"Why are you looking for the living among the dead?"

“Why are you looking for the living among the dead?”

Luke 24:1-12

For a few years after Jesus died, there were people alive who had heard Jesus preach and teach and heal people.  For a little while, there were people who could tell stories about Jesus, first-hand:  This is what I saw and heard and what I grew to believe.  For a brief period of time, there were even people who had experienced the presence of the risen Christ—just a handfull of people, but eyewitnesses, nevertheless.  Eventually, those people died off.

I would imagine that a certain authority was given to those eye witnesses:  “They were there; They know; We should listen to them.” I would also imagine that there was no small amount of envy of those people by the folks who were not there.  Jesus had been in their town but they were gone that day.  Or, they were simply born too late or lived too far away.  A lot of folks must have thought to themselves, “If only I had been there, too.  Then, I would understand.  Then, my own experience would allow me to believe! If I had seen Jesus with my own eyes then I wouldn’t have to believe.  I would just know?”

Of course, the gospels tell us that most of the people who  heard Jesus with their own ears and saw him with their own eyes, did not follow him.  What he taught was challenging.  It’s hard work to catch up to new ideas.  It’s especially difficult to accept new ideas that challenge you to care for people you really don’t care about, that require you to forgive and love people you really don’t want to forgive and love.  Tell me what I want to hear and I’m all ears!  Ask me to hear a hard truth that requires that I actually change how I do things? Well, that’s an entirely different matter.

“Ya…” we think to ourselves, “but if I had met the risen Christ, Easter would make so much more sense!”  Again, though, the gospels challenge this thought.  No one loved Jesus more than the faithful women. However, when they make their way on Easter morning to the empty tomb, they don’t understand. Someone had to remind them.  Remember led to believing but not to certainty. We love to think, “Well, I guess you had to be there.”  The gospels all say to us that being there just wasn’t enough.

In Mark, three faithful women make it to the empty tomb.  However, they have no idea what the empty tomb means.  Even when they are reminded what Jesus taught about his death and resurrection, the truth does not stick.  Their fear overwhelms them.  They run away terrified.  The risen Jesus never even appears.

In Matthew, two faithful women make it to the tomb.  They see incredible things:  an earthquake; the stone being rolled away; an angel in dazzling clothing; an empty tomb. It’s all incredible but it makes no sense, not until the angel tells them:  “Do not be afraid,” and reminds them to remember what Jesus said.  They do get to meet the risen Jesus and they respond faithfully, dropping to their knees and worshiping him.  And yet, their understanding is tentative.  Jesus has to remind them.  Jesus has to urge them, “Do not be afraid.” Even after meeting the risen Jesus, faith is about belief, not certainty.

Being confronted with mystery is overwhelming and frightening.  This whole notion of resurrection is impossibly difficult to wrap our heads around.  No matter how faithful you are, it’s a challenge, in the face of mystery and death, to hold onto hope.  That was hard even for those who were right there.  It’s why we need to remind each other to not be overwhelmed by fear. We need to remind each other what Jesus taught.  We need to own our fears and our questions but remain open to God’s presence.  Maybe we should even follow the women’s example.  When in doubt, they pray.  “None of this is easy,” the gospels keep saying.  It never was and never will be.  So when we struggle, when we are filled with fear, when we have a hard time remembering what could bring us hope, maybe we’re not being faithless.  Maybe we’re just doing what faithul people do.  We’re living with the ambiguity and doubt.

This brings us to Luke.  In Luke, there a group of women—unnamed as the scene unfolds—who are making their way to the tomb.  They have brought spices with them to give Jesus a decent burial.  They have a job to do.  That job is considered a terribly unclean job in a society in which being “clean” and pure is everything.  To touch a dead body was to be contaminated.  Any man who did this would be required to go through purification rituals at the temple.  Women were considered permanently unclean.  Why?  Because women menstruated which was understood to be a punishment traced all the way back to Eve.  You know that you are living in a patriarchal world when the ability to bear a child, perhaps the single most amazing thing a person can do but men can’t do, is turned into a curse.  Bathing and spicing a body was women’s dirty work.  To the women, this job was an act of love.

The women walk into the empty tomb and can’t find the body.  They don’t know what to make of this at all. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, two men appear and they are bathed in a dazzling light.  The women see the angels and bow down and begin worshiping.  They don’t know what’s happening but whatever it is, it is holy.  They worship before any explanation has been given.  Then, the angels ask a powerful question:  “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?”

Does “looking for the living among the dead” ring any bells for you?  It makes me think about perhaps the strangest healing story in the Gospels, the story of the Gerasene demoniac.  Here’s a quick summary.  Jesus and the disciples are on the “foreign” side of the Sea of Galilee, ministering to Gentiles.  In a world in which foreigners were treated as suspects, just the thought of Jesus doing this would have been disturbing.  Of all things, though, in this unclean land Jesus goes to the most unclean place—a cemetery—to care for the most unclean person around—a crazy guy who was possessed by an army of demons.  We would have thought of him as mentally ill but we would have been just as frightened.  Jesus wades straight into this awful place in order to find the man that everyone wanted to avoid.  Jesus finds him and heals him.  The demons that had been in the man “land” in a herd of pigs who throw themselves off a cliff.  The crowd gets mad and chases Jesus out of town.

It’s a strange story but at it’s heart it is about Jesus going into the worst places and doing the most despised things (making himself unclean) for the sake of healing and love.  He’ll do whatever it takes.  And often, when he does, the “reward” is rejection.  There are things we do in this life—hard things, uncomfortable things—that we do simply because they are the right and loving thing to do.  This is an essential part of “the way” that Jesus taught us to live.

This is precisely what the women are doing in Luke.  In this sense, I don’t think that the angels are scolding the women when they ask, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” Rather, I think they are inviting the women to make the connection between what Jesus did and what they are now doing, themselves, in that tomb.  They have come to this terrible place out of love and as they do this they are already fulfilling Jesus’ calling. 

Of course, what happened to Jesus is also what is about to happen to these women.  Doing the right and loving thing—the hard thing—often leads to rejection.  The women have a truth to share. They run to the disciples to share it.  At this point, Luke finally reveals the identity of these women: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of Joseph.  And you have to wonder if naming these women isn’t a way of driving the point home of just how faithful these women are being.  He’s honoring these faithful witnesses.

Not everyone honors them, though.  These women share the good news with the disciples.  “We went to the tomb.  There was no body.  We met two men who seemed like angels who told us that Jesus wasn’t there.  They reminded us that what happened was exactly what Jesus had told us would happen.” And yet…not one of those disciples can rise to the moment the way the women did.  Having heard what the women found and having been reminded of what Jesus taught them, not one of the disciples believes the women.  “These women are making this stuff up.” Sometimes you share your hardest won beliefs and people think your crazy.

Peter goes to see for himself.  He runs to the tomb.  He stoops down and looks in and sees some of the fabric that had been wrapped around Jesus’ body.  He stands there for a little while.  Then, not knowing what else to do, he just heads home for the night.  Again, even “seeing” didn’t guarantee “believing."

Here’s what is fascinating:  in the Gospel of Luke, there is no appearance by the risen Jesus on Easter morning.  Instead, there is something very human and very familiar.  Almost all of us have looked loss in the face.  We look at the body of a loved one and realize, “He is not here” or “She is not here.” We are stunned and puzzled. We struggle to breathe much less to remember what we believe about what lies beyond this life.  Finally, the question seems to come out of nowhere but also from somewhere very deep:  “Why am I looking for the living among the dead?”

Like the women in Luke who did not have the benefit of meeting the risen Christ but believed, nevertheless, it is possible for us, without the benefit of either proof or certainty, to stare loss in the face and still believe that there is more.  It is possible to remember that the God who loves us in this life, loves us beyond this life.  Or, of course, it is possible, like the disciples, to listen to someone who believes such things and think, “Oh, they’ve lost their minds.”  Or it is possible, like Peter, to try to see for ourselves and look death and loss in the face and then try, for all we’re worth, to act as if there was nothing to see and go home.

The choice, in the end, is each of ours to make. May God help us to follow the faithful women.