Easter - Looking for Life in All the Right Places.lwp - Page 2 of 3
Business as usual hadn’t always been like that for these women. Galilee with Jesus had been
amazing an amazing place for anyone, perhaps most especially amazing for the women who were
disciples and active participants in Jesus’ ministry. Life had meaning then; it was worth living, worth
giving up their comfortable, solid lives, to be with Jesus. They even followed Jesus to Jerusalem and
stayed watching while he died on the cross.
But with his death, business as usual had returned. Jesus and his mission had failed. But there
were still things to do. And so, just as women had done for generations, they had prepared spices and
gotten up early to finish the burial that was cut short on Friday with the coming of the Sabbath when the
sun went down.
But when they get to the tomb, the stone is rolled away, and when they go in, there is no body.
But even then it’s still business as usual, not resurrection. They’re perplexed. How can this be? Was the
body stolen? Does a dead body just get up and leave? Resurrection isn’t on their radar screens any
more than it was on Peter’s, any more than it is on ours.
Which means that for now, these women have pretty much lost their bearings.
And that’s where the angels come in, these two men who suddenly appear and stand beside
them. Of course they women are terrified - the men’s clothes are dazzling - not because they’re the
hottest look, but dazzling in the way lighting is dazzling. Being terrified is a normal reaction to seeing an
angel.
But what these angels say isn’t usual. Usually the first words out of an angel’s mouth are, “Do
not be afraid.” The angel in Matthew says, “Do not be afraid.” The young man in Mark whose
appearance is that of an angel says, “Do not be alarmed.” But Luke’s angel doesn’t say that because
resurrection is scary if you’re not looking for life.
So Luke has his angels ask this question, which is unique among the four gospels:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
That’s an interesting question (which is what they say is a good line when you don’t know the
answer to something).
For one thing, they weren’t looking for the living among the dead, they were looking for the
dead among the dead. Of course they would have preferred to have Jesus alive - alive the way they
remembered him - that’s the obvious choice. But they were there when they crucified their Lord, and
they were there when Joseph of Arimathea laid him in the tomb. They knew he was dead. And so,
failing having the Jesus they knew back with them, they wanted his corpse in a definite place in a grave
they could take care of.
They weren’t looking for the living, they were looking for the dead, which is what I think
happens when we try to get life back to life as we remember it, especially our lives with Jesus. Yes,
these women, yes, we, do find new life with Jesus - but part of the reason life with Jesus is so wonderful
is that new things always happen when Jesus is in the picture. There was no way life with Jesus, even if
he kept on with his ministry in Galilee, no way that it would have stayed the same.
You see, God has a way of doing a new thing. We heard that in the other scripture passages.
The prophet Isaiah put God’s words like this: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I
am creating; for I am about to created Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.”
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