A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — April 4, 2010
First Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Isaiah 25:1-10a;  Luke 24:1-12 — Easter

…[the Lord God] will swallow up death forever. — Isaiah 25:7c

But these words seemed to them an idle tale,
and they did not believe them. — Luke 24:11

“These words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  The women’s words about their dear friend Jesus, about him rising and breaking the power of death, these words seemed to the eleven disciples an idle tale, empty talk, a silly story, humbug.  No way, ladies.  He died, and dead is dead.  That’s just how it works.  Bodies laid in a tomb on Friday are still there Sunday morning.  It is what it is.  Calling these words an “idle tale” is putting it lightly.

How could the women’s words possibly break through the shame and guilt and fear in that room?  Yes, Peter may have decided to run off to look for himself.  But that’s not exactly clear.  Many ancient manuscripts of Luke lack verse twelve.  Some scholars believe it was added to line up with John’s story, where Peter and the disciple Jesus loved race to the tomb.  But if this is part of Luke’s story, Peter still doesn’t believe.  The Greek in verse 12 is better translated as he went home not “amazed at what had happened,” but rather “wondering what had happened.”

 

Shame and guilt and fear—the eleven would have been feeling all of these, I’m sure.  Throughout the horrible events of Friday they’d hung back as their teacher and friend was tried and crucified.  Peter had denied Jesus three times.  And this Sunday morning the men stayed behind, probably behind locked doors,  safe while the women ventured out at early dawn to make their way to Jesus’ tomb.  They had every reason to be afraid.  They had witnessed the power and might of Rome in action as the empire wielded its arsenal of terror against Jesus and his followers.  Make no mistake about it; Rome used crucifixion as an instrument of state-inflicted torture and terror to instill fear into the hearts and minds of the people.  And with hearts and minds full of fear, the disciples could not hear, let alone believe, the women’s words.

Have you ever been so afraid you’ve been locked in place, frozen?  So filled with fear you couldn’t listen to or comprehend what was being said?  So scared that you did something foolish… or hurtful… or painful to yourself?  Fear is an incredibly potent thing.

I’m sure the women must have understood the disciples’ difficulty.  Like the men, they too had hung back on Friday, albeit maybe not as far.  Certainly as they leave home just before dawn Sunday morning, headed for the graveyard with spices in hand, they fully expect to find Jesus’ body in the tomb.  Dead is dead after all.  Now they are prepared to do their duty, to anoint his body properly, to minister to him in death the way he had ministered to them in life.  What they find at the graveyard—the stone rolled away, the body vanished—leaves them… Well, the scripture reads “perplexed,” but the Greek could be translated “totally at a loss” or “undone.”  Then when two men in dazzling clothes appear the women are reduced to shear terror, heads bowed to the ground, caught in the grip of death and fear so tightly wound around heart and mind as to squeeze out any and all hope. 

The two dazzling men ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”  Why?  Because dead is dead, that’s why!  Bodies laid in a tomb on Friday are still there Sunday morning.  They had watched their beloved friend and teacher die a horrific death meant to demean and terrorize.  The men go on, “Sisters, your Jesus is not here.  He is risen.  Don’t you remember what he said while he was still with you—that the Son of Man would be handed over, crucified, and then raised?” Well, no.  Standing in a graveyard at early dawn, gripped by death and fear, they had not remembered, could not remember.  But now in an empty tomb, hearing the two men remind them of Jesus’ words of promise, they come face to face with a new reality that somehow God has brought new life out of death.  “I do remember,” one must have said to another.  And together they recall words of promise and hope… that what is impossible for mortals is possible for God.  “How could we have forgotten?” they ask one another.  “Don’t you remember his promises of resurrection and a God whose life-giving power would swallow up death forever?”  And so hope begins to triumph over their fear.

I imagine the women running home and rushing into the room where the disciples have taken shelter.  They’re all talking at once, “Do you remember when Jesus promised that God would raise him from the dead?  Well, it has happened… today.  We can’t explain it.  But it’s true.  We saw, and then we remembered it all.” 

Here is the first Easter.  In the shadow of betrayal and death, in the midst of denial and terror, in the grip of pain and fear, it’s Easter.  Even in the middle of crosses and tombs, there is hope.  It was Easter there in that room, where fear had choked off hope… and it is Easter here in our world today where fear and hope go on competing for the hearts and minds of people everywhere.

All too often fear is the weapon of choice.  Fear gives rise to terrorists, and instilling fear is their chief objective.  Fear also gives rise to acts of state-sponsored torture in response to terrorism and seeks ways to justify it.  Fear takes us into war, and an unremitting atmosphere of fear during war leads to atrocities on all sides.  Hope, on the other hand, is what inspires and gives energy to peacemakers. Hope is life-giving.  Fear creates suicide bombers… and wall-builders.  I daresay fear has erected walls of all sorts, figurative and literal—interpersonal walls, walls between races, walls to keep the populace in and free from outside influences, and walls to keep immigrants and undesirables out.  Hope, however, inspires people to say things like, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” and then hope extends this to all walls, because hope seeks to bring people together.  Fear demands unquestioning, lock-step agreement in all things.  Hope asks people to agree to disagree while they endeavor to stay in respectful dialogue.

Like many of you, I watched the ongoing debates on healthcare reform with a mixture of interest and alarm, of hope and fear.  But as the final vote neared, I was intrigued with how the two sides related to hope or fear.  In an unscripted speech the day before the vote, President Obama said to House Democrats,

“Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.” ¹

At the same time, opponents of reform were warning of the “death of freedom,” the end of democracy, and even of “the beginning of Armageddon.”  And one Republican leader said that if Democrats were to pass healthcare reform they would destroy their party just as President Lyndon Johnson had shattered the Democratic party for forty years by passing his Great Society programs.  Those of you who, like me, lived through that time will remember that those programs included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare and Medicaid, federal funding for schools, as well as many anti-poverty programs that actually reduced the number of Americans living below the poverty line instead of just pushing poor people off the welfare rolls.  The same kinds of fear- and hope-filled messages we hear today competed for hearts and minds then, too, as fear went on an offensive with dire warnings that continued even after the programs had passed. 

That first Easter morning, the women returned from the tomb brimming with good news and hope.  But in fear the disciples thought their words an idle tale, utter nonsense.  They just could not remember.  Fear won out, except maybe just a bit for Peter, who might have gone to see for himself.  What about you this morning?  Do the women’s words seem an idle tale to you?  And just as important, does fear hold too much sway in your life—fear of the future, fear of the present, fear of the past?  Are you sick and tired of being afraid?  Fear is a potent and insidious thing.  So when you do give into your fears—as we all do at various times—know that you are in good company with those eleven men closest to Jesus.  But also hear the rest of the story.

According to Luke, others besides Peter went to the tomb and found it just as the women described, but still they did not believe.  Yet later that day, the risen Jesus himself came to be with these unbelieving folk.  “Why are you afraid?” he asked them, and he let them touch him and showed them his wounds.  Caught between fear and joy, they still did not believe.  Did Jesus give up on them?  No,  he let them watch him eat, and he taught them, and they began to see for themselves that the power of resurrection had broken out in the world.  Bit by bit they came to believe as Jesus helped them remember the promises and the hope.  More than that he told them to go tell others and help them to remember.  Suddenly they were no longer disciples.  They were now apostles, people sent out to share with others the hope of the resurrection.

Now, I realize that most likely none of us here has had just this experience of Jesus—touching him, watching him eat, hearing him speak his promises aloud.  Yet we have something else.  We have two thousand years of witnesses who have struggled to remember and put hope ahead of fear, telling and retelling the stories, and witnessing to the power of the Risen Christ in their lives.  By the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we can join the disciples in trusting that Jesus’ promises are true.  As we come together to worship God, to pray and give thanks, to share in the Supper of our Lord, we can join in that chain of witnesses, attesting to the power of Easter hope over whatever fears the world may throw at us.

 

 

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¹ Reported in “Fear Strikes Out” by Paul Krugman,  The New York Times, March 22, 2010.