Easter Day Sermon

Easter Day Sermon by Jamie Howison on Luke 24:1-12

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

And what an odd week it has been, with the April snowstorm grinding things down and raising a big question mark around what we’d be able to do for Good Friday. Thankfully we were here on Friday, and then again last night, and now again this evening. The snow is at least promising to slowly melt, and the arrival of a real Spring is at least on the horizon. There’s an alleluia to be said for that, I’d have to say!

Yet in the story told by Luke, there aren’t yet any alleluias. Recall for a moment what has happened. On the Thursday night after sharing his meal with the disciples, Jesus had been arrested and dragged through what amounted to a mock trial at the temple. On Friday morning he’d been taken to Pontius Pilate, the local Roman official, with an insistence that Jesus had breached Jewish law, was a dangerous revolutionary figure, and needed to be put to death by the Romans; something the local Jerusalem officials could not themselves do. Pilate is not convinced that this is a necessary thing, but in the end decides to move forward with the execution as a way of settling down the locals, who seem on the verge of a sort of uprising. It is, quite frankly, a calculated bureaucratic move, made by a Roman official quite notorious for his willingness to use state violence to settle any troubling matters.

The disciples themselves are in hiding, presumably in the same upper room where they shared their final Passover meal with Jesus. They are aware that it is risky for them to be seen out in public, for surely that same mob mentality that had called for their teacher’s death would be turned against them. They’ve remained there through the whole of the Saturday—the Sabbath day on which the markets were closed and people would have all stayed at home—and are still there on the Sunday morning. What is going through their minds? Are they waiting for the opportune time to just slip out of the city and return north to Galilee to try to resume some sort of normal life there?

It is early in the morning, and the women—Luke says it is Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them—have gone from that hiding place out to the tomb where Jesus’ body has been laid, hoping to place the anointing spices on his broken body as a final gesture of their respect and love for him. When they arrive, they find that the stone has been rolled away, and that his body is gone. They are confused by this, but then right away there are two figures in dazzling clothes there with them, which utterly terrifies them. And why wouldn’t that be terrifying? What has happened to our teacher’s body, and what is happening to us?

And then those words from the two figures: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you…” And as the gospel writers tell their stories, there were these times when Jesus would speak of his approaching death, and his approaching defeat of that death. But what could that have meant to his followers, who were so convinced that his path was one of victory, even a revolutionary uprising against the Romans? They’d hear him speak in that way, and unable to put the pieces all together, probably just stuffed it all away, not wanting to think that death could possibly be a part of this journey. And who wants death, when you can dream of conquering the occupying enemy?

“Then they remembered his words,” Luke tells us, and they hurry off to tell the disciples back in that upper room. This changes everything… or does it? For when they arrived, “these words seemed to the disciples an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” An idle tale? Yet who can blame those disciples, who had left everything to follow Jesus, only to have it end in this horrific manner. Keep packing your things, John, we’ll just wait until the right moment, and slip away from this God-forsaken city. Back to safety, back home to the familiar of our fishing boats and families. The dream is over, and the women just aren’t yet prepared to face that fact.

“But Peter got up and ran to the tomb.” Ah Peter, filled with guilt and remorse for having fled into the night with the rest of them, even though he’d promised he would never abandon his great friend and teacher. Three times that night he had denied even knowing him; three times, one after another. He’d spent the last two days with his stomach in a knot, his mind and heart crushed by guilt. What is it that you’re saying Mary? The tomb is empty? My god, what can that possibly mean? And so while the others dismissed the words of these women as an idle tale,

“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.”

Amazed, yes, but there are still no alleluias. Peter has not seen him yet, and for all he knows the Romans have taken the body so that the tomb doesn’t become some sort of a memorial shrine. The women, though, talk of the two shining figures… and they seem so very, very sure. But can the voices of women be trusted?

And here, David Jeffrey comments, “One powerful theme to emerge in Luke’s Gospel is this: Jesus is no respecter of persons. He does not conform to our social hierarchies and sorry prejudices.” It is the women followers who are the first witnesses to the resurrection, or at least to the empty tomb. In that world it was the men who were thought to hold the important ideas, information, and perspectives, while the women had other roles; serving roles, parenting roles, subservient roles.

But that never held much weight for Jesus. Sure, his circle of disciples were all men, which was very much in keeping with the times. But there were always women close by, including, of course, Mary Magdalene. And there is also Mary and Martha, and in the stories in which they appear we see Martha taking on a more traditional woman’s role, while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus, absorbing his teaching. When Martha protests, Jesus says very clearly and very gently, “Martha, Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” It is an astonishing word to come from the Teacher, yet time and again we see how he is unafraid to draw women close, to teach them and take them seriously as people; even the Samaritan woman at the well, in John’s account.

“He does not conform to our social hierarchies and sorry prejudices,” and perhaps there is a powerful, unspoken alleluia in that truth. It is something I believe that the church needs to keep plainly in view when we think about the kind of habits, practices, and customs that are cultivated in human societies, including our own; that the social hierarchies and sorry prejudices that get easily built into cultures will very often leave some flourishing while others get ground down and are left voiceless. We must pay attention to this story of the resurrection, and how it is that it is not the men—the official disciples—who are there first, but rather those women who the men saw as tellers of idle tales.

So no, the characters in these stories are not yet proclaiming alleluias, but the women and Peter are getting closer, and in the coming few Sundays we’ll read stories of the encounters that might just release that grand word alleluia—literally “praise God”. And knowing those stories are coming, tonight we can shout it out yet again!

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Amen!