Sermon Transcript: April 20, 2025
Our scripture reading today comes from Luke 24:1-12:
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.
***
Well, a lot has happened. Last week, when Jesus entered into Jerusalem on the donkey to the jubilant cheers of the crowd, Jesus doesn’t waste any time in making his presence felt in the city. He went straight to the temple—the center of religious and political identity and power—where he causes quite a stir. In that, and subsequent encounters, he manages to sufficiently tick off both the religious and political elite to the extent that they decide to collaborate to have him killed.
At that point, even his crowd of supporters can’t save him. And they know it. And Jesus knows it too. Jesus does seem to have a few outs, but he refuses to take them. And it makes us wonder—is his death inevitable? Was it God’s will?
Barbara Brown Taylor points out that those may be two separate questions. She writes:
“It seems entirely possible to me that God’s will for Jesus was a long and fruitful life, brimming over with the divine justice and love that he was born to embody. When the world opposed that justice, however—when the world reviled that love—God’s will did not give Jesus license to stop being Jesus. God’s will supported him to go on doing justice and loving mercy, even in the face of deadly opposition. So in that sense, I suppose it was God’s will that Jesus suffer and die, since suffering and death turned out to be the unavoidable consequences of being who he was.
It was God’s will for Jesus to be fully who he was every day of his life—even if the fullness of that life shortened the length of it.”
I wonder what would happen if we had the chance to ask Jesus’ family, his friends, his disciples, the supporters in the crowd—if they would have liked to have more of Jesus’ life, if they would have liked to have him around a little bit longer, even if that meant that he had to tone it down a bit.
At some point in the narrative, Luke does just that. He very subtly and purposely shifts the perspective from that of Jesus to that of those around him—those that loved and cared for him in his life. In many ways, Luke’s telling of the Easter story is less about Jesus and what his resurrection means, and more about Jesus’ family, disciples, and followers—and what they experienced.
If we compare how Luke handles the Easter story to the other Gospel writers, we might come to the conclusion that Luke is much more attentive to the tension of loss and surrender in the story than the others. He doesn’t rush to any neat and tidy conclusions about the empty tomb and what it means. The resurrected Jesus doesn’t even appear in the story—not until later in the day, after everyone returns to their normal lives. And when Jesus does finally appear, it takes those with him hours to realize who he is. It’s true.
In today’s story, Jesus doesn’t appear—but his presence permeates every word. Luke’s attention to detail and sensitivity to what Jesus’ family and friends are going through is remarkable.
As modern Christian readers, it’s easy for us to gloss over what it means for Jesus to die late on Friday. Early—or even contemporary—Jewish readers would immediately pick up on the implication of having to grieve on the Sabbath. Jesus’ family and friends and followers are all commanded to do nothing for a whole day after Jesus’ death. They can only sit with their loss and despair.
So we might understand why the women get up as early as possible on Sunday morning to tend to Jesus’ body. Because sometimes we just need to do something—anything—to relieve the weight of our sadness.
What the women find defies their expectation and experience. The body is gone. Instead, there are two figures in dazzling clothes. The last time we encountered such figures, we were on the mountaintop with Jesus, Peter, Jim, and John, and they were met there by Moses and Elijah, who were described as shiny and dazzling.
Now, while there’s no indication that the two figures the women encounter are Moses and Elijah, the description of their shining clothes indicates they’re from the same realm. Most agree that they’re angels—heavenly messengers. And their message, depending on how you hear it, might sound similar to that of a petulant teenager saying, “I told you so.” But more likely, they are offering a gentle reminder to the rattled women: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 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.”
And with that—they remember, Luke tells us.
Now remember, they didn’t go to the tomb expecting to find Jesus risen from the dead. They expected to find his body. And when they didn’t find his body, they didn’t immediately assume the miraculous or remember all the things that he had told them. They probably reacted the way any of us would—with confusion and disbelief.
It took these mysterious messengers telling them to remember for them to begin the process of discovering what might have happened.
Now, at this point, they return to the others—to their community—to share what they know, and what they don’t know. And the others react to their words the way they first reacted to the empty tomb: they just can’t process it. Despite what they know about the trustworthiness of the women, it doesn’t fit their framework or knowledge. Even though Jesus had told them—no less than three times—that this would happen, only Peter is curious enough to go seek for himself.
Luke tells us when he arrives, he finds the tomb empty, just as the women had said—but the two messengers are nowhere in sight. Only the cloth Jesus was wrapped in is to be found. Peter leaves amazed and wondering.
And we are left wondering too—what did Peter do with the cloth? Did he take it with him?
As anyone who’s lost a loved one and had the task of cleaning out their closet and drawers can tell you—our clothing is intimately a part of who we are. It’s not that our clothing makes us who we are, as commercials might like us to believe, but more so that what we wear becomes part of us. It takes on aspects of us—look, feel, scent. All of these things that outlive us. And even after we lose a loved one, the sight, smell, or touch of their clothing can bring not only memories, but a real sense of their presence to us. Eventually, it may fade, or we let it go—but especially in the immediate aftermath of loss, clothing is a sign of our loved one’s presence, even in the midst of their apparent absence.
And that’s what Luke offers us on Easter: signs of Jesus’ presence amidst his apparent absence. Luke doesn’t confirm or deny the reality of resurrection just yet. He invites us to live in the mysterious tension between death and life. He does not move quickly to resolution, but allows us to live in that strange journey of faith and surrender that loss provides.
This is an Easter story for those of us who know all too well our human frailty and fickleness—who have experienced loss and sorrow—and who simply want to know that God is with us.
It seems to me that we need Luke’s Easter story more now than ever, with its affirmation that there is good news to be found between death and the full proclamation of the resurrection. Because that’s where we live.
Luke’s Easter story says we don’t have to wait for everything to be right and perfect to recognize and celebrate God’s resurrection reality. We have all that we need, right here, right now. What we need to do is remember.
We only need to look to the past—how God has been with us, how God has rescued us time and time again, how God has made God’s presence known in the most difficult and dire of circumstances throughout history. We need only remember the words of Jesus—words of comfort and challenge.
When we look to the past, at what has happened, with new insight and perspective, we can begin to see and sense new possibilities for the future as well. To remember God’s presence in the past gives us hope for God’s promises yet to be fulfilled.
So perhaps—especially now—living in the times when we are so divided, and when we’ve almost stopped listening to those who see the world differently, we should pay attention to the way that Luke tells the story—not through one perspective, but many. No one person in this story is given the whole truth. They all have pieces of it.
The women are the first to get to the tomb and find it empty—but they don’t know what it means until the messengers point them in the right direction. Even then, there are still huge questions. The disciples—those closest companions of Jesus, in whom he confided and told multiple times what was going to happen—refuse the testimony of the women who report on the empty tomb. It takes all of them together—if they would just listen to one another with mutuality and respect—to even begin to get a picture of what’s going on.
Luke’s Easter story is about how remembrance and community lead us to resurrection.
Like Luke’s Easter story, we each are given our piece to tell. Our job is to tell what is ours to tell—and to listen, to listen to what others have to offer as best we can. Only then can we begin to piece together something that might be worthy of being called truth.
As we celebrate Easter this year, the invitation to us is the same as it was to the women who first visited the tomb: Remember what he told you. Remember what he did. Remember how he loved and how he lived. And look for signs of his presence in the world around us—and in each other. For Christ is alive. He is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen.
