Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday April 21, 2019 (Easter Sunday)
Scripture: Luke 24:1-12
I have to confess that
I’ve been struggling over the past several days, wondering how to preach the
resurrection in a corner of the world that is anticipating flooding in the very
near future. Here in the church, we are
celebrating Easter with joy and fanfare, yet outside of these walls, people are
filling and stacking sandbags and moving furniture and belongings to higher
ground. The contrast has weighed heavily
with me as I figured out what to say this morning.
But when I turned to
our scripture reading, I noticed that it isn’t filled with unrestrained
joy. When the women, Mary Magdalene,
Joanna, and Mary the mother of James approached the tomb, they were mourning
the death of Jesus. Two days earlier,
they had placed the body of one whom they loved in the tomb, and they were
returning with spices to finish the preparation for permanent burial. Their hearts were likely heavy with grief,
their feet dragging in anticipation of the job that they had to do.
When they got to the
tomb and they saw that the great heavy stone that had blocked the entrance had
been rolled to the side, and they saw that the body that they were looking for
wasn’t there, they weren’t excited – they were perplexed, they were confused.
And when two men in dazzling
clothes appeared and stood beside them, they weren’t jubilant – they were
terrified.
It is only when they
were reminded of Jesus’ words to them, telling them that he was to die and rise
again on the third day, that a realization of what has happened dawns on the
women. They realize that Jesus’ body
hasn’t been dragged away by wild animals; they realize that Jesus’ body hasn’t
been moved by the Roman soldiers; they realize that Jesus must have risen from
the dead.
It is only then that
this small group of women can return to the rest of the disciples and tell them
what they have seen.
And even then, most of
the disciples don’t believe them. It is
only Peter who goes to the tomb and sees only the linen cloths sitting
there. No Jesus, no body. And Peter returned home in amazement, in
wonder.
Do you notice who is
missing in today’s reading? There is no
Jesus in our reading today. No body, no
resurrected one. There is only the empty
tomb, and a missing Jesus.
And the other thing
that is missing from this reading is joy.
The characters move from confusion to terror to wonder. They haven’t reached the point of being able
to rejoice yet.
Today’s reading is not
a story of the resurrected Jesus – it’s a story of the empty tomb; and with the
empty tomb, it’s as if the rug has been pulled out from under the disciples’
feet. As the old saying go, there is
nothing certain in life except death and taxes, and now we can’t even trust
death.
The empty tomb shakes
things up. The empty tomb changes the
world as they knew it. The empty tomb
means that nothing can ever be the same again.
The resurrected Jesus
will appear to the disciples later on.
The joy of encountering their risen Lord will come, if we continue to
read the story. But today, we are given
the story of the empty tomb and a missing body.
The empty tomb is the
fulfillment of all of the teaching that Jesus has given to his disciples – all
of his teaching about turning the world upside down, all of his teaching about
the last being first and the first being last, all of his teaching about the
topsy-turvy kingdom of God. With the
empty tomb, even death and its permanence have been overturned. The empty tomb means that something has
fundamentally changed in the world, and the world can never be the same again.
And so the empty tomb
issues a challenge to all of us who gather this morning, peering in to see that
there is no body. The world has been
radically changed, shifted on its axis.
The question we need to ask ourselves is how do our lives reflect this
change? How have our lives been
transformed by our encounter with this new way of being? How do we live our lives in the shadow of the
empty tomb?
It has been a
challenging journey that we have been on this week. Last Sunday we followed Jesus into Jerusalem
in a parade whose joy carried overtones of fear. We have shared a final meal with Jesus where
he spoke of his upcoming death and instructed us to serve and love one
another. We have stayed with Jesus as he
was arrested, as he was put on trial, as he was crucified, as he died, and as
his body was laid in a tomb.
But now we are back at
that tomb again, and the tomb is empty.
The resurrection is real, and the resurrection is here, and the
resurrection is now.
Easter and the
resurrection is the source of our hope.
We know that all of us pass through Good Friday periods in our
lives. Times of sickness, times of
grief, times of fear, times of pain, times of anxiety, times with the river
waters rise and the land floods. And yet
because of the empty tomb and the resurrection, we know that Good Friday can’t
last forever – we know that Easter is coming.
Easter is coming! Easter is here! The tomb is empty! Christ is not here, for Christ has
risen! Hallelujah!
Easter Sunrise Service, as we gathered on the shore
of the Wolastoq (St. John) River
Photo Credit: Josie Pike
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