The Gospel of Luke 24.1-12 (Resurrection, Part Two)
Listen to or watch this sermon here.
Our eldest daughter was born as expected in a hospital. Sarah’s labour wasn’t overly prolonged (easy for me to say), we had plenty of assistance, and though the delivery itself was a little dicey, a team of medical experts ensured our baby’s safe arrival. No birth goes exactly as expected, but Gloria’s was a relatively routine delivery. This, however, is all hindsight, and in comparison, to our second daughter’s arrival, which was a different story. Phoebe did not turn up when or as expected. The time from Sarah’s first contraction to holding Phoebe in her arms was about forty minutes, the delivery itself lasting less than ten. There were no medical professionals involved, just one near-useless husband. Feeling that baby was moving quickly, Sarah had the wherewithal to climb into our empty bathtub and stayed remarkably calm. Within moments Phoebe was in my hands, and then onto Sarah’s lap, both stable and safe. We still can’t believe what happened that bright July morning. She will always be our bathtub baby.
When folks hear that story they sometimes applauding our proficiency to deliver a baby alone at home (and of course Sarah should be praised). But proficiency is not the word I’d use to describe my experience. Phoebe’s birth was not proficiently preformed. Phoebe happened to us, and we just had to keep pace with the new life arriving in a hurry. Our little girl didn’t turn up as or when expected, and proficient or not, ready or not, we were along for the ride.
Living Through the Events
As we heard in the reading a moment ago, the general tone on the morning of Jesus’ resurrection was not that things had gone as expected. Instead, the first people to see and hear of Jesus’ empty tomb were left wondering, or simply couldn’t believe what they were hearing. And this is because no one expected to find an empty tomb that Sunday morning. Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t anticipated even by those who knew him best, and even though he’d told them it would happen. It can be hard for us to imagine the surprise of these events to those living through them, because Jesus’ death and resurrection might be overly familiar to us now.
When I visited New York a couple of years ago, I didn’t expect to see the World Trade Centre towers dominating the city skyline. I knew that the towers fell, having watched it all unfold on television. So instead, I visited the 9/11 memorial footprint, and my experience of the city was therefore shaped by its sobering history. I knew the story, and to imagine a world not profoundly coloured by 9/11, was impossible. But to those caught up in the terror and surprise of that Tuesday morning, the attack on the towers was almost unimaginable. We know the story, but what was it like for those living the story at ground zero? This is where we need to begin when thinking about Jesus’ death and resurrection. The trajectory of Jesus’ life did not go as planned. Jesus’ cross and empty tomb didn’t appear predicable to those at ground zero. For all those involved, the days we now call Holy Week left them puzzled, wondering and even in disbelief. Only later did they begin to put the pieces together.
Jesus’ Death and Burial
We touched on this recently when looking at the account of Jesus’ death in Luke’s gospel. Jesus had been crucified, a form of capital punishment under Roman law, which was so grotesque and humiliating that even the word crucifixion was avoided in polite circles. Crucifixion was reserved for those considered lowest in society, like runaway slaves, as a terrifying deterrent, but especially for rebels threatening the Empire’s control. The crucified faced a slow and agonizing death. In fact, it’s from the Latin word “crucifixion” we derive the English word “excruciating”. Death on a cross regularly lasted days, but death was only half the point. The crucified were suffering billboards, posted at high-traffic locations, naked and vulnerable to the extreme. Proficient and creative with crucifixion, the Roman message of a cross was loud and clear: mess around with us and find out…
As we reflected on Jesus’ crucifixion and death, we noted that many might regard the most surprising part of the gospels to be Jesus’ resurrection. But Jesus’ crucifixion was as surprising to the first century audience. If Jesus had been hailed as the king-like Messiah, come to bring freedom for his people, then his crucifixion and death surely meant he was in fact a false Messiah, because the true Messiah would succeed, not fail. Crucifixion, everyone knew, clearly spelled failure. That Jesus might somehow the embodiment of Israel’s God among them crucified was simply unthinkable. Full of authority and promise, Jesus had come to Jerusalem, under the hopes he’d bring about another Exodus, God’s blessing and freedom for his people. But Jesus ended up crucified, nailed up in plain view to the thousands coming in and out of the city, another victim of Roman dominance. In the eyes of the Romans, Israel’s higher ups, and even his own followers, Jesus had lost and looked cursed rather than blessed. And despite all his talk, his so called kingdom seemed to die with him. All this is why Luke refuses to gloss over the nature of Jesus’ death. Luke asks his listeners to look at a crucified Jesus and try to make sense of its meaning. And the meaning of Jesus death would only be slowly revealed later to those who lived through the events once they faced the reality that Jesus had shockingly died, yes, but he had not stayed dead.
At the very beginning of his gospel Luke writes that he’s carefully investigated everything he’s about to relay, which includes eyewitness accounts. So given Luke’s focus of accuracy about Jesus’ life, it’s no surprise he’s equally particular on the record of Jesus’ death, and now his resurrection. Luke writes that Jesus had been laid in a new tomb, emphasizing to his readers that there was no room for confusion over which body went missing – there was only one body in that new tomb, so what happened to it? He tells us Jesus was buried by a member of the Jewish high council, Joseph of Arimathea, a well to do aristocrat in Jerusalem. Presumably, the facts of where and how Jesus had been buried could be easily corroborated. The sun goes down on Friday, the Sabbath proceeds as usual, and then came the sock of Sunday morning.
The Empty Tomb
Luke writes that there were multiple witnesses to Jesus’ body having gone missing, and oddly he lists women as the first witnesses. Forgive this inherently sexist historical realty, but listing women as witnesses at that time would be a less than credible choice, because a sober-minded man’s testimony would likely far outweigh a group of grief-stricken women (at least that would be the conventional wisdom of the day). And this is in fact exactly how the scene plays out. The women tell the men what they’ve seen, and the men don’t believe them (tale as old as time). But Peter takes notice, and takes off running to the tomb (running a form of silly indignity in the ancient world, demonstrates for us Peter’s desperation). And when he finds no body in the tomb, Peter too goes away scratching his head.
Why the Surprise?
We already covered why folks would have been so discouraged and shocked over Jesus’ death (if he was the Messiah, he should win, not lose), so why aren’t they immediately overjoyed about the possibility of his resurrection? Why aren’t they putting the pieces together, even with the angels’ appearance at the tomb? A couple of reasons.
First, if you’ve not yet noticed, resurrection is not exactly a common occurrence. Then, just as know, everyone knew that the dead stayed dead. Death was the great threat, the great unknown, no matter how much folks tried to avoid it or control it. This is why, in the gospels, people are blown away when one or two folks are brought back to life at Jesus’ word alone. What kind of person can make dead people alive again? Much as you might respect a wise friend or teacher, if they started bringing people back to life, respect would be quickly accompanied by some other, stronger feelings. And if that person died a horrible death, and then it appeared they had themselves been raised back to life, that would be a different story altogether. But remember Jesus has yet to make an appearance to his friends, so they’re first reaction to an empty tomb is not that Jesus has obviously overcome death and this whole story has a happy ending. They’re still reeling from his hurried crucifixion just a couple of days earlier. When Jesus’ body goes missing, they’re puzzled, wondering, passing the message along, but by no means sure about what’s happened.
Resurrection would also not have been top of mind because folks knew that dead people tended to stay dead, but also that resurrection, if it were ever to happen, was not meant to happen yet. Folks had room for the idea of resurrection, but it wasn’t expected in their here and now. Some of the prevailing thought in first century Jewish thinking was that there might be a resurrection from the dead, but this would come at the end of the age. In other words, if resurrection were to happen it would be “at the end”, and for a lot of people, not just one person. In other words, resurrection was end of the world stuff. So the possibility of Jesus’ resurrection was, you could say, far too early. It began to reframe everything they thought about “the end”, what God was up to in their world, and the times in which they were now living. They were a bit like me and Sarah, holding little Phoebe in our arms. We thought we’d be in the hospital, we thought this whole scene would be different, but there we were with a baby in a bathtub. Things were unfolding differently than expected.
The Death and Resurrection of Jesus
Recently we talked about the message on the billboard of the cross, and that the message reads that God was in and was working through Jesus’ life and even his death. That when Jesus was announcing a new kingdom, his death was the final action in the installation of that kingdom. The message on the billboard of the cross reads that God’s presence and power has upended our expectations of what God and true power must be like; that God doesn’t dominate or coerce us, but forgives and welcomes with good news of great joy for all people. The message on the billboard of the cross reads that if you want to know what God’s like, get your eyes off all those pretenders to the throne, and look at Jesus. If Jesus was who he said he was, then the message on the billboard of the cross reads that the residence of God’s very presence is no longer a fixed and restricted space on earth, like the Holy of Holies in the Temple, but God’s presence can be found even now in the broken and bloody places of human life. The message, the sign of the cross, points forward to God’s presence taking up residence in us, through and from Jesus, by the generous flood of his Holy Spirit. But that message would not become readable, you could say, without validation.
This is one way of thinking about Jesus’ empty tomb – an accompanying sign to the cross, a victory and validation sign. The resurrection validated that the cross was how God had changed things, how Jesus’ won, how God was going to bring freedom not only for the ancient Israelites but for all people. The empty tomb is also a vindication of Jesus, of his innocence or rigorousness. The cross then, is the sign that reads: this is how God wins. And the empty tomb, you could say, is the proof. But all this only became clear with hindsight. It was all still very foggy and overwhelming for those living at ground zero. They had come to a tomb, expecting to find Jesus’ laying in the state of every other crucifixion victim before him, but he was not there. They were living in old constructs (you might say constructs where death always came out on top) but they were being ushered into a new reality on God’s terms.
Why do you look for the living among the dead?
Why do you look for the living among the dead? That is a category blowing, reality altering question. Where you expected to find Jesus, you will not find him. Like those women then, we are asked the same question now when we look carefully at the gospel message. It’s a reality-altering kind of question, which leads to more questions which transform our collective and personal realities.
Let’s be honest. Most of us probably hurried through Holy Week, our minds already turning to summer calendars and plans. But we invite you not to rush past the questions stirred up by Jesus’ cross and his tomb.
What does Jesus’ death and resurrection mean for me? How does it inform how I take in the news in all it’s horror and unpredictability? How does it define my relationship with failure or shame, shed light on the dark secrets I hide, from which I crave profound freedom? How does it inform my view of the future, at root, my anxieties about death, much as I try to ignore or avoid it? How does it inspire hope that God’s life is at work in the here and now, so that healing, restoration and forgiveness is possible in any situation? How does it shape my understanding of God’s true character, humility, mercy and grace? How does Jesus’ death and resurrection life take me from expecting to find God stuck in static and predicable death-like categories, to discovering him instead as the very present and generous giver of life amongst us even now?
The message at the empty tomb then is the same today. Do you expect to find no life, no hope, no possibility of profound transformation when you come to Jesus? Why are you looking for the living among the dead? We encourage you to face the big questions, letting the gravity of Jesus’ death and resurrection pull you in.
You might find Jesus where you didn’t think he could be. You might find Jesus to be more than you expected him to be. And you might find his good news of great joy for all people to even better than you anticipated. You might find yourself holding new life in your hands, because Jesus’ himself promised that the kingdom of God is among you. The Lord Jesus is not locked in the static and doomed categories we have resigned ourselves to live by.
Luke Knight 