“Easter! He is Risen! “This is Crazy!””

Sermon: Easter! He is Risen!
“This is Crazy!”

April 21st, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI

Scripture passage: Luke 24:1-12

My appreciation to Craig Koester, a professor at Luther Seminary and to the Luther Seminary workingpreacher website, for the commentary that supplied the framework and much of the thought for my message this morning. I am especially grateful for their ministry to pastors as I try to be faithful to my call in the midst of a serious health challenge.
Are there any parts of the Easter story that strikes you as especially odd today? Perhaps something that you hadn’t ever noticed in the Easter story before, or perhaps something that surprises you again and again every time you hear it?
(Read the Easter story again, Luke 24:1-12)
This is truly a crazy story that we celebrate today! If you don’t already believe it, I’m not sure there is anything I can say in the next few minutes to convince you. Which takes a lot of pressure off of me, for what I have come to recognize anew this past week is that while God may choose to use any one of us, it is only God that brings Easter faith. That is the role of the Holy Spirit, and of Jesus himself, to open eyes to see and ears to hear the Truth (capital T).
The account of Luke 24 begins with the obvious, with the undisputable fact: Jesus is dead. Those in the story are acting on this assumption. The women come to the tomb because they had followed Joseph and Nicodemus late Friday afternoon when they had brought Jesus’ body there, place it inside and closed the tomb with a large stone. The word for ‘tomb’ that is used by Luke means literally, a place of remembrance, a memorial place. They had come to observe their customs for remembering the dead, for honoring the dead; their practices that give expression to the grief and start of the process of finding closure. We do those things when we gather for a viewing, or for a funeral or a celebrating of life service, when we gather at a graveside to say final farewells or speak words of release as ashes are scattered. The women had prepared the things they needed. They came together, to support one another, to be able to share memories together, stories of their insightful teacher, his fiery preaching, his compassion, the amazing healings. But he died. So unexpectedly. So tragically. Their broken hearts draw them to his grave the first chance they get, “very early Sunday morning”, even before the sun is up.
But what they encounter when they arrive runs counter to all they know to be true. The reality they expect is not the reality they find. Their first thoughts must have been “Well, that’s strange! The stone is moved. That’s weird! The grave is open!” But they know Jesus is dead. They know his body was left inside the cave-like grave. Those are the facts. They saw it with their own eyes. So they go ahead as planned, inside the tomb. The body is not there! They look around… it’s not anywhere in there!
Then, suddenly, they are given a message that makes no sense whatsoever. “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has risen.” The question goes directly to the incongruity of the whole thing. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” I wonder if Mary’s first thought was, “But I’m not looking for the living. I’m looking for a dead man!” And then, there in that place of remembrance, they are directed to remember: “Remember. Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: the Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”
All they get is a message, a word. One would think God would work differently. Wouldn’t it seem better if the whole town had been present as eye-witnesses, if everyone could have watched Jesus come striding out into the broad sunlight. But the fact is that a message, a word, is all we have today, too. We have the word of those who recorded these memories. You have my word, “He has Risen. Christ has risen indeed!” Like those women at Jesus’ tomb on that early Sunday morning, you too are given a message of resurrection that flies in the face of what you know to be true.
The only logical response to such a message is disbelief, unbelief. Truly. Experience has taught us that tragedies and disease happens, that death is final, that death wins. Dead bodies do not climb out of graves by themselves except in the imagination of fiction writers. It’s a fact. We all know that saying, “There are only two things that are sure in life – death and taxes.” But along comes the Easter message which announces that Jesus is alive. When two completely contradictory claims collide, it only makes sense to choose the already established fact.
That’s what happens when the women rush back to the house where all the other disciples are holed up with their aching grief. The women share all these things, and the Eleven disciples and the others with them respond as thinking people regularly respond when a message flies in the face of what they know. Luke says, “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” Actually, “nonsense” is a rather tepid translation of the word leros which is somewhat saltier. It’s more like ‘lunatic’, or even more in line with the coarse speech of fisherman, it’s what we might call BS, that stuff the farmers are spreading on their fields right now.
Not only was the message crazy, but the messengers totally lacked credibility, a bunch of hysterical women Luke implies. The fact is that less than century ago, women and people of color were not considered credible witnesses in American courts either. How many people over the centuries, and still today, here and all around the world, speak in truthfulness yet are discounted and disregarded simply because they say is inconvenient or surprising? St. Augustine, one of the Fathers of the Faith, a Roman African who lived just 300 years after Christ, declared in one of his sermons, “And truth became like an idle tale.”
Actually, disbelief or unbelief does not mean that a person believes nothing. Rather, it means that they believe something else. Someone who declares, “I don’t believe it!” actually just believes something else more strongly. But it is in that moment, at precisely that place where the Easter message begins its work by challenging our certainties. Experience teaches that death wins, death is final and even the strongest among us will eventually succumb. Experience teaches that life is what you make it, so get what you can while you can because it’ll be over soon enough. And then along comes the Easter message which says, “Really? Are you sure about that? Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” Easter announces, “Death is real, but it is not final.” In Jesus, life gets the last word.
Again today, the Easter message calls each of you from your old belief in death to a new belief in life. The claim that Jesus’ tomb was empty on Sunday morning, the story that the one who died by crucifixion has risen up alive, is so outrageous, so crazy, that it might just make you wonder if it might – just might – be true. The apostles didn’t believe the women; they were convinced that the message was nonsense. Death was death. Yet…, Yet…, Yet, what if? What if it’s true? Peter needed to know. The message was crazy, but could he risk not checking it out for himself? It was so incongruous that he just had to wonder, had to take a look.
All of us who got up this morning and came to be here, are following in the footsteps of Peter. Everyone who has gathered to hear the Easter story across the globe, over the centuries, heard the rumor that Jesus is alive and came to hear for themselves, to hear again and to marvel at the thought: what if it’s true? What if death is real, but not final? What if Jesus is not merely a figure in the past but a presence in the present? What if Jesus really can meet you right here? What would life be like then?
The Easter reading stops with Peter’s “wondering to himself what had happened.” Yet the Easter story continues far beyond that. It continues on as God continues to challenge our certainties about death and human brokenness, with His message about the promise of life. So go ahead and tell God that you think it’s outrageous to expect anyone to believe that Jesus has risen. Go ahead and tell God that you believe that death is still so final. None of this is news to God. God has heard it all before, but God simply refuses to believe it. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” God wonders. “Through the living Jesus I give you the gift of love and life. Why would you think that I would offer you anything less?” (Craig Koester, www.workingpreacher.org)

Closing Song: “He Lives!”

We are offered again the choice that Moses put to God’s people: Today I have put before you the choice between life and death… Choose Life, that you and your children might live. Dt.30:19