An Idle Tale?

“But they did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”

In the shadowy half-light of a Sunday dawn a band of faithful women clambered over the rocks and up to the tomb where the body of Jesus, their beloved friend and teacher, had been placed on Friday afternoon. Most of these women had followed Jesus since the very beginning of his ministry, and some of them had used their own funds to support Jesus. They saw how he healed people and lovingly listened to everyone who came to him. They saw how he especially welcomed women, poor people, tax collectors, and even gentiles. They heard him teach in the synagogues and tell stories in the villages. They heard him declare that God’s reign had come close to them. They were there too at Jesus’ last meal with his friends, sitting on the floor, or perhaps in an area screened off from the men. They were there at the cross, standing silently by, watching him die like a common criminal. They followed his body to Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, anointed his body for burial, and watched as the stone covering the mouth of the tomb was rolled in place. Unlike most of Jesus’ other friends, the faithful women didn’t betray him, deny him, or flee from him.

Then in that shadowy dawn, the women had a shattering experience. The rock covering the mouth of the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid had been rolled back, the tomb was empty, and two men stood near it. Angels? Terrified, the women fell to the ground. Then the strangers flung a question at the women, “Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery?”1 As the women stood up, they slowly began to think of all that Jesus had taught. They remembered how he had interpreted Scripture and some of the things he had said about himself. They remembered that he had taken pains to remind Peter and all the rest of his friends that, “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the religious leaders, high priests, and scholars, be killed, and on the third day be raised up alive.” As the sun rose higher in the sky, suddenly the truth dawned on the faithful women, and they knew that something new and totally unexpected had happened. They ran to tell the others, but “but the apostles didn’t believe a word of it, thought they were making it all up.” Even after Peter went to look for himself, he still wasn’t convinced.

No surprise. In his accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and of the earliest experiences of his followers, Luke stresses how difficult it was for people to believe that Jesus had been raised – unless they went back to the Scriptures and thought about what Jesus had said. At the same time that Peter was shaking his head in puzzlement, two of Jesus’ other followers were walking to the village of Emmaus. They related to the stranger who had joined them on the walk all that had just taken place in Jerusalem, not realizing that they were speaking with the risen Jesus. Seemingly exasperated, Jesus said, “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?” Only when Jesus broke bread with them did they fully see him.

The two disciples ran back to Jerusalem, right to Peter and the others, and told them all that had just happened. Then Jesus himself appeared among them all, but, “They still couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It was too much; it seemed too good to be true.” Only when Jesus helped them to understand the Scriptures did the truth begin to dawn on them. And when Jesus reminded them that were witnesses of what had happened to him, they began to see that they too might be called to tell others about what had taken place.

So is the story of Jesus’ being raised sheer nonsense? At the very end of Matthew’s gospel, some of the eleven disciples still doubted. We’ll hear the story next week of how difficult it was for Thomas to believe that Jesus had been raised. Some of the Corinthian Christians must have doubted the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Why else would Paul have had to remind them, “Face it – if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors.” If Jesus’ being raised from the dead were sheer nonsense, could Peter, an unlettered fisherman, have convinced Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, and all his household, that God raised Jesus on the third day, and that the Scriptures testify that Jesus is God’s anointed one?

And yet, the whole story is still so hard to believe! Doubt in Jesus’ resurrection has a long history – and for good reason. None of us were witnesses. None of us travelled with Jesus and his friends. None of us heard him teach or saw him heal. None of us saw Jesus hanging on a cross between two thieves. None of us wept with the women. But we do know death. We do know the death of a loved one. We do know the death of a relationship, whose loss leaves unfillable holes in our hearts. We do know the death of hopes and dreams, as our work for a peaceful and just world evaporates into yet more war, violence, and injustice. We open our newspapers, or turn on our computers, smart phones, or televisions and witness yet another act of terrorism and murder: Brussels, Paris, Charleston, Newtown, Tucson. Too often, we are those people whom Paul pitied, pitied because the resurrection seems so far away from our own experience. Evangelical preacher Tony Campolo is famous for preaching on Good Friday, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!” Is it still Good Friday for us? Is this where we live?

By God’s grace, Good Friday is not where we live! After that shadowy dawn, the women went and told Peter and the other apostles. Perhaps they told others as well. The men on the road to Emmaus understood what had happened and told the Eleven. Peter finally understood what had happened. By God’s grace, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter and others of Jesus’ friends spread the good news that Jesus had been raised from the dead and was still alive to them. Paul had a shattering experience of Jesus’ risen presence on the road to Damascus and became an eloquent preacher of the good news. Others of Jesus’ friends risked life, limb, and property to spread the good news that Jesus had been raised, that their lives were forever changed by Jesus’ resurrection, and that new life was available, by God’s grace, to all who followed Jesus. And so the good news has come down to us, to this very day, to this very place, good news brought to us across the centuries, witness by witness by witness.

No we are not stuck on Good Friday! It is Sunday! We too have heard. We may not know exactly what happened in that tomb in the rock, but we trust what we have heard. We trust Jesus’ promise that on the third day God would do something extraordinary. We too study Scripture and find in it the confirmation we seek of the reality of God and of new life in Jesus. We too trust that death is not the final answer to our brief human lives. We trust that we too will enter that larger life where time is no more, and that in a sense, as Jesus’ followers, we are already living in that life. We too trust that with God all things are possible, even our own transformation.

And we hear something else. We hear in the words of the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrected life an invitation to us, an invitation to follow Jesus and to live as he lived. Like the women who first saw the empty tomb, like the men at Emmaus, like Peter, like Thomas, like Paul, like all those who spread the good news, we too have been commissioned. We too are called to tell others that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he is the first one who was raised, but he is not the last. Where he is, there we will be.

Sometime in the 1980s, I attended a conference of feminists in the church. There were Catholic women religious there, as well as Protestant clergy women and lay women. We discussed books like Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father, and we celebrated liturgies using feminine imagery for God. The Catholic sisters talked of their struggles with the Roman hierarchy and the call they felt to ordination as priests. The Protestant clergy women spoke of their struggle to be heard and taken seriously in churches still dominated by men. During that conference, I was given the button you see me wearing today. I’ve kept it all these years. The button says, “But they did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” For those of us at the conference, the words reflected our experiences in the church at that time. By God’s grace, much has changed in our churches. Although neither women nor married men are ordained yet in the Roman Catholic Church, much has changed even there. Even more has changed in the Episcopal Church, as we have learned that neither gender nor sexuality nor ethnicity nor disability are reasons to exclude people from leadership in the church.

So can I put my button away? Or does the story of Jesus’ resurrection still sound like nonsense? Not for us who believe God’s promises! Not for us who recognize Jesus at the altar and hear his voice in Scripture. Not for us, who joyfully accept his call to share the good news with others.

Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

1. This and subsequent Scripture quotes are taken from The Message.