Text: Luke 24:1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came 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 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.  (NRSV)

Easter lilies were on sale at the hardware store for a dollar each, yesterday, so I picked one up for church for Easter.  I should have bought twenty.  The cashier was an English woman who told me that in the Anglican Church they display lilies at funerals, not on Easter.  The Easter lilies were making her feel sad.  She also told me that she is still religious but doesn’t belong anymore to any church.  I wanted to tell her that even though she was from England, she had become a true Pacific North-Westerner, since 63% of people in the northwest do not go to church.  Many like her will say they are religious.  I wanted to say that, but I couldn’t get a word in because then she began to tell me the entire history of the Anglican Church and would have just kept on talking, but she had another customer.  She was lonely; it seemed to me, starving for religious conversation.

I wish I could have told her that lilies are a sign of new life, and that perhaps the reason Anglicans display lilies at funerals is to remind them of the resurrection, just like we American Christians do at Easter.  It seems to me, that in her sadness about the lilies, she was like the women at the tomb in Luke’s resurrection story for today.  She was looking for the living among the dead.  What grief she carried inside, what deep spiritual loneliness, but she didn’t seem to be finding Jesus in the hardware store, or perhaps anywhere in her day-to-day life.  She craved community, I thought, the resurrection life. 

This week, Edie, one of our members, gave me a copy of a Sunset Magazine article written by one of my favorite Christian writers, Anne Lammott.  Anne Lammott wrote: “I sometimes teach classes on writing during which I tell my students everything I know about the craft and habit.  This takes approximately forty-five minutes.  I begin with my core belief – and the foundation of almost all wisdom traditions – that there is nothing you can buy, achieve on your own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder.  But the good news is that creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty. 

“Then I bring up the bad news: you have to take time to do this.  This means you have to grasp that your manic forms of connectivity – cell phone, email, text, twitter – steal most of your chances of lasting connection or amazement.”  (This is probably not the best time to bring this up, when the Apple I-pad just went on sale just yesterday and people were lined up all around the mall to buy one.)  “That multi-tasking can argue a wasted life,” Anne Lammott continues, “that close friendship is worth more than material success.” 

I have had many deep and meaningful conversations with friends on email, but even so, nothing compares to meeting face-to-face.  Nothing compares with Christian community.  And I know that even my best creative activities -- writing or music or even conversations with friends-- do not always fill the emptiness I feel inside.   Do any of us really expect to find life by staring at a computer screen?  Do you hope for fulfillment and wonder watching TV?  Is that where you hope to find lasting connection or amazement?  Why do we seek the living among the dead?

Don’t worry; this is not a sermon about the evils of technology.  That’s just a convenient metaphor for what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about that emptiness we feel inside, and how as a culture we rush to fill it mostly in futile if not destructive ways. 

I’m also not going to promise that following Jesus is going to save you from being lonely and fulfill are your longings.   The band U-2 sings these refreshingly honest lyrics:

“You broke the bonds

And you loosed the chains

Carried the cross

Of my shame

Oh my shame You know I believe it

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” 

And if that song is too out-of-date, there’s another one by the band Metric called “Gold Guns Girls” that says about the same thing. 

No, Christianity doesn’t save us from grief and longing, at least not as long as we live on this side of the grave.  But Christianity does offer us true community and life.  The message of Easter is be open for surprise, because God is always breaking through our world and our lives with powerful and unexpected grace.  It will knock your socks off.  It will blow your mind.  It will break your heart wide open and fill you with love and peace and freedom and joy!  It offers you life in relationship with God and with each other.  The world seems to offer isolation and competition, desperation, fear and death.  The message of Easter is forgiveness and love and community and life.  It is the surprise of finding love where you expected hate, acceptance where you expected judgment, friendship among strangers, hope from despair, and life out of death.  For God brings things into being out of nothing and even raised Jesus from the dead.  Open your eyes and ears and hearts to the good news of God. 

There are two obstacles.  One is that we don’t take the time to see it.  “We’re too busy looking for love in all the wrong places” as that old country song by Johnny Lee goes.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?  The angels ask.

The other is that maybe we have gotten used to the Easter story.  Professor Karoline Lewis from Luther seminary says we have become accustomed to the idea of resurrection.  We have domesticated resurrection.  Perhaps it is easy to believe in the resurrection on Easter when we’ve got the hymns, the choir, Easter Lilies and trumpets for goodness’ sake.  How can you not believe in the resurrection of the dead when you’ve got trumpets!  Even Saint Paul said, “When the last trumpet sounds, the dead will rise!”  And so we believe, but perhaps we have become complacent in our belief, and now we take it for granted. 

In the gospel story, you can understand how incomprehensible, how utterly crazy the resurrection must have been.  The women didn’t expect it.  They had seen Jesus nailed to a cross.  They had seen him die.  They had seen where Jesus’ body had been hastily put in the tomb on Good Friday.  There hadn’t been time to prepare his body for burial.  On the first day of the week, their earliest opportunity, the women went to the tomb with spices to anoint Jesus’ body.  There was nothing in their lives that could have led them to expect that they would find anything other than Jesus’ corpse in that tomb.  When they found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, they were perplexed.  The word for perplexed in Greek also means despair.  There were no Easter lilies or trumpets to help them believe.   Their confusion and despair turned to terror, when suddenly there were angels.  The women buried their faces to the ground.  They heard the angels say “why do you look for the living among the dead?” 

They weren’t looking for the living, though; they were seeking the dead among the dead.  In detective stories on TV… (Isn’t it funny that I’m referencing TV shows in this sermon after I just trashed TV?)  In detective stories on TV when a person goes missing, the sergeant always tells the detective to check the morgues.  Where else would you look for the dead?  The dead don’t just get up and walk away.

But the angels’ question calls us to expect the unexpected.  The question, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” implies that we are really seeking life, and if we aren’t, we should be!  And if we are to seek the living, the morgue isn’t the place to look.  Somewhere in the Gospels, Jesus told a man to let the dead bury the dead, and to come and follow him.  Let go of the past.  Let go loss and grief and bitterness and regret.  Let go of negativity, doubt and hopelessness.  “No one who puts hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God,” Jesus said, and don’t worry about tomorrow, either.  “Sufficient unto the day is the trouble therein.”  Jesus said.  I love that line in the King James Version.  No worries either way, because God is doing a new thing, even now, don’t you perceive it? 

The women weren’t seeking the living.  They were seeking the dead among the dead.  But then they saw the stone rolled away.  They saw the empty tomb.  They heard the angels say “why do you look for the living among the dead?” And then they heard these words, “He is not here.  He is risen.” 

It was Mary Magdelene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.  I like how the writer of Luke first tells us the story, because it is of utmost importance, but then names at least most of the women, because that is important too.  These women were the first witnesses of the resurrection.  The women saw, they heard, they remembered, they believed.  And they ran back to tell the others. 

And yeah, it is hard to believe.  Their words seemed to the disciples an idle tale.  Trumpets help.  Now we’re accustomed to the Easter story.  We believe in the resurrection.  But it is not easy to look at the dead unredeemable parts of our own lives and truly believe we can be resurrected.  Even Paul in his letter to the Corinthians spoke tentatively of the resurrection of the dead.  He proclaimed justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, but spoke wistfully of the resurrection of the dead.  He said, “If I may attain the resurrection.”  

But the resurrection from the dead means that anything is possible.  It means that there is nothing in us that cannot be redeemed.  There is no fault that cannot be forgiven.  There is no failure that cannot lead to even greater life than there was before.  There is no shame that cannot be transformed into acceptance and understanding.  There is no obstacle that we cannot face.  Jesus died for our sins, and rose to new life.  Christ has risen.  Each moment every day is now infused with wonder, lasting connection and amazement.  We are invited into community of the Risen Christ.  We will experience that community in unexpected places. 

After the hardware store, I went to the grocery store to buy Easter Eggs.  They had Easter lilies for eight dollars a piece.  I told the cashier that they were selling them for a dollar a piece at the hardware store.  I paid for my eggs and colored dye and went out.  But when I got to the car I remembered about the Resurrection Biscuits for the children’s sermon.  Edie and Carol and LaRayne had it all planned out, but I wanted to try making the biscuits at home, so I’d know what I was doing for the children’s’ time today.  So I went back into the store and I bought the biscuits and the marshmallows and came to the same cashier.  She said, “Would you like to buy an Easter Lilly?”  We laughed and laughed.

Christ is Risen

Alleluia.