Scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 15:19-26.

Sermon text: Luke 24:1-12

“Time stands still for no one.”

Sometimes, in the darkest times of our lives, we really wish time would stand still long enough for us to grasp the magnitude of our loss, for us to cope with the pain. We don’t mind so much if time continues once we’ve somehow adjusted to the absence of the one we loved. However, in its own cruel way, time marches on, dragging us along with it away from the moment of agony into the uncertain and unknown future.

Most likely, the women who approached Jesus’ tomb on Easter Sunday had decided the day before to meet early and perform their final act of love for Him: Anointing His body with spices and preparing it properly for a more lasting burial. Joseph of Arimathea, the owner of the tomb, and Nicodemus his friend had hurriedly buried Jesus’ body following the Crucifixion; unfortunately, the time for Passover bore down upon them, leaving the 2 formerly secret followers of Jesus little space for a proper preparation. The women thought they would finish the job and then leave Jesus’ body to return to the dust from which it had come.

As they walked toward the tomb, the women spent their time wondering how they would move the massive stone from the burial chamber. Would the Roman guards help them? Or would the guards, hardened men as they were, simply tell the women to go away, that Pilate had sealed the tomb and the women’s journey was for nothing?

St. Luke’s account of the events at the tomb that day seem somewhat sketchy; the other Gospel writers helped to fill the details in the story. St. Luke recorded the women arrived to find the massive stone rolled away from the entrance, and apparently no Roman guards around. (St. Matthew provides the story of the guards’ absence. Read the story in Matthew 28 and notice the angel didn’t bother trying to soothe the guards’ fear.) Then, the women noticed 2 “men” standing by “in dazzling apparel.” As frightening as the sight appeared, the men spoke to them: “Why do you seek 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 delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”

Did you catch the key phrase here? “He is not here, but has risen.” With that one statement, the crushing weight of Jesus’ brutal death evaporated, replaced by inexpressible joy. Jesus lived again! Contrary to the Roman proclamation of His death, Jesus had conquered death itself, just as He had prophesied!

I would have found this somewhat difficult to comprehend, but the women — some of whom had probably accompanied Jesus and the disciples from His earliest days of ministry — remembered His sayings about living again. The angels’ statement reminded them: “Remember how He told you.” Jesus had clearly foreseen His own death and plainly spoke of it. He also spoke of a resurrection to follow 3 days later. Now, the women understood the open door; now, the empty tomb made sense. Why close the tomb when no body lay inside?

Again, I confess I understand the disciples’ disbelief. What kind of women would babble about a living Jesus? Didn’t they see His mangled body on the cross? Didn’t the women see the result of the Romans’ brutalization of their leader?

Fortunately, St. Peter (St. John would later write that he accompanied St. Peter) ran down to the tomb to see what the women were talking about. When he looked inside the tomb, St. Peter saw the linen cloths which Joseph and Nicodemus had used to wrap Jesus’ body, but the body itself certainly had disappeared.

Chapter 24 of St. Luke’s Gospel contains several amazing stories. By the end of the chapter, you’ll find Jesus had appeared to St. Peter himself, as well as to several other followers (including a trip to Emmaus, about 7 miles away from Jerusalem). Jesus used every available minute of the first Easter, appearing to select believers to confirm the women’s story of His resurrection.

History records the effects of the Resurrection of Jesus. The first group of believers, who had days before seemed nothing more than a dispirited and scattered group of shocked and saddened souls, reunited around their risen Lord and awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Following Pentecost, the Church spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. Today, Christianity claims at least 2 billion followers among earth’s population.

How did so many people come to believe in Jesus’ resurrection? I think we believe because we have experienced the reality of Jesus’ life, even nearly 2,000 years after He rose from the dead.

Because Jesus lives, we have experienced peace with God. St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). St. John wrote in his first letter to the Church, “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). Although we once stood in rebellion against God because of our sins, we now experience a relationship of peace with our Creator, a relationship Jesus Himself works to maintain.

Because Jesus lives, we have experienced freedom from sin’s penalty. St. Paul told the Ephesian church, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). Jesus Himself “redeemed” us from sin; because of His grace to us, He gives us freedom from judgment and the assurance that we receive divine forgiveness rather than divine justice.

Because Jesus lives, we have experienced love as we’ve never known it before. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17). God created us to love us, not to condemn us to eternal death. Everyone who believes in Jesus comes to know true, godly love that transcends the fleeting feelings the world calls “love.” “Love” in the world’s sense will eventually, inevitably diminish. Love in God’s sense continues forever.

Because Jesus lives, we can also face the inevitable march of time in our lives. Last week, The Christian Century magazine carried United Methodist Bishop William Willimon’s Easter column. Willimon wrote:

1. About a month after my mother died, as I was conscientiously prolonging my grief, I was offended by the impertinence of an undeniably glorious sunny day, and in February too. What sort of God would rub such beauty in my sorrow-contorted face? It made me wonder which was more real—my ugly loss or the gift of a beautiful day?
   

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3. Each blue Monday, though it seems more often, I get a dispatch from an agency of my denomination informing me of the terrible things that have happened in the past week. This agency seems to believe that those of us who live in the hinterland don't read newspapers or watch TV. It is good enough to send to us clueless ones a weekly catalog of how bad things are around the world: earthquakes, plagues, murder, starvation and mayhem. The God this church agency believes in is always behaving badly in some part of the world or another….
   

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5. But is this what God wants? If God had desired our constant mournful earnestness and concern, why did God make a gloriously effusive world filled with peacocks and humming birds and bright February days to mess with our grieving? If we look at the world from this angle, it's almost as if God wants us to be happy....
   

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7. On two mission trips to Haiti with undergrads, there was widespread agreement that the most disarming thing about the country was the laughter of the children, along with their raucous singing. How dare they sing when their life expectancy is so horribly short? Was their laughter an escapist respite from the unmitigated tragedy of their lives, or a smart rebuke to our assumption that their lives were trapped in tragedy? …
   

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9. But those singing-through-their-tears Haitians make me wonder: a truly theological analysis suggests that we may be meant by God for music, destined for joy. Maybe our fitful good deeds are not the end of the story. The church’s relief bulletins rarely include that theology along with its lists of sins and disasters. This is what you get when anthropology overtakes Christology—it’s always Good Friday. What’s dead stays that way.
   

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11. But what if the grieving women who came to the tomb on Easter morning are right? What if Friday isn’t the end of the story? What if God is rewriting human tragedy into surprising comedy? What if Jesus told the truth when he declared, toward the opening of his ministry, that he was turning today’s tears into tomorrow’s laughter. Thus Luke’s good news ends not with the disciples’ grim determination to right what's wrong with the world, but with their turning toward Jerusalem, the scene of the greatest of tragedies, “with great joy.”
    

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13. This world is full of death. Open your eyes and you will see the weeping all around. Human life can be, even for the undeservedly well fixed among us, one long series of funerals. Caesar sent thousands to the cross; still does.
    

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15. As far as I can tell, there's only one thing we know that the world doesn’t: we know another story. In the gloom, on the margins, there are women singing with Wesley and without earthly justification. Their only rationale is theological. They have learned the secret about God and can’t help singing. The God who could have been sovereign chose rather to be love. Dare we risk defiant delight? Listen, in Port-au-Prince they are singing: Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
    

People of God, Jesus lives. We can’t stop time, but because He lives, we can sing, and we can celebrate joyously that Jesus has defeated death and brought enteral life to all who believe in Him, confessing Him as Lord and believing in His resurrection.

“Because He Lives.” At New Hope today, we’ve heard the story sung by our choir. I know of no better way to celebrate Easter than with the song, “Because He Lives.”