“Why do you Seek the Living One among the Dead?”
Luke 24:1-11
4/15/07
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Alleluia! In the story of Alice in Wonderland, Alice enters into
a world where nothing is as it should be; nothing corresponds to the
way things are in reality. Everything that happens in Wonderland
contradicts what Alice knows to be true. Animals, flowers,
playing cards, and even doorknobs are able to talk. Certain foods
are able to make Alice grow either larger or smaller. This way is
that way and that way is this way. And things keep getting
“curiouser and curiouser.”
Today’s Gospel text might be described in the
same way, where nothing is as it ought to be, nothing corresponds to
what we or the women should expect in reality, and things seem to get
curiouser and curiouser the more we look at them. But in the end
we discover that it’s not Jesus and His life, death, and
resurrection that have been the dream, but that our own lives and way
of thinking have been the fantasy all along, and that the Gospel in
fact wakes us up to reality and reveals the truth to us through the
historical fact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
The women had come to Jesus’ tomb on the first
day of the week to do what was the normal practice of those days - to
anoint the body with spices. Their experience was that when a
person died he stayed dead. So they expected Jesus to be right
where He had been laid to rest. And yet, they had witnessed Jesus
raising Lazarus from the dead. There was also another instance
where He had raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead, and on
another occasion He had brought a widow’s son back to life, as
well. But perhaps in their mind there was nothing that Jesus
could do for Himself once He was dead. So, forgetting what Jesus
had told them about His rising again from the dead, they came to anoint
Him with the spices they had prepared for Him.
They came on the first day of the week. The
curious thing about the first day of the week is that it is also known
as the eighth day of the week. In the O.T., when a baby boy was
born, eight days later he was circumcised, representing the new life
that that child was now entering into among God’s people.
And so, Jesus was also circumcised on the eighth day, the same day as
His resurrection. The number eight, then, symbolizes a new
creation. Not only was this day of Jesus’ resurrection the
first day of a new week, but it was also the first day of a new life, a
new age, a new creation. Now, every Sunday is a little eighth-day
Easter celebration for Christians, as we rejoice in this new creation
that Jesus has ushered in through His bodily resurrection from the dead.
The women, however, weren’t thinking along
these lines. The only thing that was on their minds was how they
were going to roll away the stone that blocked the entrance to
Jesus’ tomb. This, too, was only natural for them to
think. Stones don’t normally roll themselves away, and it
was too heavy for them to roll away. But something curious had
happened which they had not expected: The stone had already been
rolled away.
Here (speaking allegorically for a minute, if we
may) the stone represents everything that would block or hinder Jesus
from getting to you. Many times it is you yourself who sets up
these hindrances. Many times you yourself are the
hindrance. You become a hindrance, for example, when you say or
do something that keeps the Gospel from getting to others. The
hindrance may be false doctrine. It may be sinful behavior.
It may be apathy. But the greatest hindrance that keeps Jesus
from you is the hindrance of unbelief. This is a stone that must
be rolled away in order for your crucified and resurrected Jesus to
come to you. But you can’t roll this stone away
yourself. Only He can roll it away, which He does through the
proclamation of His Word. On that first Easter morning He used
His heavenly angels to roll away the stone that blocked the entrance to
His tomb. Today He uses the earthly angels or messengers of His
Word - pastors, whose job it is first to point out this stone of
unbelief that you have set up which blocks Jesus from coming to you,
then to lead you to confess that you have set up this stone yourself
and that you can’t remove it, and then to point you to Christ who
rolls this stone away for you with His words of forgiveness. Once
Jesus rolls away this stone of unbelief, He also rolls away all the
other stones which the devil, the world, and your own sins would try to
set up to keep Jesus from you. Jesus will let none of them hinder
Him from coming to you. With His Word He removes them all.
Now, Jesus needed no one to roll away the stone from
the entrance to His tomb in order for Him to escape. Nothing can
hold Jesus, not even death. He sent His angels to roll away the
stone, in order to show that He was no longer there; that He had, in
fact, risen from the dead. This is good news for us, because it
confirms God’s acceptance of His Son’s sacrifice on the
cross. As the Apostle Paul writes, “If Christ has not been
raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins...
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of
those who have fallen asleep.” Christ’s resurrection
assures you that your faith is not in vain, that your sins are
forgiven, and that you have the certain hope of your own bodily
resurrection to look forward to.
But when the women encountered the angels who
proclaimed Christ’s resurrection to them, they were afraid.
See, the thing about angels is that most often they are God’s
messengers of doom and destruction. They are not only sent to
announce God’s wrath, but also to carry it out. One only
has to look at the account of Sodom and Gomorrah to see that angels are
not the cute little children with wings that they are often depicted to
be. And so, upon seeing these awesome creatures in all their
glorious splendor, the women rightly responded with fear.
“Woe to us! We’re doomed!” they might have
thought. But the curious thing here is that the angels had not
come to pronounce God’s judgment and then pour out His wrath upon
them. Instead, they proclaimed Christ risen from the dead and
told the women that it was necessary for Him to be crucified and then
rise again on the third day.
Curiously, what the women expected to receive they
did not receive, and instead received what they didn’t
expect. They expected God’s wrath, which is what we all
deserve to receive on account of our sins. What they didn’t
expect and what they received instead was God’s mercy.
Christ’s resurrection does not mean that Jesus has come back from
the dead to punish you now on account of your sins, but to proclaim
God’s peace to you. The warfare is over, and you are under
God’s blessing instead of His curse for the sake of Jesus,
crucified for you.
Now, the angels knew that the women were expecting
to find the body of Jesus where He had been laid. But they asked
them why they were seeking the living One among the dead and then told
them that He was not there, but that He had risen. Curiously,
Jesus was not where the women had expected Him to be. You and I
often have the same problem - expecting Jesus to be in places where
He’s not. Instead of looking for Him where He has promised
to locate Himself, we go looking for Him where we think we ought to
find Him. Instead of God’s Word, Baptism, and the
Lord’s Supper, we look for Him in things like visions and dreams,
experiences and miracles, feelings and forests. Instead of the
cross, we look for Him in glory. Instead of in the Christian
Church, we look for Him in any number of man-made religions. And
yet, all those places where we naturally want to go to try to find God
are where the dead are. They are dead things, invented by our
dead reason, delivering nothing to us but death, instead of the Living
One, Jesus Christ. Only among the living, among the things that
give life, among the things where the Living One has located Himself
will we find our risen Lord and Savior. Jesus is not among the
cold, empty, dead things produced by our reason, but in His words,
Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper among His people. If you pay
attention to His words, as the women were told to do, you will find Him
in these places. Here in this place, where His Word is being
proclaimed and His body and blood are given to you to eat and to drink,
the Living One is present giving you life, so that you too might no
longer be among the dead but with Him among the living.
The other curious announcement from the angels (in
addition to their words that Jesus had risen) was their words that all
these things had to happen to Jesus. Jesus Himself had told the
women and His disciples that He had to be betrayed into the hands of
sinful men, that He had to be crucified, and that He had to rise again
from the dead on the third day. Jesus had to do these things,
because these things had been laid upon Him to do by the Father.
Jesus had to fulfill the Scriptures. The Scriptures are where the
Father had laid out for His Son what He had to do. In order to
take care of your sins, Jesus had to lay down His life on the
cross. His shed blood was the only thing that could atone for
your sins; it is the only thing that cleanses you from all sin.
So, Jesus had to die. But He could not stay dead. As we
read from Paul earlier, a Jesus who’s still dead and buried is no
Savior at all. You’d still be in your sins with no hope of
your own bodily resurrection, if Jesus Himself were still dead.
So, He had to rise again from the dead. Jesus did both: He
died and He rose again from the dead, just as the Scriptures foretold,
just as God had planned, for you and for your salvation. And
that, of course, is the most curious thing of all, that God would lower
Himself to come in human flesh to die on a cross and to rise again from
the dead, in order that you might have eternal life.
As a result of hearing this good news, the women
returned from the tomb to proclaim it to the eleven apostles and to the
rest of Jesus’ disciples. This is what the Gospel does to
you when it takes hold of you - it opens your mouth, so that you tell
others the good news about Jesus. You might wonder sometimes,
“What is it I’m supposed to say?” Here the
Scriptures tell us that the women told the disciples “all these
things.” What things were those? The things that were
announced to them by the angels, namely, that Jesus was not dead, that
He had risen from the dead, and that He had to be crucified, die, be
buried, and be raised from the dead. In fact, towards the end of
Luke’s Gospel account, Jesus Himself says, “Thus it is
written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from
the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
proclaimed in His Name to all nations, beginning from
Jerusalem.” So, we are not left in the dark as to what to
tell people about Jesus.
And yet, like the response which the women got from
the disciples, often the response you’ll get will be the
same: People will look at you as if you’re a fool, as if
you’ve been visiting Wonderland, where everything is the opposite
of what we experience, reason, and believe. And yet, we have the
sure testimony of the eye-witnesses in the N.T. documents that this is
no myth or fairytale, but that God has indeed come to us in the flesh,
has given His life on the cross for us, and has risen bodily from the
dead, so that you and I might be delivered from the dead things of this
age and be brought to life with Christ right now with the sure and
certain hope of the resurrection of the body and the life of the world
to come. Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!
Alleluia! Amen.