April 4, 2010 – Easter Sunday
Luke 24:1-12
Bodily Raised
The Resurrection of Our Lord – Easter Sunday – April 4, 2010
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The women who arrive at the tomb expect to find a dead body.
They’ve come to prepare it with spices in order to respect and honour it.
But they don’t find any body. What they find is an empty tomb. Zero. Nothing. Nada.
Well, that’s not quite true: they do find a couple of guys in dazzling clothes: no,
not the Bee Gees, presumably, but rather, angels, or God’s messengers.
These men terrify the women. That’s what angels usually do in the Bible.
That’s why they are always telling people not be afraid.
We’re accustomed to seeing the Renaissance painting version of angels,
where they always look like they’ve just had a manicure and where
their hair always looked like they’ve just walked out of Vidal Sassoon.
[Philip Culbertson in New Proclamation:Year C, 2010; Easter Through
Christ the King (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 9]
But not these guys: these are scary dudes.
And the women are scared, and perplexed and confused. Where’s Jesus’s body?
It’s just an empty tomb. What gives?
Well, at least, if they don’t have the body, the messengers do give them a message.
“He is not here, but has risen.” Remember? Well, that’s great. Words are good.
But it’s not quite the same as having the flesh and blood Jesus who is, after all,
supposed to be dead.
Still confused, they run away, run like heck, back to the apostles.
You can sort of relate to the women on that morning, right?
They come to honour a dead body, the body of someone whose memory they cherish.
That’s not so different from many of us: we come to honour Jesus because he was a swell guy,
his teachings were good, and the way he lived was kind of cool.
But it’s hard to believe he’s really alive: I mean, that’s just confusing. Perplexing, even.
We’ve got an empty tomb, no body, and some words that we can either believe or not.
Yeah, we can relate to the women.
The words we’re given on this day, that Christ is risen can seem a little empty of substance,
just like the tomb.
But Luke’s understanding of Jesus’ resurrection is more than just
someone saying the tomb is empty. That isn’t the end of the Easter story in Luke.
It’s just the beginning. No: God hasn’t forgotten to tell us something.
There’s more: the main Easter story in Luke’s Gospel happens right after this one:
the story of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus.
On Easter day, two disciples are walking back to their home-town of Emmaus from Jerusalem,
a seven mile walk.
They think Jesus is dead and gone. They’re disappointed.
Suddenly a stranger appears and starts to walk with them.
They don’t recognize the stranger, but it’s Jesus, right?
And he asks them why they’re so sad. And they tell him.
So then this stranger starts to explain to them that all this had to happen to the Messiah,
that the Messiah had to suffer and then enter into this glory.
And then the stranger explains all of scripture to them, telling them how it’s all God’s plan.
And they still don’t recognize him.
And then, when they finally get home, they ask him to stay with them, and he says okay,
and then the stranger takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and gives it to them and then,
Wham-o! They recognize who it is who is bodily present with them: Jesus!
This is the heart of the Easter story in Luke’s Gospel.
What Luke is saying is that we won’t fully find the risen Christ in words only.
We certainly won’t find the risen Christ in empty words, words that are empty of action,
words that are not embodied in loving deeds.
The risen Christ isn’t recognized in words or even in appearance:
the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who hung out with Jesus,
didn’t even recognize him.
He taught them in words the meaning of scripture’s words, but still they didn’t recognize him.
They recognized him only in his actions, in his breaking of bread for them,
In making the scripture story come alive by manna-sharing with them.
The Jewish rabbis, writing at about the same time as Luke, had a very similar insight.
In the Talmud there’s a story about Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi who asked Elijah
(don’t ask me how he asked Elijah) who asked Elijah, “When will the Messiah come?”
Elijah answered, “Go ask him yourself.”
Rabbi Yehoshua then asked, “What do you mean? Where is he?”
Elijah answered, “By the gates in the city of Rome.”
“Well, how will I recognize him?” asked Yehoshua.
Elijah said, “He sits with the poor who suffer sicknesses,
wrapping and unwrapping their bandages.”
That’s where we encounter the risen Christ: in loving action.
[Culbertson, 17-18]
I encountered the risen Christ in New York a month ago or so.
I was in Macy’s: yes, Macy’s! And I saw a little miracle there on 34th Street.
I witnessed something: called the resurrection.
A young woman with some form of mental disability was trying trying trying to
get on the escalator. They have lovely old wooden escalators at Macy’s,
and this woman desperately wanted to ride down on it.
As she stood there, several people, unsure of what to do, stepped around her on to the escalator.
And then, the risen Christ appeared: a middle-aged woman with a broad New York accent
came up to her and said in the kindest way, “Let’s ride down together.”
And she took her arm, and counted “one-two-three” just like I did with my boys,
And together they rode down the escalator, and talked, and, at the bottom, she counted
“one-two-three” as together they stepped off.
There was the risen Christ, bodily, beautifully present.
That’s how I know, this and a hundred other ways, that Christ is risen from the dead.
I am not a Christian and I don’t believe because of something that someone told me or
taught me, although those things are important, vastly important.
I’m not a Christian and I don’t believe because of some argument for the existence of God,
although I have been deeply moved by the recent images from the Hubble telescope
showing the beauty of the vast reaches of space and that causes me to reflect on
why there is something, all this something, this gorgeous universe something,
rather than nothing. I mean really. But that’s not why I am a Christian.
I’m not a Christian because I believe in something that happened long ago, like an empty tomb.
I’m a Christian because the risen Christ encounters me and this whole world now. Bodily.
Resurrection is about something that is happening now.
Christ is filling empty tombs and empty places and empty hearts now.
Christ is bandaging hurt wounds now.
Christ is helping people down escalators now. Christ is feeding people at our foodbank now.
Christ is present in and with you now.
Christ is present in the suffering, in the hurting, and in the difficulty.
Our lives are not unmitigated joy. They never are. Our lives are a mixture of joy and sorrow.
But the reason we sing on Easter Sunday is because the bodily presence of the risen one is
with the suffering. And we are witnesses to these things.
The great preacher William Willimon wrote recently that the evening the earthquake hit Haiti,
the people were – unbelievably – singing and dancing in the streets.
The CNN reporter there couldn’t believe what he was witnessing:
this singing and dancing in the midst of devastation.
People who have been on mission trips to Haiti have reported the same thing:
that the most unsettling thing about the experience is
the singing and the laughter of the children there.
These people know something that all our theology often is at loss to describe in its words:
that the risen Christ is bodily present with us and that that is cause for rejoicing.
Yes: there is death. Yes: there is suffering. Yes: there is despair: I know these personally.
So do you: the older I get, the more it seems like they become old friends.
But you and I: you and I know another story besides the one in which these are principal actors.
You and I know a different story: somewhere, a hurt person’s wounds are being bandaged.
Somewhere a needy person is being helped down an escalator.
Somewhere a hungry person is getting enough groceries for a week.
Somewhere children are singing even though they have no reason to,
and women are dancing without any earthly justification.
And we, we here this morning: we can enter into that story with our bodies, or not.
We can bandage with them or not, and step on the escalator with them or not,
and feed them or not, and sing and dance with them or not:
But that will not change the fact that Christ is raised and
that we have seen these things with our own eyes. We know we have.
Enter into the story again this morning.
For this morning we have not only words. We have bodily bread that we will take,
and give thanks for, and break, and share. And that’s important.
Because when we do that, the risen Christ will be bodily present.
That’s why we come together and do it, every Sunday.
That’s how the words he is risen come alive.
That is where Jesus lives: in breaking and bodily sharing. He is present here.
I love this cartoon [Show New Yorker cartoon where guy with paper hat on head
points to it and says, You can’t do this on the internet]
No, you can’t do that on the internet. And you can’t embrace on the internet.
And you can’t feed a hungry person. Or bandage a wound. Or help someone down an escalator.
Or share communion.
For these things you need a body: we believe in the resurrection of the body.
Resurrection is what our bodies were made for.
May our bodies, by their loving actions, show forth the resurrection, this day and always. Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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