
Amen.
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