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Greensboro, NC

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April 8, 2007: Easter Sunday

Luke 24:1-12
"Easter Faith"

Have you ever experienced seeing-- just for an instant--a dead loved one? As if they have come back from the dead? Or maybe you hear their voice, turn in amazement, expecting to see them? Sometimes I think I can still hear Stewart Cass behind me in the choir, or look to the back of the congregation and see George Andreve or Al Vernon. I still remember Dot Hartley's laugh and Tracy Scardino's smile, and it's hard not to think of Ruth Andreve when eating ice cream.

When we have these kind of close encounters with the dead, our heart skips a few beats. Part of you is thrilled rejoicing in the illusion, in the kindly gift you have unexpectantly been given, and part of you grieves anew, freshly aware that, no, your loved one is not here after all. We love. We lose people we love and it feels like we are the walking dead. Still we get out of bed every morning, put our feet on the floor and try to get through the day. Sometimes faith means going on with our lives and tending to the necessary chores of day to day living, especially those tasks that need to be done in hard times.

That's what the women were doing that first Easter Sunday morning. They got out of bed, tended to the necessary chores of the day--preparing the burial spices as their mothers had taught them, and then they set out for the tomb. They knew without a doubt Jesus was dead.

I wonder what we would have seen if the tomb had been equipped with a 21st century surveillance camera? Would the tape show Jesus waking up, taking off the cloth wrappings, laying them to one side and pushing back the stone with superhuman effort? Or would the image on the film be obliterated by a great burst of flashing energy? Or perhaps one second the body is there and the next second it's not. If so, why was the stone moved aside? To let Jesus out, or the women in?

Whatever the reason, two men in dazzling white, presumable angels, suddenly appear and state the obvious to the women. Jesus is no longer here. H's risen! Remember? How he told you, when you were back in Galilee that he would be handed over to the authorities? Be Crucified? And rise again on the third day?

And, yes in fact the women do remember! They remember Jesus had told them this would happen, not just once but four times in Luke's gospel. He is not dead after all! He is risen!

Now note that the women do not go yelling this incredibly wonderful news at the top of their voices through the village streets, proclaiming it to perfect strangers.

No. They save the telling of this amazing prediction come true to people they trust and love, their own faith community—folks who know them, and we would think remember, as they had remembered, that Jesus had told them he would be handed over to the authorities, crucified and on the third day rise again? Surely the fact Jesus had said this on four different occasions and now that they had actually witnessed this fact, surely the remaining 11 apostles would put 2 and2 together and it would click. Sure the women's story is pretty unbelievable, but it is not beyond what Jesus has already told them? They would get it, Right?

Alas they did not. In fact you might say, as Anna Carter Florence puts it, that “for one wildly out of character moment, they forget their disciple manners and resort to the subtle cadences of a high school locker room: oh yeah? That sounds like a load of….. to me.” Translators of Luke seem to play down the apostles'reactions by polite-ing up their response to the women's story. “It seem to them an idle tale, and they did not believe the women.” But the Greek word Luke uses to describe the apostles response, leiros is more accurately translated as our modern day slang words beginning with “c” or “B and S.” In other words, the disciples judge the women's story to be nonsense, trash, a lot of bull. Perhaps to underscore the severity of the disciples' response, nowhere else in the New Testament is the descriptive word leiros used.

So just as the women's testimony shocks the disciples, and they find it not only unbelievable, but a lot of nonsense, a lot of BS, the disciples' response shocks us. Here were women who they knew from their own experience to be reliable, Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod's household manager who provided for them out of her resources, and even one of the apostles' own mother, Mary the mother of James! Each of them telling the same story about their first hand experience. Are we surprised that from the very beginning the good news of the gospel is met with ridicule and skepticism? Even by the people in the best position to find it believable?

The empty tomb alone does not lead to Easter faith. Instead faith is based on personal encounters with the risen Lord. That is just as true today as two thousand years ago. It was only after the disciples experienced additional evidence for themselves that they came to see the women were telling the truth. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that there are certain aspects of our faith that cause us to raise questions from time to time just as those first disciples raised questions as they heard the women's report about the tomb. The presence of questions does not hinder our ability to ultimately come to faith—as Paul Tillich the great protestant theologian of the last century said—“doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.”

Some things do just have to be experienced to be believed. No other evidence will do. Perhaps you know what I am talking about. In the real crisis of life when we lay a loved one in the grave, when a marriage falls apart, our bodies quit on us, when we are betrayed by an employer, friend or family member, the loss can be so immense that it obliterates the other loves in our lives. Our loss is overwhelming. We think we will never recover from the blow. What today's gospel story teaches us is that remembering God's presence in the past can give us resources for dealing with the present. This is what many of us have discovered when writing our lebenslauf , our spiritual autobiography for Gemeinschaft 1. When we take the time to reflect back on our life, we see God's sustaining presence in the hard times in our lives, bringing new life out of the remnants of death.

We discover that faith does not usually move from promise to fulfillment, but rather the opposite way--from fulfillment to recognizing and remembering the promise. Meaning that remembering what we have been taught about who God is and what God does is often the instigator of recognition when what we've been told about God is fulfilled in our experience. The promise becomes real when we have experienced it.

On that first Easter morning those women did not have all the answers they might have wanted. But they did their best with the knowledge they had, and ran with it. When it comes to faith that is all any of us can do, trusting in the promise. And in the midst of tending to necessary chores of getting on with life, the women were met by the unexpected experience of good news, and the same is true for us in our losses. Our being faithful to our daily tasks may lead to us to unwittingly being the bearers of good news. Resurrection life.

But today we hear not only about resurrected life in the here and now, but also in the hereafter. The defining conviction of the Christian hope is that because Jesus was raised from the dead, the grave is not the final reality of human experience. DL Moody, one of the great American evangelists of the 19 th century once said,

“Some day you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield , is dead. Don't believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now.”

The good news is not only that death is not our final experience. We do not have to wait until we take our last breath to experience risen life. God is constantly bringing new life out of the dead remnants of our past. Not life as we knew it before, not our old life, but new life. Jesus was unalterably changed by his death and resurrection. Just as we are unalterably changed by the losses in our lives.