“Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places?”
Luke 24:1-12
The women come early in the morning with the spices they have gotten ready for anointing Jesus’ dead body.
Why do they do this, do you suppose?
Why bother?
I suppose they are doing it for the same reasons we have viewings and funerals.
They are doing it for the same reason we take flowers to the grave of a loved one.
They are showing their respect and love for the dead.
They had been with Jesus and experienced His radical acceptance of them, His love for them and His teachings that had somehow changed their perspective on things.
And they loved Him for it, even though they didn’t quite understand what He was about.
And so, they didn’t want to forget.
They didn’t want to forget the One Who had brought such life to their lives, such hope, such meaning…albeit however short that time period was.
They didn’t want to forget the One Who had been so kind to them.
They wanted to show proper respect to the One Whom they had loved.
They were in mourning, and this is what we do when we are mourning.
We go to where the lifeless body lays, or where the ashes are kept…
…or to our memories of them.
And we go seeking.
We go hoping and wishing that when we speak to them, they will hear.
We go hoping and wishing that they will, perhaps, give us some kind of sign showing us that their lives have not really ended, that there is more, that they are really alive.
But all we find is a mossy gravestone and some earth.
When the women get to where Jesus was buried, the stone covering the entrance to the tomb has been rolled away, and they can’t find Jesus’ body.
Suddenly, two men in clothes that gleamed like lightening stand beside them and ask them a question that can be haunting: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
“Why do you look for life in a tomb?”
“Why do you seek comfort and hope in a graveyard?”
(pause)
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
This is a question that was addressed to the women who went looking for Jesus’ dead body some 2,000 years ago and it can well be a question we ask ourselves some 2,000 years later.
For isn’t it true that, in one way or another, we all go looking for the living, for life among the dead?
When I was young I wanted to be a rock-star.
I thought to myself, “Wow! Those guys have got it made.”
They have the fans, the women, the money, the power.
They rock and roll all night and they party every day.”
But what is it all for?
What is it all about?
What’s the purpose?
What do they accomplish?
What good do they do?
They become old or has-beens in just a few short years.
Yes, all that comes to an end…
…and hopefully they will have survived it.
But then, many of them spend the rest of their lives trying to relive that brief spot of time for the rest of their lives, playing the same hit song over and over and over again, night after night to smaller and smaller crowds until their lives come to an end.
It’s really not all that glamorous after-all is it?
It’s not such a wonderful way to live.
Actually, it is sad and destructive.
And many of these people end up being very depressed and addicted to a number of substances as their bodies and their fame fade away.
They’ve got some memories, and that’s all.
But even memories fade.
I sure wouldn’t want to be a rock star.
I thank the Lord I didn’t have the talent for that.
For that is NOT living at all!!!
It is death.
I remember, back in the 1980’s passing by a car that had the sticker on it: “The one who dies with the most toys wins.”
That had been the first time I’d heard or seen that.
And it was a sad thought to me.
That’s winning?
That’s what it is all about?
What is so great about that?
It’s all so fleeting.
It’s all so shallow and meaningless.
But, that is looking for the living among the dead, is it not?
And so many of us do just that.
We might think, “If I can only get that promotion at work, everything will finally be okay.
I can feel good about myself and buy the things I’ve always wanted.
I’ll have no more problems, I will have life.”
But even if that were to happen, we would still not be satisfied.
We would still not have found life.
We would still be flailing about in the darkness seeking but never finding, looking but never seeing.
One thing we humans are very good at is looking for life in all the wrong places, are we not?
Where do you seek life, salvation, shall we say?
Or where have you sought life and found yourself still wanting?
Some of us may seek life in our desires.
Others may seek life in power over others.
Some seek life in wealth and material things.
But it is all for naught.
There is a story about a very rich man who was told that he only had a short time left to live.
So, he called his wife to his bedside and gave her these final instructions:
“I want you to grab two large pillow cases and drive straight to the bank.
When you get to the bank I want you to have them fill those two pillow cases up with cash.
When you get home, go up in the attic and hang them from the ceiling.
After I die, I will grab them on my way to heaven.”
The man’s wife did what he requested.
Several months after his death, she was in the attic cleaning some things out when she came upon those two pillow cases.
They were still hanging exactly where she had left them and they were still filled with the dead man’s money.
“Snap!” said the man’s wife, “I knew I should have hung those in the basement!”
Where do you, where do I look for life?
If we spend our days looking for life in all the wrong places, we will never find it.
Remember the rich young ruler who came running up to Jesus asking Him: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
He was so eager.
He was so ready.
He was so excited.
Jesus said to him, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
Then come, follow me.”
We are told that when the young man heard this, “he became very sad, because he had great wealth.”
And so, he walked away from the Only One Who could give him what he had asked for, sad…but rich…
…seeking life, but choosing death instead.
Why is it so hard for us to give up the fleeting things of this world?
Why do we find it so horrendously impossible to make the decision to seek life among the living?
Jesus said, “with people it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.”
And the reason it is impossible, for us, in and of ourselves to choose life from the One Who is LIFE itself is because we are born with a sinful nature, we living blind in the darkness of this world, and we don’t naturally know anything different.
I was sharing that idea with a friend this past week.
I used a silly example from my childhood.
When I was a kid, as you now know, I thought rock stars had it made.
They had the life.
They had the groupies and the partying—they were living.
In any event, there came along a Christian rock group that got somewhat popular and I bought one of their records.
They were pretty good.
Their music had the same sound as the other bands I liked in the 80’s hair metal days.
They looked the same.
And I remember assuming that, although they sang Christian lyrics, they must have the same experience with groupies and partying as all the other bands I idolized.
And so, I had their album, but it was just one among all the others.
It wasn’t until after I had my born- again experience, that it dawned on me that these rockers were not like the others, could not be like the others off the stage.
If they were truly saved, they were new creations in Christ.
Something had sprung up inside them that was life and not death.
And that something is salvation by grace through faith in the Resurrected Christ.
And this faith is a gift of God.
It’s not something we can get or grasp on our own.
It is something we must accept as a gift.
It is something we must experience.
And it changes us in dramatic and radical ways.
It is how we find life.
And it is how we find the reason for which we were created.
And the journey of life out of death starts and is found there.
If we were to just go on with our lives without ever accepting that free gift from God, continuing to cling to this world rather than turning to Christ…
…we would just die in our sins with no forgiveness, no life, no salvation, no hope, just hell.
Jesus Christ came into this world to save us.
He died the death we deserve, for the wages of or payment for our sin is death.
Jesus rose from the dead because, as the only sinless victim of death—the only One Who never sinned, death has no hold on Him.
And through faith in Him, we too are raised to everlasting life.
And so, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the game changer.
It is the hinge of history.
It is the moment of reckoning.
It is the light in the darkness.
And it is a threat to any who would rather continue living as if the cross were the end of the story.
It is a threat to anyone who would rather save their lives than lose them for the sake of Christ.
In John Chapter 3 we are told: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come to the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”
Let’s ask ourselves this Easter morning: Where are we looking for life?
In the darkness of Satan’s death camp or in the light of Jesus’ Resurrection?
Satan is a liar and the Father of all lies.
And similar to the way he tempted Jesus with temporal and selfish desires over eternal and selfless love—he temps us as well.
And what he has to offer, can look very good and charming.
We can get so caught up in the moment of it, that we might say “The heck with eternity.
This wealth, this fame, this job, this lust, this whatever” is more important to me.
It’s worth the price, it’s worth taking the chance.
These few fleeting moments of pleasure are worth risking eternity in hell.
If we would only wake up the realization that this stuff already has the makings of hell.
We are never happy, at peace and satisfied with the stuff that the devil to sell to us as “Life.”
It’s all a lie.
It’s all smoke and mirrors.
We are only happy, we only find peace in Christ.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is ultimately a threat to anyone who would rather live as if the cross were the end of the story because the truth Easter is that once we walk up to that tomb and see it empty with the stone rolled back, we cannot go back to the way our lives were before.
We cannot go back to the world with the same eyes, the same worldview.
Once we have found the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field we can never be happy with the dung of Satan again.
Once we walk up to that tomb and see it empty and find out that we cannot look for the living among the dead, the clock starts running out on our former ways of life.
The knowledge of the Resurrection compels those of us who believe to walk the path of discipleship.
And that is when our new life has begun.
When Christ calls us, we must experience the call to give up our ties to this world.
As Bonhoeffer puts it: “This is the death of the old human being in the encounter with” the Risen Christ.
And it is, at the same time, the beginning of new life, real life, life everlasting found only in Jesus Christ and in Him alone.
It is the beginning of freedom and living, not for ourselves but for the sake of God and others.
It is the beginning of our experience of living with the love of God inside our hearts.
It is life found.
It is rejoicing.
It is then, and only then, that we can cry out, sing out, and praise God in Spirit and in Truth:
“Hallelujah!!! Christ the Lord has Risen.
He’s alive.
And because He lives, I live as well.”
Amen.
