Feast of the Resurrection, 03/27/2016

Sermon on Luke 24:1-12, by David H. Brooks

“[He] was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that…[he] was dead as a door-nail….[of that] there is no doubt. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”

For those of you that are at all bookish, you will probably recognize the sentences I just quoted as the opening lines from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with Jacob Marley’s name dropped out. But the situation is the same, and we must not allow ourselves to be distracted from the sober, somber business of the tomb and the body just because we think we know what’s really going on, or because we think we know what the story’s really about.

For in fact Jesus is dead, dead as Dickens’ proverbial doornail. Everyone knew it—the Twelve disciples who went deep underground and stayed out of sight; Joseph from Arimathea, who parked the body at a convenient place before the Sabbath regulations kicked in; the women, who got the spices and ointments ready to do more of the dirty work that women always seem to have to do. Yep, Jesus was as dead as a doornail.

So their reaction is entirely understandable, as they search high and low for the body. They search, perplexed: is this the right place, are we sure about our landmarks, what could have happened to the body, do we know how to find Joseph, and so on. Perplexed. All the Gospels record confusion, bewilderment, and bafflement at the discovery that the grave is empty.

Would you or I react any differently? We modern people tend to put ourselves on a pedestal relative to those who lived long ago. C. S. Lewis called it chronological snobbery; maybe today we should say that we privilege ourselves because of our position in history, but we want to think ourselves superior, more advanced as humans because of when we live. We’re more knowledgeable, sophisticated, worldly; they were back water rubes, naïve, ignorant. But they seem to act in much the same way I would if I went to a funeral expecting to see the body of someone near and dear to me and couldn’t find it. The women in Luke’s gospel are disadvantaged only because they don’t have a funeral director as a convenient target for yelling.

The mention of funeral directors brings me back to where we started. Jesus was dead, as dead as a human being can be. Note this fact well. The first witnesses to Easter knew full well what death looked like. They were acquainted with death, saw it on a daily basis; it lived at home with them, was a regular companion in the neighborhood. Its smell was constantly in their nostrils, it rubbed shoulders with them at work, kept them company on journeys and trips. They knew death, knew it in a way that we sanitized modern day Americans, with our industrial processes to manage and confine death, do not. They knew death, and they knew that the man Jesus, born of a woman, who got tired and hungry and thirsty, who knew joy and sadness, was dead.

Except that now he was not. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” ask the two strangers in dazzling white. It’s as good as saying there’s nothing to see here folks, move along. The empty tomb means nothing; the promise that Jesus gave means everything. “Remember what he told you...” This is no longer bewilderment, but sheer giddiness and delight so amazing that it would set loose laughter of a most splendid illustrious variety. For if Jesus is alive, then the possibilities simply stagger the imagination! The very world has been shifted on its foundations, and what was set in stone, what is true about how the world is supposed to work, what we know about life, death and doornails is suddenly not so certain any more.

Remember what he told you. We are witnesses, for we ate and drank with him. He is alive. God bless us, everyone.

The Rev. Dr. David H. Brooks
Columbia, SC USA
E-Mail: Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com

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