What Are You Looking For?
based on Luke 24:1-12
by Rev. Karen Goltz
“Why do you look for the living among
the dead?” It’s a good question. Jesus himself had told them what was
to happen to him, and that on the third day he would rise again. And
here it was, the third day, and the women were in the cemetery, carrying
the spices used for treating a dead body. They weren’t looking for the
living Christ; they were seeking a corpse they could treat with respect,
bury properly, and then leave in the tomb marking his final resting
place as a remembrance of him. Similar to our modern cemeteries today,
they probably expected to return again and again to that tomb, to
remember Jesus’ life, to feel close to him, and to miss him.
We hear the story so often and know it
so well, it’s easy for us to sit back and snicker at the women and the
other disciples for their lack of faith. Of course Jesus had risen from
the dead; he was the Son of God. That should have been made clear by
all the miracles he’d performed, and of course they should have believed
him when he’d said he would rise from the dead. But we have an
advantage; we have two millennia of people telling the story, believing
it enough to pattern their lives according to it, and passing it down
from generation to generation, to billions upon billions of people over
the centuries. It’s old news to us.
But to the women and the other
disciples, it wasn’t a story. It was their reality. Imagine it.
You’ve been following this man for months, maybe years, believing that
he was the long awaited Messiah. He’s supposed to save Israel and make
her be a light to the nations. But then you see him captured, and
killed. Dead. No pulse. No extraordinary measures available to bring
him back. He’s dead, and placed in a tomb, and left there for days.
Despite what you may have believed, despite what he may have told you
about himself, death seems pretty final. So you make yourself get used
to the idea that this man, no matter how much you loved and admired him,
was in the end just a man, and now a dead one, at that. Try to imagine
yourself accepting the death of a loved one, a death that you yourself
witnessed, only to find that the plot they’d been buried in was now
empty. Is your first thought resurrection? Probably not. You think
either grave robbers or vandals, or maybe you’re so discombobulated that
you can’t think of an explanation at all, and you just stand there,
perplexed and confused.
Now if you’re standing there and two
men in dazzling clothes suddenly appear out of thin air and tell you
that he is risen, you might be a little more open to a crazy idea like a
dead man being alive again. But if you’re at home in mourning, and a
few of your distraught family members or friends come in and tell you
the same thing, would you believe them? Be honest now. Your distraught
cousins, who were so scarred by witnessing the death that they’ve been
hysterical all weekend, return from the cemetery and tell you that the
person you saw die isn’t really dead. Most of us wouldn’t believe them;
we’d call and make an appointment for them with a grief counselor. It’s
not healthy to live in that kind of fantasy world; you have to accept
the reality that you live in a hard, unfair world, and deal with the
facts of the day.
But here’s where the disciples have an
advantage over us. In the verses that come after today’s gospel
reading, Jesus himself appears to the disciples. As hard as it is to
argue with the finality of death, it’s harder still to argue with the
dead person standing in front of you three days after the deed was done.
The two millennia of people telling the
story now work against us. It was so long ago. They were a backwards,
superstitious people existing without the benefits of the enlightenment
and modern science. Miracles can be explained. And more importantly,
stories get changed in the telling. Maybe an idle tale born out of
wishful thinking got told so many times that it morphed from “if only it
had happened” to “it really happened.” Isn’t that much more believable?
“Why do you look for the living among
the dead?” In other words, “why are you here? This is not where you’re
going to find what you’re looking for.” What are you looking for? And
where are you looking for it? Some are looking for comfort, some for
answers, some for guidance, and some don’t know what they’re seeking;
they only know that something’s missing from their lives. And when all
else fails, they come to these buildings that seem like monuments built
to remember a crazy story. I mean, when nothing else works, a lot of us
are willing to give crazy stories a chance.
I loved the TV show 24 when it was on.
Trust me, this will tie in. In one episode, a tough guy who seems to
wrap himself in rules and regulations to justify some pretty
unscrupulous actions does something very much out of character for him;
he breaks the rules himself cover up a serious mistake made by a man he
hates, and who hates him back just as much. When a Muslim woman who
works there questions his actions, he quotes her a verse. She
recognizes the verse and says, quite incredulously, “You’ve read the
Koran.” He replies, “And the Bible, and the Talmud,” and he goes on to
list virtually every sacred text ever written for any religion. He then
tells the woman, “You’re fortunate; you’ve already found your answers.
I’m still looking for mine.”
Like many of us, he was ready to give
every crazy, ancient story he could find a chance, because nothing else
was working.
The problem is, stories aren’t the
answer. They can give us information, but information is not what we’re
seeking. “He is not here, but has risen.” The living Christ is not
locked inside the pages of a book, no matter how sacred, nor is his
residence Joy in Christ Lutheran Church. The living Christ is not in
here, but out there, in the world, working in, with, and through people
and events. The Bible gives us information about Christ our Lord, and
Joy in Christ Lutheran Church, along with the other Christian churches,
can help us to interpret that information, but all that is to help us
see him in our lives. We worship God in Christ here, and we interpret
the information we get from the Bible here, but he is not here. At
least, he’s not here any more so than he’s anywhere else.
Earlier in the service we sang, “Jesus
Christ is Risen Today.” Note the tense. He is risen. We didn’t
sing, “Jesus Christ rose two thousand years ago.” Big deal. What does
something that happened two thousand years ago have to do with us? But
it’s not a mere historical event we were singing about. It’s our
present reality. Jesus Christ is risen. Today. And
every day! Every Sunday is a little Easter. Every Sunday we worship
the Christ who is risen, and every Sunday we try to interpret the
story in light of how God in Christ is working in our lives throughout
the week. Because God in Christ is working in our lives
throughout the week. Alleluia!
“Why do you look for the living among
the dead?” I won’t go so far as to equate the church with the dead.
I’m not saying that at all. But I am saying that Jesus is not locked up
inside a book or a building anymore than he was locked up inside the
tomb. He is risen. He is alive. He’s walking with his
disciples on the road to Emmaus; he’s guiding them in the upper room.
He’s on every road, in every room, walking with every one of us, guiding
every one of us. The book and the building can, should, and do help us
understand what all that means, but you needn’t come looking for him
here; he’s already found you out there. Amen.