Easter Morning Luke 24: 1-12 April 21, An Idle Tale

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1 Easter Morning Luke 24: 1-12 April 21, 2019 An Idle Tale I ll let you in on a little secret: The Easter sermon scares the daylights out of me. I suspect this is true of most preachers, but not all of us are foolish enough to admit it. I have three reasons for this fear. The first is this: The news that Jesus Christ is risen is so good, and so beyond any reasonable expectation, that only a fool would think that he or she could do it justice. Consider my position. I ve got 12, maybe 14 minutes in which to convey to you a reality that Jesus own disciples rejected on first hearing, and the church has yet to master after 2,000 years of trying. Sometimes, after a funeral, a kind soul will shake my hand and say, You did a good job, preacher. You really captured the essence of so-and-so. I always smile and say Thank you, and I always think to myself, What rubbish! I did no such thing. I didn t even come close. Nobody can capture the essence of another person. You can t sum up a life lived with all its ups and downs, glories and defeats, no matter how well you knew that person. Oh, you can hit the high spots. You can tell a few stories. You can thank God for putting that person in your path, but you can t encapsulate a person s life. I don t care how smart you are, or how clever you are with words, you can t capture the essence of another person. It s the same with Easter, but a million times over. Easter isn t something to be encapsulated. It s a reality to be lived. It s not so much a concept as it is a way of life. I can t do justice to Easter because I haven t finished living it. The best I can do this morning is to invite you to join a group of women as they trudge through the morning darkness to perform a grizzly but important task. They are going to the tomb of their beloved leader Jesus to wash his body, anoint it with spices, and prepare it properly for burial.

2 2 You see, there hadn t been time on Friday to perform the full rites of burial. It was well into the afternoon when the soldiers in the execution detail took the body of Jesus down from the cross. The Sabbath would start at sundown. There was just enough time to get the body into the tomb supplied by Joseph of Arimathea, and the tomb sealed. And so these women are up before daylight on Sunday morning, making their way to the tomb. They ve got water for washing the body, and oil and spices to anoint it. They don t need a shroud. Apparently Joseph supplied that along with the place to lay the body. These women know where to go. They were there when they laid him in the tomb. We re all invited to join these women, even though the males among us might feel a little out of place. Perhaps you noticed. There are no males in this party. Partly that s because in those days preparing bodies was women s work, but mostly it s because the male disciples hightailed it long ago. They cut and ran, most of them, when the authorities showed up in the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus. The sight of all those soldiers armed to the teeth seems to have dampened the men s resolve to stick with Jesus through thick and thin. Such was not the case with the women Mary from the fishing village of Magdala, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and the others whose names Luke fails to mention. They had been with Jesus throughout his ministry. They pooled their resources to support him, followed him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and kept a vigil throughout that agonizing Friday afternoon. These women did not cut and run. They were there when they crucified our Lord. And now you and I are approaching the tomb with these women. You ve been to a cemetery before, haven t you? You know what to expect. So do I. If you don t mind, I think I d rather wait outside as these women accomplish their task. But (and that s the word Luke uses) but they don t accomplish their task, do they? It s not necessary. The men in dazzling clothes which is gospel-speak for angels, sum up the situation rather nicely. Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.

3 3 These are rather pedantic angels just the ticket for the likes of us, who live in an academic community. They can t resist going over earlier material. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. Here s the second reason why I find the Easter sermon so daunting: Easter happens in context. It s not just about what happened sometime between good Friday and Easter morning. It s about God s love affair with humanity reaching back to the Garden of Eden. Easter is about how, over and over again, we broke God s heart with our cruelty, our disregard for our neighbor, and our refusal to do justice. Easter is about how we stoned the prophets who tried their best to get us back on track. Easter is about hungry children in a land of unequaled wealth, about emergency rooms clogged with sick folks too poor to buy insurance. Easter is about priests who abuse their calling and hide behind the skirts of cardinals and popes. Easter is about Jesus taking on the mantle of a prophet, and calling people today to account. Easter is about Jesus running the money changers out of the temple, Jesus welcoming the children, Jesus eating with outcasts, Jesus wrapping a towel around his waist and washing 12 pairs of dirty, dusty, feet, and commanding us to do the same. The good news of this day doesn t start with an empty tomb. It starts with the God who formed us out of the dust of the earth, breathed into us the breath of life, and refuses to let us go. Easter happens inside the memory of the Triune God. The first Easter sermon began with the word Remember... The third reason why I m shaking in my boots this morning is this: I can t do a single thing to make you believe what I m saying. All of this is either a damn bit of foolishness or a holy bit of foolishness, but either way, it s folly. God becoming

4 4 flesh and living among us. The Word of God pinned to a cross. A tomb made empty because the dead, broken body it once housed has been raised in a resurrection body. Foolishness. If you were to put your trust in this story, then you d have all sorts of foolish ideas about what God has yet to accomplish. You re liable to believe, for instance, that there s no good reason why everyone can t have decent, affordable healthcare. You re liable to think that peace between nations is a real possibility. You might even believe, fool that you are, that our own nation need not be divided between red and blue. If you put your trust in the God of Easter, purple is a real possibility for you. Jesus launched humanity on a trajectory toward God s best hopes for us. Because Christ is alive, hope is alive. As a preacher of the gospel, I can proclaim this reality, but I can t make it happen for you. I can t even make it happen for myself. Let s get back to those women. They remembered Jesus words, Luke tells us, and then made a beeline back to the eleven disciples, dragged them from the beds they were hiding under, and told them what they had witnessed and remembered. The disciples did the reasonable thing. They told the women to get real. We don t know what you ve been smoking, ladies, but we know dead, and Jesus is dead. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. You see what I mean? You see what Easter preachers are up against? Easter sermons are by definition an exercise in foolishness. Jesus own disciples didn t believe the first Easter sermon they heard. They figured the Romans and the religious authorities had had the final word. The future Jesus pointed to, the world he embodied for that short time he was with them, turned out to be no more the a pipedream. Dead is dead. End of story. Only a fool would believe otherwise.

5 5 The disciples eventually discovered that God doesn t require our permission to make Easter happen. God alone draws us into Easter. We don t choose Easter. Easter chooses us. God enters the deepest, darkest pit of our existence and pulls us into the sunlight. God takes what is dead stone dead and gives it new life. God takes what is broken and makes it whole. God takes what is foolish and makes it wise. I hate to admit this in church, but sermons don t convince anybody. All they do is point in one direction or another. God does the rest. If I can point you toward what God is doing in Easter, I ll have done at least as well as those women in Luke story, and that would be something, seeing as how they are clearly the most faithful people in it. The best I can offer you this morning is an idle tale that will change your life and is already changing the life of the whole world. Beloved, may this be the worst sermon and the best news you ve ever heard. Brant S. Copeland, Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Tallahassee, Florida