Remembering the Tomb” Luke 24:1-12
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Garrett Vickrey" Easter Sunday" Woodland Baptist Church" 3.27.16 San Antonio, TX" “Remembering the Tomb” Luke 24:1-12 Easter is a day of flourish and them. 2 men suddenly appearing color. We celebrate with great in a graveyard would give most us pageantry. The organ booms, the a good scare. These 2 men trumpet blasts, and preachers like wouldn’t want to do that nowadays me let off a lot of hot air. But, the in Texas, this being an open carry gospel story we celebrate this day state. is a little different than this. Luke’s gospel begins with the Christmas The women were afraid and they story with all it’s ornamentations. fell to the ground, still perplexed at There’s music at the annunciation what was happening. And as they to Mary where she learns she is kneeled the men said, “Why do pregnant with the Christ, there’s you look for the living among the the magnificat, shepherds in the dead? He is not here, but has field, there’s animals cooing, and risen. REMEMBER HOW HE angels in glory proclaiming. But, in TOLD YOU, while he was still in the end, there’s emptiness. Galilee, that the Son of man will be Twenty-four chapters later the handed over, crucified, and on the music has stopped at an empty third day rise again.” Something tomb. Not much of a show. like a memory, more like a vision Besides 2 men in dazzling clothes came to them, and they knew what Broadway wouldn’t touch it. Some they did not know a minute before. followers of Jesus, women, who And they knew it as if they had had seen him crucified and buried, always known it. A door had been showed up to prepare the body for opened to a new world, that looked burial. They came at first light. It like the old with a new dimension was quiet. And they saw the stone to it. Everything was new that was rolled away. They didn’t know what old. Yet, the newness seemed to make of all this. They stood older still. Light was coming. Day there perplexed staring at an was here. And they knew nothing empty tomb. Suddenly two men would ever be the same again. were standing with them, which would have been alarming even Remember how he told you. had they not had light gleaming off Remember. You have heard this !1 before; but, this is new. And this belief it is about faith. And faith is becomes the message they more than belief. It is a way; a receive that first Easter morning posture of life bent toward God. So (one they already knew deep in perhaps if we are faithful to the their bones, but had forgotten): resurrection than we might bend God is the Lord of life and death. our life toward it… toward the new The son of man, the Human One day it brings. But, to do that we (the One who is always for us), he must be open to God… like the holds the keys to the tomb. And if tomb that day. Remember, the Jesus holds those keys, what do tomb was not just empty it was you think he will do with them? open. God isn’t looking for us to be perfect; he’s looking for us to be At the empty tomb that morning open. the women remembered what they had forgotten. Now, they had to A friend of mine told me yesterday help everyone else remember. And she asked her 4 year-old daughter that’s where things get tricky. how Jesus’ friends must have felt on Saturday with him gone, their What will we remember today? Will hopes dashed. And the daughter we remember resurrection as an responds, “Yeah, but the Easter idle tale overly optimistic Christians Bunny was coming the next day.” tell each other to make it through the day? Or could we too The first witnesses to the remember Jesus’ words to us and resurrection weren’t even deemed find strength today in the worthy to be real witnesses. In that faithfulness of God. A faithfulness day, these women could not even shown throughout scripture. And claim the body. They had to watch then maybe resurrection could from a distance as Joseph of become for us a mystery to pattern Arimathea took it and laid it in a our life around. So that we no tomb. Their word was worth longer think of it as some idle nothing; and it meant nothing to story, but the foundation of our the apostles, who thought their tale own story. was idle. Yet, these women are not just treated as messengers or The question this day is not simply, secretaries for the apostles by the ‘Do we believe in the resurrection?’ two men at the tomb. They remind The way of Jesus was never about the women of what Christ had !2 taught them. The women here are course, ‘We can get a great treated as disciples in and of minister at a discount and we can themselves and are not told to go sell the church on a woman as tell the disciples. pastor with the bonus of paying her less’). 2000 years later women are still undervalued by followers of Jesus. The women were not the only less Most churches don’t ordain than ideal characters God uses as women. Most will not elect them as the first witnesses of resurrection. deacons. Most are content to let An even earlier report we have of them be directors and volunteers the resurrection coming from the who essentially run the church bible (in 1 Corinthians 15) comes while men in positions of so-called to us from St. Paul, the murderer. power take the credit for building Before his conversion to churches. The resurrection of Christianity Paul was the man who Jesus turns these power dynamics held the coats of the men who on its head. It is the women who stoned the first Christian martyr, preach the first Easter sermon. It is Stephen. He terrorized Christian the women who become the first communities by hunting them witnesses of the resurrection. It is down. Can you imagine the early the women who lead us from the church’s surprise when Paul empty tomb and begin to put the showed up for bible study claiming pieces of Christ’s church together. to have had an experience of It’s 2016 this shouldn’t need to be meeting the risen Christ? Bill said, gender equality is critical to Leonard, compared this to a jihadi the future of God’s church. Women terrorist coming to Wednesday are held in equal esteem in other night dinner and saying he wants institutions; it’s embarrassing that to be your pastor. the church is falling behind instead of leading the way. Christ calls us The tomb is empty; what is all disciples— men and women. impossible for mortals is possible Does the San Antonio Baptist for God. Women are preaching. Association practice this? Does the And terrorists like Paul get a BGCT? Do we? Do CBF search second chance. The great baptist committees and churches who hire preacher Carlyle Marney once said women as ministers and pay them of Judas: “The biggest sin of Judas less than men? (Thinking of was not that he betrayed Jesus. !3 Who hasn’t betrayed Jesus? The live on in us long after they are biggest sin of Judas was that he gone.” didn’t stay around long enough to see what God can do with When we say that we are sisters betrayers.” Paul is proof of that. and brothers in Christ. It is this And by the way, so are we. kind of living memory that enlivens us in the midst of all the death and Downton Abbey ended earlier this amnesia that surrounds us. We month. This show that centered remember what happened: that around a noble family in England Christ died an innocent man; and at the beginning of the twentieth was raised to newness of life. That century aired it’s finale. For six memory lives in us now. It is a seasons we watched two sisters in memory that fades on days when it the family Mary and Edith snipping seems too good to have been true. at each other, backbiting, But, nonetheless this memory, this betraying, and plotting. Their resurrection is the power behind youngest sister Sybil died early on life now. in the series. Mostly, their fights were Mary saying and doing The Harvard preacher Peter terrible things to Edith. Towards Gomes says it like this, “The the end, in the last few episodes, evidence of Easter is a they began to change towards reconfigured Easter people, people each other. Mary was contrite who are no longer afraid of the about how she had treated Edith. dark, people who dare to live by And she was surprised when Edith their affections and not by their forgave her. Mary even asked how fears, people who know that they is it possible that she could forgive need not die in order to truly her for being so terrible to her for experience resurrection living, . years. Edith said, “You are my people who fear neither death nor sister. And one day only we will life. In short, people such as remember Sybil... or Mama or you and me who aspire to be Papa or Matthew or Michael or people like that.