Easter Sermon 2024: And I hope…

Text: Luke 24:1-12
Video of this sermon here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nOJf7y0cQ
I apologize for the unedited nature of this copy… I have another sermon to preach Sunday. 🙂

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³but when they went in, they did not find the body. ⁴While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. ⁵The 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. ⁶Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, ⁷that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” ⁸Then they remembered his words, ⁹and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. ¹¹But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹²But 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.”

—

Every year as I leave the house on this morning – Easter morning – I take a picture of the lights of the city from my front stoops and post it with the saying, “while it was still dark.”

In the gospel stories, the story of this morning is prefaced while it was still dark or as in the Luke text today, “at early dawn.” Various methods of acknowledgment of the fact that it’s before the day began. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself let’s go back a little bit in this story… Not Jesus’ story, my story, let’s go back a little bit to last night.

I was very tired, so I went to bed earlier than normal. I tried to keep myself awake because I knew if I went to bed too early, then I would wake up at midnight and not know what to do with myself, so I kept myself awake till about 10:30 and then went to sleep…  which means it was 2:30 when I woke up and didn’t know what to do. It was more than just the typical fact that I don’t sleep well on Saturday nights because my sermon is churning around in my head, it was more than a typical fact that I tend to wake up around 2:30 or 3:00 and stay awake for a while with thoughts churning in my head… it was more than typical awake-in-the-middle-of-the-nightness…

I actually walked around the house. I relocated myself about three different times trying to see if I could settle into something that would be akin to sleep… I was goldilocks in my own house: I tried the couch, a chair, and my bed three different times… nothing was restful… nothing “fit” my state of mind. 

There was an anticipation in me.

For the women named in the gospel stories, who make the initial journey to the tomb on Sunday morning, while it was still dark –  for them, there was also an anticipation. The text tells us that Jesus died shortly before dusk on Friday, the Jewish day began at evening, so as the sun sets on Friday Saturday is beginning – the sabbath day. The crucifixions are cut short. The text tells us because they didn’t want them hanging up throughout the Sabbath day and the burial of Jesus is rushed in that “while it was still light” moment… they got the body into a tomb with haste, sealed it up, and began the sabbath.  A day without work. 

I’ve always been struck that for the disciples, for these women,  that sabbath day had to be excruciating.  Jesus is dead, hope is gone, the divine messianic promises dashed to nothingness…  so many questions in that space, so much despair, and all they had to do was walk around the house and find if there was a place they could settle in… but the anticipation is more even than that, because the cosmic implications of dashed messianic dreams – long-awaited messiah – they also just… weren’t able to bury their friend in the right way.  They didn’t get to wash and cleanse his body… prepare the spices, wrap him in love and linen – and grieve. 

They were a mess… and a mess with anticipation – and so they were waiting… and left early on Sunday morning while it was still dark because it’s not like they were getting any sleep.

Luke tells us that these women took what they need to the tomb to attend Jesus body, but when they got there, the stone was rolled away from the tomb, there was no body there. The text also tells us they were perplexed.

What a word: perplexed.

I have to imagine there wasn’t a word they could put to what they were feeling…  anticipation had built over days… weeks really, anticipation and disappointment… and abject despair… and then when they came to put the one thing right that was in their control: that they could not do either.  His body was gone… and they were…. Undone? 

In Acts, Luke uses the same word we call “perplexed” but it is generally translated, “at a loss of how to investigate this.”

Does that just put it right?  That speaks to me so well about the abject despair, and overwhelmingness of this new discovery, of this moment… because it’s not just that things are not as they are supposed to be it’s that I don’t even know where to begin to figure out why, to figure out how, to figure out even what is this.

I don’t know how long the women stood there… how long they stared into the abyss as it stared back into them… I do not know how long they sat perplexed… but I suspect they would be standing there still except the text tells us that “while they were perplexed…  while they’re in an ongoing state of unknowing how to even investigate – suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood before them, and they dropped to the ground terror-stricken.

…

Why do you look for the living among the dead? He’s not here… he has risen.

Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man will be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and on the third day rise again?

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Why are you perplexed?

Remember how he told you?

Remember.

We’ve run across this word multiple times in our Lenten journey. We run across this word constantly in our lives, not simply in theological ways but all the time.  What is it that we remember and how does what we remember and what we do not remember continue to form us.  We have been talking through our Lenten journey about Peter in particular and about Peter’s arc from fisherman, who wanted nothing to do with Jesus, to patriarch of the church who would die on its behalf.  We have tried to follow Peter’s footsteps in his journey of growth and looked at these blips, these instances, these interactions between Peter and Jesus that were so often seen as Peter’s failures… but were formative for Peter in the way of Jesus:

Peter not being able to walk on water, but is immediately rescued by Jesus

Peter wanted to form booths for Elijah and Moses and Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration because he couldn’t figure out what was going on there because he was perplexed there.

Peter told Jesus he could not suffer and die because Peter needed him and Jesus rebuked him for setting his mind on human things not divine things.

Along this journey, we could say Peter failed fervently, but none of them were failures of formation. In fact, I would argue that the depth of character, leadership, and abundant nerve of Peter to confront the world on Jesus’ behalf in the days that are to come following Jesus, resurrection and ascension… are only possible because of the, not in spite of, the way Peter failed forward into who he is today as he created memory, deep and abiding memory of the steadfast love of Jesus, the resolute vision of God, and an unrelenting care for all of creation.  Peter never failed. He was formed. His memory was formed.

Do you not remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee?

Speaking of going backwards. The Greek Philosopher Socrates continues to have a lot of impact on Western civilization – and while he did not write anything down we know much about him from his students – like Plate, who did.  Sound familiar?  There is much similarity between Socrates and Jesus… separated by 500 years – they lived similar lives… other than the whole Son of God part.  Socrates, like Jesus, asked a lot more questions than he gave answers. They both deviated from the traditions that they grew up in , not as a rejection of them per se, but as a fulfillment of those traditions on a trajectory most unwilling to follow.  We know that that rabble-rousing nature of their questions led to both Socrates and Jesus’ executions.  And I am struck by this question, “do you not remember” and it’s corollary moments like last week when we were in the Palm Sunday text and John made a point to tell us that no one understood what was going on in that procession and they would not until Jesus’ glorification, until Jesus Crucifixion and his resurrection, and then… they, John tells us, “they would remember”  By which he implies – then everything would fall into place – that which was perplexing… would reveal itself.  

So I’m struck by a conversation that Socrates has on the eve of his death, when the Athens has deemed that his troubling of the minds of the youth and the people of Athens was a capital crime, and he must die.  Socrates gets in a conversation recounted in the book Phaedo, and he talks about learning and knowledge.  This isn’t strange, that’s pretty much what Socrates always talks about, but I have always loved this one because Socrates here describes his belief that we are not born as blank slates but that we actually have knowledge: all the knowledge.  It’s just that we don’t remember any of it and the process of learning is not the process is being taught something we don’t know, but the process of learning is being reconnected with the memory of the knowledge we already had – which is why, when we learn it, it makes sense – it falls into place.. its like discovering something that always was true and that we always knew… deep in our bones.  I don’t want to get lost in the weeds of how that works or doesn’t work from my cognition standpoint – but I love the idea that we have a genetic memory, that we have an ancestral memory that we as a people who are created in the divine image, have a logos – a word, a knowledge, that resides deep in our DNA and our formation and our education, our learning, and growth as people intellectually, emotionally, spiritually – is all about remembering.

Do you not remember what he told you while he was still in Galilee.

All of our texts of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection are full of so much foreshadowing. It’s amazing to the reader of this story that anyone in the story doesn’t know everything that’s going on at any given moment, Jesus has talked in the Gospels three times that he will die and rise again, 3 times he told this to his closest friends – those who do not remember.  And yet they do not know it.

Which brings me back to that word again: perplexed. 

When we are overwhelmed when we are so at a loss for how to even investigate, it’s not that we don’t have knowledge available to us. It’s that we’re frozen in our personhood about how take the next step – any step.  Grief, trauma, fatigue… Oh, what it would be like if they’d only been able to have a good night sleep, these things paralyze us… and they are perplexed.  They are cut off from their own memory… from what they know to be true.

The Luke account of Jesus resurrection goes on: It tells us now who these people are you that we have seen are so out of sorts. They didn’t even have names… automatons, not fully people in their grief who just knew that while it was still dark, but going to be light soon, they had to do what should’ve been done days ago, and so enlightened now by the angel’s testimony they remember not only Jesus’ words and life, they remember who they are again:  Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, Mary mother of James, and the other women.

Remembered into their selves again, remembered into the abundant and rising life of Christ again, they went back to tell the apostles this story. They went to kindle the memory of their friends about their friend Jesus, but the words, it says, seemed like an idle tale to the apostles, and they did not believe them, but…

But we know Peter is well versed in being wrong,  we know that Peter has started to form his memory in the way of Jesus to constantly imagine the unimaginable so sparked by their story Peter doesn’t scoff. Peter runs to the tomb, stoops in, and sees the linen cloths by themselves.

And he then went home amazed.

That’s what the text says: then he went home, amazed at what had happened. 

Amazed I love this word too. It’s the perfect parallel to the perplexedness of the women -at first – when they looked in the tomb with the hint of memory which they already sparked in Peter….

If we get into the Greek of that word, amazed… we would find that it could also mean: “astonished out of one’s senses.”  Amazed and Perplexed mean almost the same things but at completely different ends of the spectrum of awe… to awful.  They are both visceral emotional reactions, they are not intellectual processes.  Perplex is “I am stunned and deflated beyond my mind working to process what is before me.”  And Amazed is “I’m blown away!”

I like that there’s a maze to the word, amazed. Peter is also speechless and yet it’s a speechlessness founded on deep memory, while it was still dark – hope sprang loose from the clutches of death!

Every year when I take my picture standing on the stoop of it being dark I am struck, by how fitting this narrative of this story is…. while it was still dark!  Because Easter doesn’t happen when you expect it to, it doesn’t happen when things are going well, resurrection – by its very name – happens when everything has been lost, and BEFORE we even check to see what’s what…. life is already finding a new way to break forth from the grave.

The women don’t get ahead of Jesus.

Peter doesn’t get ahead of God.

We don’t know how the story ends no matter how many times we’ve read it because the story is still breaking forth in our lives. We cannot catch up to life abundant!

This story is still out in front of us, while it is yet dark, before you are yet embraced your genetic, ancestral memory of resurrection, that resurrection power is at work in you – springing you to hope.

One of the other things we’ve been doing throughout this season is framing our sermons around the hymn “Come, thou Fount of Every Blessing.” 

Today’s sermon title comes from the middle verse of that hymn.  It is the one that always gets people wondering because it says here “I raise my Ebeneezer” and people have no idea what that is.  Ebenezer is a reference to the 1 Samuel chapter 7… when the Lord saved Israel from an invading army of Philistines Samual raises a stone to help the people remember that day and he names the stone Ebenezer saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” 

The Ebenezer is like a standard, a herald, a memorial so that we do not forget our ancestral knowledge… our memory – that in God life wins out over death.  And when we plant that standard and… it tethers us to hope.

Here I raise my Ebenezer, Here by Thy great help I’ve come

And I hope by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home

Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wandering from the fold of God

He to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood

Memory is what stands between us and despair. Memory is what stands between us, and being at loss for where to even begin to investigate. 

Memory is what holds us in the place of hope that tombs cannot hold back life and that God is on the loose.

Memory is what tethers us to the faith that when Jesus rises, Jesus raises us up to, and that this truth is out in front of us even today, while it was still dark.

And I hope…

The text says Peter walked home. I have no idea what it means by that, Peter‘s home is days away.

Maybe it just means he walked to the home of where they were staying,

maybe he and his amazedness, his astounded beyond his senses-ness walked all the way home to Galilee,

maybe it’s that now in this memory reborn – having restored this deep and abiding knowledge, that he will never again lose, this knowledge that even death cannot separate him from his friend, from the power of God…  maybe it means that Peter was never not home again for the rest of his life – wherever he may be. 

And I hope…

In a world that looks all too much like it is still dark, while the world is caught up in wars and rumors of wars, envy and strife, while hunger and poverty hold many in the grip of the tomb… while far too many leaders seem deaf to the pain of their people, while neighbors go unloved, and strangers go targeted by distrust….

While it was still dark… and I hope…

Life IS breaking down those walls, opening up that soil, and springing forth anew… this is our Ebenezer… this is our hope… this is our unrelenting belief.

let us run and catch up to God on the loose at work emptying tombs and spreading love and life.  W

e have work to do, do you not remember?

He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed.

Who is Jesus… on the cross?

That’s right, who do we say Jesus is, when Jesus is on the cross?

Going back awhile (oh about 13 years or so) I have been very intrigued by the above question.  But let’s take a step back first.  It is one thing to answer the question of who Jesus is upon birth, in his ministry of calling his first disciples, and in his healing and teaching.  We say “God with us,” we might quote scripture with him being the “Son of God” or “Son of Man” or maybe just “the Messiah.” Of course it is very hard to pin Jesus down to saying more than “that’s who you say I am,” or “okay but don’t tell anyone.”  Jesus makes “I am” statements but they aren’t so clear as all that… and of course in John’s Gospel he does ramble for a good while about being “one with the Father” but then in John 17:20-23 he makes clear that he is praying that we are as “one” together as Jesus is with the Father, and that their oneness would be extended to include us in the same oneness together (sorry if that’s not clear… but he really is rambling – or John is, or the Spirit is… whoever – rambling is the “order” of the day).  Jesus, it seems to me, imagines that Jesus is no more one with the Father than we might be one with each other and even with God.  So it hardly makes a great case for Jesus as God, or a strong case for his being unique in his oneness with God.

So who is Jesus?  If this isn’t answered by the Bible with clear authority (and I would argue that it is not, though it certainly provides fertile ground for faithful imagination) the early traditions claimed Jesus not simply as Messiah, Lord, and Son of God… but as God.  (There is quite a bit written by smarter and more informed people than myself on the subject so I’m not going to tarry here.)  Perhaps this comes from asking, who was the risen Christ, and who is Jesus today?

The Church began to pray to Jesus, we come to understand God through Jesus, we imagined the great act of God on behalf of the fulfillment of creation as coming again through Jesus in his “second” coming.  (One might ask why Jesus has “gone away” necessitating his “coming again” but again I won’t take that rabbit trail, and I’ll try to get to my point.)  When we ask of this Jesus, who are you – we imagine no other answer than ‘God.’

But now I want to back up again… I want to return to this week in our liturgical year.  I want to inquire – in a Pilate kind of way, I think – of the Jesus of triumphant entry, of eye’s wide open betrayal, of doubt ridden abandonment from his friends, his followers, even from his God, and of the crucifixion and death… I want to inquire of this Jesus, who are you?

I imagine what he will say.  He will say, “well who do you say that I am?”

And that’s the rub of it all – Jesus just doesn’t want to be pinned down into any easy to understand identity.  But let me tell you from experience.  (Having done this on more than one occasion.)  If you gather a group of passionate Christians together and tell them that on the cross God dies… they will not respond in the affirmative to the thought (but from experience I can say you will also have a really good conversation ensue).  We can imagine Jesus as God in just about any place or time – even the manger of a stable as a babbling infant – better than we can wrap our minds around the idea that God dies on the cross. We imagine that somehow Jesus can be God in all other times but that God pulls some divine magic to make sure God doesn’t die when Jesus does.  And… I don’t know.  God hasn’t let me in on the secret.  It’s a mystery to me.  But I’ll admit the philosopher’s training in me struggles with the inconsistency of claiming Jesus is God and yet trying to claim that God doesn’t die.  I’m not content with some spiritualized attempt to imagine that just the incarnation of God dies, but not the God behind ‘the Jesus.’   I don’t know what really happens – my faith is mixed in with lots of doubts, and nothing about my journey as a follower of Jesus is predicated on the absolute truth of my interpretation or understanding of how all this works.  If Jesus was actually married, if Mary wasn’t a virgin, if God admitted to not being perfect in some kind of cosmic confession booth… none of these thing would come to me as a shock.  They would not rock my faith or cause me to doubt any more than I already do.  But I still question.  I still seek to know with a very lower case “k.” Not because I want to pin God down… but because I really think there are powerful takeaways for my life in this story at the heart of the story of Jesus.

If the whole of God was on that cross.  Not just a sliver, not just a fleshy sub-part, not just a prophet, not just a sacrificial lamb or substitute person to represent the idea or corporation of all people, not just a sent out image like some billboard evangelist, not just a child of promise… but THE promise AND the PROMISEER wholly, complete, and total ?  That’s really scary.  How can the world survive that loss?  Why would God risk that?  We aren’t really worth all that, are we?

It’s okay for God to give up a son for us… but for God to risk God’s own eternal annihilation for us?  What if the resurrection didn’t happen?  What if that was the end?  What if…

I sure hope God knew what God was doing.  Jesus doesn’t seem all that sure in the garden.  Was that just an act?  What if God didn’t know… what if God surmised but wasn’t certain? Or forget that… what if God was certain… to a point.  What if God knew that it should work… has no reason not to work…  Is it responsible for God to put it all at risk on the gamble that it would work?  And what did working even look like?  How do we even know?

I want to know… but it seems I do not need to know.

But here is what I look and imagine and feel and wonder about this week… this week that God dies.

• God really does know what it means to suffer, not from hearing cries, not from an emotional substitute.  God suffers in God’s self.
• God knows what it means to stare death in the face wishing it could have gone a bit differently.  God has regrets… regrets about friends’ actions, communal activities, even regrets about God’s own chosen course of action.  God agrees – this is not the way it’s supposed to be, but God rolls with it anyway.
• God is willing and able to risk the death of beloved reality for the hope of greater life on the other side.  God even imagines that proper engagement of death is a fertile ground for new emerging hope (Yellowstone fires anyone?)… that death is a servant to life though we have to think beyond ourselves to see it sometimes.
• God really does think we are worth it.  God has gambled on us – does gamble on us – and there is nothing, not logic or fear or stubborn waywardness or orthodoxy or hate or hesitancy or… well there just ain’t anything that will prevent God from giving up everything for us.

God. Everything. For Us.

It is all on the line.

That’s why all the right answers, or good theology, or learned scriptural analysis, or long-held tradition aside… that’s why when I look up on the cross this Friday I will won’t just say, “Jesus died for me.” I won’t join the centurion in Matthew saying, “Truly this man was God’s Son.” I will say God is dead… dead… dead.  I will sit there in awe (both awe as awful, and awe as uncomprehending overwhelmedness).  Because it’s a pretty amazing thing to put the shoe on the other foot and imagine that we worship a God who would let us put God to death – rather than the other way around.  I will sit in that space and imagine how anyone goes on after that.  And on Sunday?  Well… we’ll see when we get there.

But when we get there, whatever we see, I hope I hold on to the knowledge that death isn’t so scary.  That we are worth the risk.  And that allowing us to burn ourselves down to see what rises is about the biggest affirmation of abundant life I can imagine.

Thanks be to God.