Alleluia, Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
This resurrection gospel has a lot of what we who have heard the story year after year have come to expect: the women coming to the tomb at dawn; the stone rolled away; the vision of angels; the other disciples’ disbelief of the women’s “idle tale” ; Peter’s running, stooping, looking, and amazement.
It has a lot of what we expect, but it feels so incomplete. Angelic announcements and human amazement are only part of the resurrection story. There has to be more — and there is. Luke isn’t done with us hearers yet.
Luke gives us a good beginning in this first part of the resurrection gospel that we hear today. The women come to anoint the dead body of Jesus, but they encounter the unexpected: the stone rolled away, no body. Perplexing, indeed. Then perplexity gives way to terror at the appearance of the messengers and their question: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” And their charge: “Remember what he told you.”
Remember what Jesus told you. That seems like pretty solid advice for an angel to give. Remember what he already told you about his passion — and about his rising again. But when this first Easter announcement got passed on to the rest of the members of the Jesus movement, it seemed to them an idle tale — except that Peter got up and ran to the tomb and, stooping and looking in, he saw that it had become but a linen closet. And he went home, amazed.
The trajectory from coming to the tomb to do what’s right for the dead body of Jesus — through perplexity, announcement, and disbelief, to amazement — this trajectory is familiar. But there has to be more — and there is. Luke isn’t done with us hearers yet.
This is only the beginning of the story. In the unexpected absence of the expected dead body, something new has sprung forth. Death, the destroyer, is destroyed in this eighth-day act of new creation. And the death that is destroyed includes all the evils that attend it, everything webbed together to make the shroud that lies over all the nations, the shroud the nations cannot remove.
This beginning of the resurrection story is the beginning of the destruction of that shroud, the shredding of the web of death and evil, and pouring of hope into all our perplexing history, leading us finally to God’s feast for all peoples on Mount Zion, the center of blessing for the whole world.
We are invited to a foretaste of that feast today. We, like the myrrh-bearing women, are invited to remember what Jesus told us, to “do this in remembrance” of him. Ah, but that’s more easily said than done. We who are gathered for this communion liturgy are, alas, not all in communion. All of us remember what Jesus told us; it’s just that, like any group of witnesses, each of our church bodies remembers it slightly differently.
So, even in the midst of Easter joy, we know the pangs of our sad divisions. Communion in the midst of division. Perplexing, indeed. Some contemporary theologians of the ecclesia say it is impossible. That’s beyond my scope. But as the one called to preach the word to this assembly today, I would say: not impossible, but incomplete. There has to be more and there will be. God isn’t done with our churches yet.
Remember, the angels said, remember what he told you. For Jesus and for those who would follow him, there will be suffering, tears, and dire disgrace. There will be perplexity. But the shroud will be removed, folded neatly and left in an empty tomb on the day when our God wipes away every tear, takes away the disgrace, and makes a feast for all peoples.
This, alas, is not yet that day. But as we remember today what he told us to do, and do it, not as we ought, but as we are able, we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Come and make us part of your eighth-day new creation. Come among us even in our incompleteness and division. Finish the work you have begun among us. Come among us and waken the dawn of the day of resurrection.
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
