“EASTER IS NOT IDLE TALE”

Easter Sunday—April 8, 2007

United Lutheran Church-Red Wing, Minnesota

Luke 4:1-12

Grace and Peace to you on this glorious Easter morning from Jesus, the  Risen Christ our Lord.  Amen.

            The major celebration of Easter among the Moravian Christians of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, takes place in the cemetery, or “God’s Acre”, as they call it.  There the saints have been buried for generations under simple white stones which bear testimony by their simplicity to the faith of a plan people who believe in the resurrection.  Between the love feasts of Holy week and Easter morning the people come with brushes and pails to scrub the stones.  And on Holy Saturday every stone gets a bouquet of fresh flowers.

            Then on Easter Day, before dawn, the whole community meets at the church and to the subdued sounds of brass bands, they march to the ceme-tery.  Among the orderly rows of marble, in the very presence of death, they celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ among the dead.  It’s as if that were the only proper place to have such a celebration, out there among the tombs where death is unavoidable, even in the dawning light of an April morning, among the people’s flowers that have not yet begun to wilt.

            It’s not brassy; even the bands sound slightly cold as they play anti-

phonally from hill to hill.  There’s hardly a sermon at all, mostly just familiar words.  It’s all very understated, and there is about it a quiet wait-ing, for the sun to come up, and more.

            Understated at first also is the telling in Luke’s Gospel of the first Easter morning,  when the women come to the tomb after the tragedy of Good Friday.   The disciples had ventured so much for Jesus; leaving behind their work, their homes, there families.  Following Jesus had looked so pro-

missing.  He could heal the sick, cast out demons, speak with authority, even forgive sins—something it was believed only God could do.  The disciples had hoped that with Jesus, they had gotten in on the ground floor of the kingdom.

            On Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem and the crowds cheered “HOSANNA, TO THE SON OF DAVID” and their hope in Jesus had soared.  At the Passover meal( the Last Supper) on what we now call Maundy Thursday, they argued about who would have the best place in the kingdom. Then came Good Friday and it all came crashing down.  When Jesus died on the cross, the disciples lost it all.  All their hopes were crucified with Jesus.

            You know the story by heart, you’ve heard it before and we just read a portion of it again.  This time it was from Luke.  On the first day of the week, a few close friends of Jesus got up very early, heading for the tomb.  Burial spices in hand, they went to put those on his dead body which was a tradition and duty.  It was a visit to the grave, somewhat like we do, except we often bring flowers or a plant.   So, walking silently to the tomb, they knew they had lost a fortune in love for this Jesus.  Nothing remained but their desire to bring the spices to the tomb.  Then it all changed!

            Approaching the tomb, as the cover of night began to lift, something about the tomb looked strangely different.  In the morning mist, in the first dim light of the day, the burial cave should have been all gray.  But in the half light, the women spied a black opening in the rock.  The entrance to the tomb was open.  The stone rolled away.  Silently, they entered the tomb and in the dim light, expecting to see a human form shrouded in white, lying on a stone ledge; they found instead the cave was bare, the body gone, and the tomb empty.

            Perplexed and confused, they were startled when suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.   Terrified and bowing low with their faces to the ground, they shielded their eyes from the light.  “WHY DO YOU SEEK THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD?”  Strange question!  They were not seeking the living among the dead; they were seeking the dead among the dead.  “HE ISN’T 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, BE CRUCIFIED, AND ON THE THIRD DAY RISE AGAIN!”

            Now it dawned on them, the truth dawned on them, revealed as with the morning light.  They had forgotten but now remembered what Jesus had said.  Their master and friend, teacher and savior, the Son of God lives! Jesus had risen from the dead!  So run, don’t walk!  And they did, to find the other disciples.  I say, others, because Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women were also disciples of Jesus.  They were followers who had learned to trust him. “GO TELL!”, and they did. For they told the others what they had seen and heard.

            But then there is this rather amazing statement in Luke’s Gospel. “BUT THESE WORDS SEEMED TO THEM AN IDLE TALEE, AND THEY DID NOT BELIEVE THEM.”  So Peter gets up and runs to the tomb to see for himself, sees the linen cloths in the tomb, and goes home…amazed at what had happened.  The immediate reaction was that this could not be

true.  It was an “idle tale”, something lacking basis in fact.  Maybe it was even nonsense or foolishness.   Did you hear that, in this account of the resurrection, the reaction of the closest to Jesus was that this was an

“idle tale.”

            I find that a rather amazing verse to insert in this account of the resurrection.  Here in this story, where death has been defeated, where sin has no lasting power to destroy us, where the kingdom of God awaits us, and where there can be new life now…we hear that those closest to Jesus during those years of his ministry have such a reaction.  They had heard him preach and teach, perform miracles and healings, even pronounced forgiveness of sins and as eye witnesses they receive the news as an idle tale/nonsense.

            And it does sound like it!  Whoever heard of anyone regaining life after being declared dead for three days?  It seems foolish to believe that someone who had experienced being crucified, having the very life blood drained out of him, could suddenly have the strength to walk out of a tomb.

The whole resurrection account defies any sense of logic/rational thinking.

AND YET…

            It was during the following days, as Jesus began to make his appear-ances known to those very disciples…on the road to Emmaus where their hearts burned inside of them as they heard him speak, and when he appeared

to them and ate with them, and allowed them to touch him, and opened the scriptures to them and retold them all that he had told them before…

then what had seemed  to be an “idle tale” became an eternal truth.

            What turns the corner could only come later with the genuineness of the change Christ’s resurrection made in their lives.  For they changed from being defeated to become dynamic, from doubting to death-defying. The change that took place in their lives, was not the kind of change you’ll find in people who are perpetuating a fraud.   You don’t die to defend a fairy tale.

They came to believe that in fact, Jesus Christ had indeed, been raised from the dead. They were willing to give up everything they had, including their lives in defense of their contention/belief that Christ was alive.

            Somehow they were presented with a presence of Christ that enabled them to witness to the world.  In one of his writings, Rabbi Abraham Heschel made this important observation: “THERE ARE NO PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD; THERE ARE ONLY WITNESSES!”  I believe the same can be said for Christ’s resurrection.  They could not open a text and prove the resurrection of Jesus, they could only testify to their own experience and the experience of others.  They had known him before the crucifixion and they encountered him after the resurrection. No wonder Luke would later write of them in the Acts of the Apostles, that “they turned the world upside down.” Their words rang with an authenticity which the people heard, and people believed they were telling the truth.  No idle tale, but an eternal truth.

            Those first witnesses to the resurrection knew full well that some-thing, something, had happened to them. Their world had been entered, encountered, transformed, and reformed.  Easter wasn’t God saying, “Let me get you out of this terrible, deadly, tearful world.”  Easter was God saying, “Let me show you what I am doing to you and to this world in which you live.”  So great was the transformation that their enthusiasm(Greek word-entheos-meaning “possessed by God or filled with God”) spead and enabled them to influence the furtherance of the faith.  Had there been no resur-rection and telling or witnessing to it, there would be no Gospels, no Epistles, no New Testament, and no Christian Church.

            When they finally proclaimed that Christ was raised from the dead it wasn’t like saying that his cause lives on, nor just his memory lives on, but it meant Christ was a “REAL PRESENCE”.  Easter says that while you can crucify God’s love, you can not keep it dead and buried.   We need to grasp that Jesus is not just a figure of the past but is a figure in our presence.  For Jesus continued to be experienced by his followers after his death in a radical new way and continues to be experienced in this way. The presence of the Spirit of God, the Wisdom of God, and the Word of God, continues to be alive and those experiences continue to this very day.  The truth of Easter is grounded in the continuing experience of Jesus.

            It’s also important to say that Easter affirms that Jesus is Lord of what God is like and what life in abundance is meant to be when Jesus is present in our lives.  Garret Keizer wrote: “ON THE DAY WHEN I CAN NO LONGER BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION, I SHALL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO FOLLOW CHRIST.  IT’S NOT THAT I REQUIRE A REWARD AFTER DEATH; IT’S JUST THAT I REFUSE TO HAVE A DEAD GUY RUNNING MY LIFE.”  The resurrection of Christ is a crucial part of our faith statement, the foundation of all that goes before and after.  The risen Christ is by definition still alive, in the stories that we continue to remember, tell, and reinterpret to and for one another.

            This is no idle talk---this Jesus who promised forgiveness; brings

                                   forgiveness.   This Jesus who promised us life; brings

                                   us daily life.  This Jesus who promised life everlasting;

                                   brings us everlasting life.

            IN the leading of His Spirit—personally and communally among

                       the people of faith.

            IN the bread and wine that is his body and blood.    

            IN the splashing of the waters of baptism when we are baptized into

                       this death and resurrection.

            IF WE HAVE EYES TO SEE AND EARS TO HEAR!

            Today, if we take the resurrection seriously, we have a great responsi-

bility laid upon our shoulders. If we can sing today, “Jesus Christ Is Risen

Today”, then we are saying that Jesus really is Lord and all the other would-

be lordlets of this world are not.  When we sing, “The Strife is o’er, the Battle Won”, it means we join in the mopping up actions wherever evil still dares to challenge the rule of a good and loving God.  And if you believe,

“Jesus Christ Is Risen”, then get ready to witness to that the next time someone by their hate, cruelty, or pessimism believes that death is in charge.

The Apostle Paul says, “If Christ isn’t raised from the dead, then we are the biggest fools of all.”  Stop the music, pick up your lily, and go home for breakfast.  “If Christ has not been raised, we are most to be pitied!”

            This world stands waiting for the witness of a people who truly live anchored in hope.  Last Fall, a great Easter witness arose from a tragic “good Friday” event.  One fall morning, a father of three walked into an Amish schoolhouse  in Lancaster, Pa. and took ten young girls hostage.  As the police arrived he began shooting, and when all was said and done, five of the girls were dead.

            As the events from the school house began to emerge, amidst the great evil done was the witness of all-or-nothing faith and a community of believers who were willing to let Easter be their defining reality.   According to the survivors, even as her captor prepared to shoot them, a 13 year old hostage named Marian bravely stepped forward and asked to be shot first.

As one adult later remarked, she embraced the faith of her ancestors.  She witnessed to the fact that Easter and not the gunman was her ultimate reality.

Later as the community grieved   , they proclaimed their hope in the Easter reality, as they thanked God that in spite of their loss, that it was their children and not others who had been attacked, for their children were safe with Christ.   Then, they went to the home of the gunman, and forgave the gunman’s actions in the presence of his wife and family.   Such a witness

silenced the world.  Easter faith always does!  Because only those who live without the fear of death truly know what it is to live.

            This morning the Risen Christ stands outside the tomb in which the world always tries to re-encase him.  But the Risen Christ can’t be limited by our stones, our wisest arguments, or our disbelief.  He is Lord over heaven and earth, and has overcome death to transform our lives.

EASTER IS NO IDLE TALE, BUT AN ETERNAL TRUTH!  CHRIST IS RISEN!   RISEN INDEED!                              Pastor Clark Cary