Resurrection holds Absence, Presence, and Promise Together
Luke 24:1-12
1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." 8 Then they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
art by Jim LePage
I wonder if the women rose early that first day of the week, hands full of the spices that attend death, because they wanted to get the difficult task of grieving over with. I wonder if they went out so early in the day because they couldn’t really sleep anyway. I wonder if they hurried to the tomb because they longed to remember and honor Jesus, even it wasn’t the way they really wanted to. I wonder if they went there because they didn’t know what else to do, but their bodies knew the movements of mourning – the rituals that could help their hearts and spirit process this profound loss and offer meaning and connection in the midst of this suffering. I’ve heard it said for years that on Good Friday, Jesus was abandoned by every last one of his friends and followers, but that easy drama erases the women who stayed, the women who endured, and the women who would then be the first to see and hear and proclaim the Good News.
We are eager to hear the words “Christ is risen!” But it takes a bit of unraveling before the Resurrection can be recognized. First, they see the stone rolled away. As a woman, finding something (especially something whose purpose is security) different than the way it’s supposed to be… is not encouraging. My first instinct is not hopefulness. My first instinct is danger. I can’t imagine the multitude of scenarios playing out in these women’s minds when they saw this. I don’t know if it was courage, defensive caution, curiosity, or hope that drew them forward….but they went in.
They find the tomb…empty. Again, this could mean a number of things - not all of them good or holy. Christ, God with us, appears absent. What are they to make of this seeming nothingness?
Suddenly, in their midst alongside them in their confusion were two dazzling figures. The mix of dazzle, awe-struck fear, and reverent bowing tells us that these are ones who reflect the voice of God. They pose the preposterous question: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?” They proclaim the audacious promise: He is not here, but has risen.”
It doesn’t get much clearer than that! How often I’ve longed for a messenger of God to just show up and tell me what’s going on, but even that doesn’t seem to capture the fullness of the Resurrection. Perhaps it’s not something that can simply be told.
The Resurrection doesn’t really make sense with just one thing or in words alone, and yet it continues to unfold.
To makes sense of what’s unfolding now without getting stuck in fear and frustration, the messengers of God draw on the remembrance of what came before. “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” “The women remembered his words” and this memory of what Jesus said when he was present in a different way helps them make sense of this apparent absence now and prompts them to go forward to “tell all these things.”
Their proclamation that Jesus is present—he is alive on earth again—is an act of redemptive remembering, in two senses: their remembering is a recalling of Jesus’ earlier teachings, but it is also a remembering insofar as they re-member the body of Christ. They seek to draw together again a community that has been torn apart by fear, confusion, grief, and distress.
Peter and the other apostles misunderstand Jesus’ missing body, thinking it represents an absolute absence. They dismissed the Gospel when the women told it to them, as impossible. The men decided that the women couldn’t be trusted as an authority on God’s movement in the world, and in so doing would nearly miss Resurrection unfolding before them. It couldn’t be true. But something of its truth must have stirred in them anyway because it moved Peter from where he was to go and see what they had seen.
The women testify to this experience of absence actually being a revelation God’s expansive presence in new, wilder, uncontainable ways.
Perhaps you’ve noticed and wrestled with this same strange dichotomy this past year – being keenly aware of the physical absence of people you love and yet experiencing their presence in heart and soul with you. Perhaps you have entered into the emptiness in one way or another…and suddenly found a reflection of the divine standing beside you. Perhaps you find yourself telling a sacred story of how life emerges from the places of death, even as it still doesn’t quite make sense, and yet there’s another kind of revival in the process of sharing those words.
It seems the Resurrection holds all things together – what was, what is, and what is to come, absence and presence, worry and relief, death and new life.
Luke 10:26-28 tells us that Jesus taught the two greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor as yourself (see also Matthew 22:38-39). The empty tomb scene presents one way to put these two commandments into action. The women’s experience, and their response to it, remind us that when we love God, neighbor, and ourselves with our words and our actions, we render Christ visible in a world where the divine all too often seems absent. We draw community together, instead of being pulled apart by fear, confusion, grief, and distress. When we do that—draw attention to a deeper reality that is often hard to remember or believe—God is still present and working in the world. Death does not, and will not, have the last word. That good news—that gospel—is what Christians proclaim when we say that Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia!
This Good Resurrection News continues to unfold in us in ways that empower us to see ourselves differently, to see the world differently, and to mobilize around that promise.
Resurrection is revealed, remembered, and reflected beyond the call of the trumpets, the scent of the spring lilies, and a day on the calendar that demands church attendance. It is a new horizon that holds together sorrow and joy and points to new possibilities through this union that seemed an idle tale only yesterday. It opens us up to recognize all kinds of resurrection moments even within our regular rhythms. It invites and empowers us to be a part of resurrection in our words and actions.
Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there. - Clarence W. Hall
The Good News of Resurrection is not only in ancient Jerusalem or a heaven hereafter, but among us…Christ is not among the dead, but the living. Christ is risen in you. What a curious, wonderful, and extravagant mystery. May today inspire you to tell a tale so wildly hopeful and liberating that you make others wonder if it could really be true. May it be so. Alleluia! Amen.