April 11, 2004 — Easter Sunday
Christ Lutheran Church, Columbia, MD
Pastor Jeff Samelson
Luke 24:5
“Why Do You Look for the Living among the Dead?”
I. You Have a Risen Lord
II. You Have a Reason for Believing
III. You Have a Reason for Living
Grace and peace be with you, from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen.
Dear Friends of our Living and Resurrected Lord:
I imagine many of you have heard the old joke — or at least some version of it — about the man who’s walking along the street one night and comes across one of the neighborhood children inching along on his hands and knees down on the sidewalk beneath a streetlight. The man asks the boy, “What’s wrong, Jimmy? Did you lose something?”
“Mmf, mmf, yes,” whimpers Jimmy. “I dropped the dollar Mama gave me for ice cream.”
Feeling sorry for the boy, the man gets down on his hands and knees, too, and starts looking. After a few minutes, he says, “I’m sorry, Jimmy, but I don’t see your dollar anywhere. Are you sure this is where you lost it?”
“No,” the boy says. “I dropped it over there by the vacant lot.”
“What?!” the man exclaims. “If you dropped it way over there, why are you looking for it here?”
Jimmy looks at him, then points. “It’s dark over there! I can see a lot better here.”
Little Jimmy was never going to find his dollar if he kept looking in the wrong place, no matter how long or hard he looked or how sincerely he expected to find it there.
I. Just as the women on Easter morning were never going to find Jesus if they kept looking in the wrong place, no matter how long or hard they looked or how sincerely they expected to find him there. They were looking for their Lord in a tomb, and the angels were there to redirect the women’s search. The ladies, and all of Jesus’ followers, needed to understand that if they were expecting to find their Savior still lying in a tomb, they were dead wrong. In their grief they had forgotten what Jesus said would happen when he died, and so, to remind — and gently rebuke them — the angels asked: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
Another way they might have made the same point would have been to ask, “Why are you carrying that?” You see, the women had not had enough time to properly prepare Jesus’ body for burial on Good Friday, so they had purchased spices with which to finish the task once the Sabbath was over. So, early on Sunday morning, the women got up and, carrying the spices they had purchased, set out for the tomb. Now you have to realize that these spices would have been packed in the burial cloths, not just sprinkled lightly over the corpse. And we’re not talking about a little bottle of McCormick’s dried oregano, either — these spices must have been heavy. The women were carrying a real burden — which makes their worry about who would move the stone away from the tomb once they got there even more understandable.
But in reality, the burden they were carrying was much heavier than a load of spices that turned out to be totally unnecessary. The women were weighed down with needless grief and needless worry about things they should have trusted God to take care of. They were living as though Jesus were still dead. And so, since they had an already risen Lord, the angels asked them, “Why?”
I sometimes think it might be helpful to have an angel or two pop up in front of me once in a while and ask me the same kinds of questions. How about you? Would these reminders and gentle rebukes help you? — “Hey, why are you living as though your Savior were still dead?” “Why are you still carrying that?”
Because, you know, we do still often live as though Jesus were still in his tomb, and we do still carry burdens that we should have put down or put on Jesus’ shoulders a long time ago. We forget — or fail to trust — that Jesus finished the entire work of our salvation, and we say or think things like, “Well, yeah, Jesus died for my sins — but now it’s up to me to live a life good enough to get into heaven.” That’s thinking as though Jesus is still dead.
Or, like the women that morning, we struggle under heavy burdens and worry about things as though God expected us to handle everything on our own — as though God won’t, or can’t, work all things out for the good of those who love him. We freak out over crime or terrorism too close to home, or we limit our families and overwork our jobs, not truly trusting that when God says he’ll take care of us no matter what that he means he’ll take care of us no matter what. That’s living as though Jesus is still in the grave.
But Jesus is not still dead. His grave is empty — there’s no reason to be looking for him there. And that’s why the angels’ question is such a good reminder to us — and a healthy rebuke when our faith needs to be directed once again to God’s promises. Let’s not live as though Jesus were dead; we have a risen Lord.
II. Some weeks ago I came across an interesting story about Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, and an evangelist in his own right. He’d been asked to participate in one of these panel discussions about Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ”, and the topic they were particularly concerned with was “Who killed Jesus?” Some of the panelists were concerned that the movie would incite anti-Semitism if it made it look like the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death. I think others said, no, the movie makes the Romans come off as the bad guys, not the Jews.
But eventually someone made the point that Gibson had answered the question quite clearly, both in his statements about the movie, and in the movie itself — you can’t blame just the Jews and you can’t blame just the Romans — it’s everyone’s fault, yours and mine. Since Jesus suffered and died for our sins, we are the ones responsible for his death.
There was apparently more discussion on that point, but finally Graham felt compelled to point out the futility and meaninglessness of the whole debate. Basically, what he said was, “Hey — what does it really matter? Why are you making such a big deal out of who killed Jesus? He’s not dead!”
You see, many “scholars”, “experts”, and skeptics argue as though there’s a body in the morgue someplace whose murderer needs to be found, but the truth is that with their arguments they’re behaving more like detectives who refuse to drop a murder investigation even when the supposed victim stands before them and asks them to. There’s reliable evidence that renders all their blame-pinning pointless, but they decline to accept it. They look for the dead among the living.
They should know better. We all should know better, just as the women at the tomb should have known better. Looking for Jesus among the dead on the third day was kind of like looking for an ice cube in a furnace or a submarine in a Kansas cornfield. The tomb was not where he was supposed to be — God had said so, and what God says can be believed.
That’s what the angels reminded them of after asking them why they were looking in the wrong place for Jesus —
“He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again’” (Luke 24:6,7).
When Jesus said that, it wasn’t just a prophecy — it was a promise. But the women had forgotten it — or had they simply not trusted it? Jesus had predicted his betrayal, his suffering, his death, and resurrection — but they — his disciples, his friends, his followers — hadn’t wanted to hear anything about him dying, so they hadn’t paid enough attention to the part about him living again. Now they were reminded that they had a reason for believing what the angels were telling them about Jesus’ being alive — Christ had promised.
And when God makes a promise, he keeps it. That’s the whole point of the resurrection — not just that God had said Jesus would rise from the dead, but that his rising from the dead guarantees our resurrection. That’s our reason for believing — because our loving Lord has promised eternal life in heaven to all who put their faith in him for their salvation, and Christ’s resurrection proves not only that he’s serious about saving us, but that he can and will and does deliver on his promises.
So you don’t have to worry about whether or not you’re going to heaven. Really, you don’t — because you have God’s Word on it that you are when you trust in Christ. And you don’t have to grieve and mourn without hope, the way unbelievers do, when a loved one dies, who shares that same faith in Christ, because you have God’s promise that you will be reunited in heaven. You may lay him or her in a cemetery today, but that’s not where you’ll find a fellow believer when your end or the end comes — there is no point in looking for the living among the dead. That’s not to say there will never be any grief — after all, even Jesus cried when his friend Lazarus died. Grief is real, but the point of the resurrection is that it’s temporary — it doesn’t last. God has promised his children eternal life and joy in heaven, and he’s guaranteed it with an empty tomb.
That’s why we Christians can’t talk about Christ’s suffering and death without also talking about his resurrection. They have to go together. We need to see Jesus living again after he’s been dead. And because we do, we have more than enough reason for trusting in Christ — God keeps his Word.
III. Even when we don’t. Your boss ever catch you at your desk when you should have been out on a call, or in the back room when you should have been working out on the floor? He knows where you’re supposed to be; you know where you’re supposed to be; and when he asks you, “Hey, uh, what are you doing here?” you really don’t have an answer.
About nine hundred years before Jesus died and rose again, the prophet Elijah found himself in a similar fix. He’d become discouraged with his work and was afraid for his life, so he ran off to the desert, hid in a cave, and waited to die. The Lord found him there and asked him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9). His question contained a reminder for the prophet. He was saying, “Hey, Elijah, you are a prophet of God — you have a job to do. What are you doing here in a cave in the middle of the wilderness, waiting to die?”
The angels’ question to the women contained the same kind of reminder. “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? — What are you doing here? You have important other things to be doing.” Talk about news that turns your life upside-down and all around! When the women headed out to the tomb that morning, they were full of sadness and despair. They were probably almost numb with grief, and wondered what point there was in going on when their hopes of salvation had been so severely crushed. But everything changed instantaneously and irrevocably when they heard the angels’ words and saw the empty tomb — suddenly, their pointless lives had a purpose — they had a reason for living. They got the message the angels were sending — that they had a living Savior, and therefore they didn’t want to be standing around keeping this all-important news to themselves. Luke tells us that the women left the tomb, went back into the city, and told the Eleven disciples everything. Like the shepherds in the hills outside Bethlehem thirty-some years earlier, they spread the news concerning what they had seen and heard.
That’s what they did with their good news. Christ’s resurrection had given them a reason for living. What about you? What are you doing here? What difference is the news of Jesus’ resurrection going to make in your life? Or are you going to ignore the reality that’s staring you in the face and keep on looking for the living among the dead?
You see, what happened on that first Easter morning does give each and every one of us a reason for living. Everything changes when we first grasp the meaning of that empty tomb — we don’t want to go on living the way we used to, and we don’t want to keep this tremendous good news to ourselves, because there are so many spiritually dead people out there in the world and in our lives who need to hear the message of life — to know that they have a living Savior. We know that our Redeemer lives; we want everyone else to know that, too, because it makes all the difference.
It’s sad to say — it’s a real shame — that there are so many “Christians” for whom it doesn’t make a difference — or, at least, not much of one. I’m reminded of so many of the great, big, beautiful churches of Europe, and elsewhere, that are like Easter eggs that are all shell and no egg. They’re beautiful on the outside, but there’s no life in them. They’re museums, or mausoleums — and many who visit them end up finding death where they should be seeing life.
We don’t want our church to be like that, do we? We want to be a place where people find the living Christ, and find people with living faith worshipping, loving, and serving among and with and beside other people with that same living faith.
And where the rubber of the resurrection really meets the road — your life as an individual believer — what difference does it make that you have a living Savior? Think about the change it made in the lives of those women. They were excited, to put it mildly — they ran to tell the disciples the good news. And you can be sure that from that point on their attitude toward death was completely different — because they now had proof of life after death. They were bold. They were confident. They were hopeful. And they were full of joy!
That can be you, too! Your life is different because Jesus lives — your life now, not just what happens after your death. You have a new and happy reason for everything you do — your job, your schoolwork, your play, your conversation, your health, your everything. You live because Christ lives, and you live for him — to thank him with your worship and service — and you live for the spiritually dead in your life — to tell them, to give them hope, and let them know that they have a living and loving Lord who saved them from their sins. It’s true — because Jesus rose, you have a reason for living.
And so, you see, you have all these things. You have a risen Lord, a reason for believing, and every reason for living. And you have no reason to look for the living among the dead. Amen.
This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Christ is risen; he is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.
