Looking for Jesus?

The Rev. Sandy Selby – St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron

Easter Sunday, Year C – April 8, 2007 (8:00 service)

Text: Luke 24:1-10

A few weeks ago the media was abuzz with yet another story of ossuaries unearthed around Jerusalem. Because of the names that had been carved on these stone containers, a scholar was claiming that these ossuaries had once held the very bones of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and their son. What, the talking heads wondered, would this shocking discovery do to the Christian faith?

Frankly, it does nothing. For one thing, Jesus and Mary were very common names in 1^st century Palestine. For another, even if it could be shown conclusively that these bones were those of Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus whom we call Christ is not to be found in a box (as much as people might sometimes want to put him in one).

The lectionary reading from the Acts of the Apostles makes clear that from the earliest days of the church the proclamation of the crucifixion and resurrection has been central to the Christian faith. After the conversion of Cornelius, Peter tells the crowd gathered in Caesarea, “they put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul identifies what had already become tradition some twenty years after the death of Jesus: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve” (1 Cor 15:3-5).

For centuries, all manner of people have tried to come up with resuscitation scenarios and other theories to explain away the astonishing claim that Jesus was raised on the third day. Biblical scholars such as those in the “Jesus Seminar” discuss the resurrection as if it is a problem to be solved. But that’s clearly not the way Luke the evangelist sees it.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the two men in dazzling clothes ask the women at the tomb. Having gone to the tomb and found it empty, the women are understandably perplexed. But the two men tell them that they are looking for Jesus in all the wrong places.

In the book of Acts, Luke tells us that after the resurrection Jesus appears to his followers in Jerusalem for forty days, telling them about the kingdom of God. He promises that the Holy Spirit will empower them to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. And then, as they watch, he ascends toward heaven. Again, two men in white robes appear and ask the disciples, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” “…why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Jesus is not in the tomb, and he is not in the sky, but is alive and present in ways that his followers will soon discover.

The men in dazzling clothes tell the women where to look: “He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Remember. These women have been with Jesus throughout his ministry, from Galilee to Jerusalem. They were there when he predicted, more than once, that he would suffer, die, and rise again.

They do remember, and that memory opens their hearts and minds to the meaning of the empty tomb. They find themselves again with Jesus in Galilee, where they had been from the beginning. For among his early followers Luke named “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.” These women were there when Jesus healed the hemorrhaging woman who touched the hem of his garment; they shared a feast from five loaves and two fish with 5,000 others; they saw countless lives transformed.

They remember well Jesus’ words about betrayal and rejection and suffering and death—things that had happened, just that week. And as surely as he had prophesied those things that had just taken place he had also told them that on the third day he would be raised.

“So it’s true,” they realize, “he is risen indeed! It’s just as he said it would be.” Having remembered, the women leave the tomb and tell all this “to the eleven and to all the rest.”

The meaning of the resurrection is clear to Mary and the other women because they have walked with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. Like the women, we cannot begin to know what the resurrection means unless we put it within the broader context of the salvation story. For the death and resurrection of Jesus are not isolated events, but part of the ongoing activity of God in history--activity that continues today.

“Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” If Christ is risen, he lives among us still. If Christ is risen, then he is loose in the world with the power to raise us up. Karl Barth once said that the gospel “is not a natural therefore but a miraculous nevertheless.”

Christ suffered and died for us but is among us “nevertheless.” And Christ continues to work within the world to bring forth the cosmic reversal that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ represent. When we see power brought forth from weakness, healing from suffering, and new life from death, we know that we are in the presence of the risen Lord.

The proof of the resurrection lies not in excavating the empty tomb but in looking all around us. You and I know of resurrection stories in the lives of people right here in this parish, stories that testify to the God who raises the dead and calls into existence the things that are not. Stories in which Jesus is glorified once again and lifted up for all to see. Here, today, we participate in the risen life of Christ and testify to his presence among us in the breaking of the bread.

Contrary to what contemporary preachers of the prosperity gospel would tell us, the Christian faith is not about optimism, a kind of wishful thinking that turns our current circumstances into positive results. Rather, the Christian faith is about hope even in the darkest of nights. Paul says that the resurrection is only the beginning: “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:25-26). Hope gives us the capacity to participate in the struggle against evil, suffering, and death, even when there is no end in sight.

You may recall seeing stories in the Beacon Journal about Andy Holcomb, a local man who lost his body from the waist down in an industrial accident eighteen months ago. A few weeks ago I heard Andy, who was eighteen years old when the accident happened, speak at a conference sponsored by Akron General. George Murphy was one of the speakers at that conference.

Andy began by saying this: “I had a plan—to get an education and a job, to get married and have children, and to have fun playing with my children. But God had a different plan.” After Andy was extracted from the machinery that nearly consumed him, he was taken to the Emergency Department at Akron General. Those who treated him could not believe that he survived his injuries. Andy has spent months in and out of the hospital and struggles today with severe pain.

Many of us who heard Andy speak that morning had seen him before. I saw him two days after his accident and several times thereafter during his hospital visits. He is a remarkable young man. The chaplains at Akron General know that there has been a constant during all of Andy’s hospitalizations: he insists on prayer and Communion every day. Someone asked Andy what the Eucharist means to him. Here’s what he said: “It keeps me focused on God. It tells me that God is with us and in all of us. It tells me that my cross is just an extension of his.”

“Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

Alleluia!