Where Are You?

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.

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Many years ago I had a job as a teaching assistant in a college class for education majors.  We taught teachers how to evaluate their students.  It was not their favorite class.  One day the professor sought to liven up his lesson by staging an event.  He recruited a woman to walk through the back of the classroom, taking a shortcut to the other side of the building, in the middle of his lecture.  As she was walking through, he suddenly stopped lecturing and called her out.  He told her he’d seen her do this before, she had no business interrupting his class, and so on.  She argued back with him, saying she wasn’t creating any kind of disruption, that everyone does this.  It was all staged, but the class didn’t know it.  They sat there with wide eyes and gaping mouths.

After the woman left, the professor asked the class to write down a brief summary of what happened, in case there were questions about it later.  He said he thought he might have to report this incident to his department head, and he wanted their “testimony” as witnesses.  Absolutely, they said.  You’ve got it.

The testimonies were interesting.  They were all over the map.  Some were unemotional, detached, just the facts – but only a few.  Others embellished with details about how this woman angrily stomped through the room, called the professor ugly names, and that sort of thing.  And then there were others, who maybe had a beef with this professor, who suggested that the problem was really him; he had no call to be so angry with this woman who was doing nothing wrong. They were not consistent.  And that was exactly the point.  Oftentimes, our observations are colored by our feelings, our expectations, our beliefs.  The truth as we see it is formed by our personal experience.

I wonder how the personal experiences of the men and women who followed Jesus affected their thoughts and actions on that first day of resurrection.  Luke tells us about the women who went to the tomb that morning.  These were the women who had been following Jesus from Galilee.  They were there while he preached and taught, healed and fed, performed wonders and signs.  They were there when he entered Jerusalem in a triumphant procession, and they were there when he was arrested.  They were there at the cross – even when his dead body was taken down and carried to the tomb. 

They were the last to leave at his death and the first to arrive on this morning.  They are the only ones to hear the question: Why do you seek the living among the dead?  They were, perhaps, the most steadfastly loyal of his disciples, but they were also women.

And the fact that they were women may help us understand why they went running back to the men.  On their own they had no authority.  It wouldn’t even surprise me if they failed to trust their own judgment, because they had been taught all their lives that their minds were too weak to be trusted.  So I wonder if the women believe what they had seen and heard?  Did they believe their own reality?

The men – Jesus’ inner circle of disciples – had also been with Jesus for a long time.  They had seen and heard it all, too.  In fact, they had been his privileged students, with extra special classes devoted to teaching them how to become leaders in the movement after he was gone.  While it’s true they didn’t stick around to the end last Friday, and they didn’t venture out this morning to the tomb, it’s understandable.  They were at risk; they were wanted men.

So they didn’t get to see the evidence.  They didn’t get to hear the proclamation, “He is not here; he is risen.”  But even so, they were the best and the brightest, hand-picked by the Lord to carry his message.  Did they believe everything they had learned from him?

This thing that the women are telling them – is it reality? Or merely an idle tale?  Apparently, only one of the men – Peter – thinks there is even the slightest possibility that what the women are saying might be true. He runs from the room, no explanation, directly to the tomb, wanting to see for himself.  And even then, we have no idea if Peter believes it. 

Welcome to Easter morning.  There will be more encounters, more discussion, more revelation to come.  There will be those who come to believe in an instant, and those who are much slower.  But on this first resurrection morning, it’s all up for grabs.

Over the weeks and months and years, the stories will be developed, practices will be formed, belief system will be established.  The scriptures will be written, doctrine will be taught, and the church will be institutionalized.  But in all of that, and from where we sit now, perhaps we lose sight of one thing.

What we believe in our heads will only ever reach our hearts, and be expressed in our lives, if we know it to be true in our experience.

We can all recite the events, the elements of this story – the cross, the burial, the empty tomb, the risen Christ.  We can say the words, but the truth of the resurrection is in the experiences of our lives.

It is in the experiences we have of those individuals who first taught us about Jesus – ones who brought us to church – held the hymnal for us, gave us our first taste of communion bread.  The ones who answered our questions about God and helped us believe.  The ones who sat with us when we were facing the hard questions, the questions that can’t be answered, and gave us the support we needed as our faith was tested and refined.

It is also in the experiences we’ve had of witnessing to our own faith in our words and actions.  When we read the scriptures and heard him say, “feed my sheep” and “love your neighbors” and we tried to do just that.  When we, in our own turn, taught someone about Jesus, walked with someone through the hard times. 

The truth of the resurrection is in the everyday practice of faith for each one of us, and for the church as a whole.  And the truth of the resurrection is tested every day by the powers of this world.  We are, as Christ’s disciples, the ones to show the world this truth.  So I ask you, does our faith attest to the truth of Christ’s resurrection? 

Is there evidence in your life that life has overcome death? Is the hope of Christ alive in the way you respond to your neighbor?

Is the triumph of life over death proclaimed by this congregation in the way we make decisions for our church?  When it comes to the power of the resurrection, where are you?

Are you with the disciples, hiding out in the upper room, refusing to believe that there might be good news?  Are you with the women, fearful and insecure about taking a stand?  Are you with Peter, running to the tomb to see for yourself because maybe, just maybe, you want to believe? 

O, that we might be with the angels, saying, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  God has defeated death through Christ who is alive. Hallelujah!  Amen. 

Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.