Why Seek the Living Among the Dead?”

“Why Seek the Living Among the Dead?”

A sermon delivered by Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell at Myers Park Baptist Church on March 27, 2016 Easter Sunday 2016 from Luke 24:1-12

There once was a Presbyterian, a Methodist, and a Baptist who died on the same day and found themselves at the pearly gates. St. Peter said they could enter heaven if they could answer one question: “What is the story of Easter?” The Presbyterian replied, “Oh, that's easy! Easter is the holiday in November when everyone gets together, eats turkey, and is thankful.” “Wrong,” St. Peter replied. So the Methodist said, “I know, Easter is the holiday in December when we put up a tree, exchange gifts, and celebrate the birth of Jesus.” “Wrong,” St. Peter replied and turned to the Baptist and asked, “Well, do you know the story of Easter?” The Baptist smiled and said, “Of course. Easter is the Christian holiday that coincides with the Jewish celebration of Passover. Jesus and his disciples were eating at the last supper together when the Romans took him to be crucified. He was made to wear a crown of thorns, hung on a cross, stabbed in the side, left there to die, and was buried in a nearby cave, which was sealed off by a large boulder, and every Easter it is rolled away so Jesus can come out.” St. Peter said, “That’s right!” Then the Baptist said; “Yes, and if he sees his shadow and goes back in, there will be six more weeks of winter.”

Faith in the resurrection has gone out of style among mainline Christians in America today. Recent polls suggest that belief in the resurrection has steadily declined in the last 20 years. By some estimates less than 50% of mainline Christians now believe that Jesus was resurrected, and even less than that—around 25%—believe that they will be resurrected when they die. There are all sorts of reasons for this decline. Advances in our knowledge and understanding of science and technology, physics, and modern medicine have made it harder for good rational people to believe that someone was raised from the dead. For modern people, the resurrection of Jesus seems like complete nonsense. This has led Christian scholars and theologians to wrestle with the resurrection and offer us many different ways to approach the story of Easter. Some have said the resurrection is just a myth that needs to be demythologized. Others have said it is merely a memory that brought Jesus back to life in the minds of his disciples. Still others have said it is simply a metaphor for hope and new life.

Myth, memory, and metaphor—the resurrection is all of those things. But what if it is also something more? I must admit that personally, it is difficult for me to believe in the resurrection. As an academic-type, I struggle to accept the idea that God raised someone from the dead, but then I am reminded of the story of the disciples. They were fearful people, just like us. On Thursday and Friday, when Jesus was arrested and the disciples were confronted by the conspiracy of the Sanhedrin and the violent political power of the Roman Empire, they cowered in fear. Because of their fear they betrayed Jesus, denied Jesus, and abandoned Jesus to die alone. Even though they had marched with Jesus into the city of Jerusalem fearlessly proclaiming the peace that he was going to bring, when it became a matter of life and death, their fear became paralyzing and they ran away. Why wouldn’t they be afraid? Roman executions were specifically designed to instill terror in their subjects, and they were extremely effective.

But then something incredible happened. Those same fearful and cowardly disciples who had betrayed, denied, and abandoned Jesus—and who were now huddled together in a room hiding from the authorities—eventually came out from hiding and walked back out into the world. Many of those same cowardly disciples would go on to stand up to the violent power of Rome, proclaim a new reality, risk their lives, and die for the very man they once abandoned in fear. Their faith propelled the spread of Christianity throughout the world, and if they hadn’t overcome their fear, we wouldn’t be here today. Something extraordinary happened to those fainthearted disciples that transformed them into brave and courageous

2 martyrs. That transformative event was the resurrection. The question we have to ask ourselves is, “Do we believe that the disciples would have been willing to die for a myth, a memory, or a metaphor? Would we?”

The women, who came to the tomb at dawn on Sunday morning with spices prepared for Jesus’ body, were the first disciples to take an incredible risk with their lives. Associating themselves with a rabble-rousing would-be Messiah was extremely dangerous. But to go to the tomb to offer Jesus a proper Jewish burial was not just an observant outpouring of love—it was a perilous act. Jesus had been executed for treason, and these women could have easily been arrested by the Roman soldiers who were guarding the tomb, or suffered an even worse fate. Yet they went anyway as a brave group of women—with strength in numbers. The gospel of Luke tells us that there were at least five of them—three are named, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. But there were an untold number of other women who came along with them. Maybe they thought they needed to have enough women to roll away the stone for themselves and protect each other from what might await them at the tomb.

They were well prepared for a confrontation with any kind of human force, but they were not prepared to find the stone already rolled away, the tomb empty, and two strange men in dazzling clothes. 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.” The question the angels posed to those brave and faithful women still haunts us today. Why do we look for the living among the dead? Why do we look for life among the things of this world that are passing away? Why do we allow ourselves to be seduced by the dead things of this world—money, power, security, possessions, and success? Why do we look for life among things that that are here today and gone tomorrow? Why do we look for life among the dead? The answer is actually quite simple—it’s safe. As author Sara Miles says, “Even the most liberal Christians would prefer to follow a dead religion rather than a living God.”

One day at a conference, the famous Methodist preacher Will Willimon and the famous Jesus Seminar scholar Marcus Borg found themselves in a heated conversation about the resurrection. Borg asked Willimon, “Why do you need a supernaturally resurrected body of Jesus to make your faith work?” And Will responded, “Marcus, I don’t need a resurrected Jesus. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I even want a resurrected Jesus. In fact, if I got one, it would be a real nuisance for me, personally. I’ve got a good life. I’ve figured out how to work the world, on the whole, to the advantage of me and my friends and family. My health is good, everybody close to me is doing fine. I have the illusion that I’m in control, that I am making such a significant contribution to help Jesus that I may be eternal on my own. No, I don’t need a bodily resurrected Jesus. In fact, if I ever got one, I’d be more terrified than the women were at the first Easter because my life would only become much more difficult.”

What I think Willimon was trying to say was that our tendency to reduce the resurrection to a myth, a memory, or a metaphor, as privileged mainline Christians, is often a result of our social location. We just don't find that tendency among the poor or communities of color, and that’s because they need the resurrection to be more than a myth, a memory, or a metaphor. They need it to be real. When your community can’t escape the cycle of violence and victimization, when your family and friends are dying from lack of health care, when the bills exceeds your monthly income, and when you’ve got suffering and death at your doorstep you need more than a metaphor—you need the resurrection to be real. If resurrection is real then death is not the end. If God has the power to raise people to new life, then we don’t have to be afraid of death anymore. Resurrection means we can face the reality of death, like the disciples who came out from hiding, walked back out into the world, and opposed a brutal empire when they realized the grave had been conquered once and for all.

In our comfortable Western first-world context, we often tend to see the resurrection as a nice ending to the story. But we might learn something about the power of the empty tomb from those whose lives are not so comfortable. We might learn something from those who need to believe that the stone was rolled away and who need to believe that the tomb was empty—who need to believe that Christ has claimed victory

3 over the powers of violence, evil, injustice, and a world full of dead-end possibilities—many of which keep our first-world lifestyle secure while the rest of the world suffers under the weight of oppression. For those who are less wed to the world the way it is, the resurrection is no myth, or memory, or metaphor—it is good news, the sign of a new age, and a threat to anyone who wants to continue living as if the cross and the grave are the end of the story. The powerful are the ones in the story want Jesus to remain dead because then everything stays the same. A dead Jesus changes nothing. He makes no claims on our lives, but a risen Jesus—that changes everything!

In his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone tells the story of Mamie Bradley. She suffered with deep grief when her fourteen year old boy, Emmit Till, was lynched in Mississippi for defying the rules of white culture and flirting with a white woman on August 28, 1955. The loss of her son’s life was so egregious, so unjust, and so unnecessary that her agony was unfathomable. In the anguish of her spirit, she railed at God saying, “Why would God let this happen?” But then one night Mrs. Bradley had a strange experience. A voice came to her and said, “Mamie you should be grateful to be the mother of a boy who died blamelessly like Christ. Your son Emmit will never be forgotten and now there is a job for you to do.” For Mrs. Bradley, that voice she heard that night was the voice of the resurrected Jesus. It spoke of hope that, although white supremacists had killed her son, they could not deprive his life and death of an ultimate meaning. As in the resurrection of the crucified one, God could transmute defeat into triumph, ugliness into beauty, despair into hope, and the cross into resurrection.

Reflecting on Mrs. Bradley’s faith, James Cone says, “Suffering always poses the deepest test of faith, radically challenging its authenticity and meaning. No rational explanation can soothe the pain of an aching heart and troubled mind. In the face of the lynching death of an innocent child, black Christians reached into the depth of their religious imagination for a transcendent meaning that could take them through despair to hope—and that was the power of the resurrection.” Because of his mother’s faith, the horrible death of Emmit Till helped give birth to the Civil Rights movement. Two months after his death, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and a 27-year-old preacher named Martin King came to lead a boycott that changed America forever. The leaders of the Civil Rights movement faced down dogs, police, water cannons, guns, bombs, and entire cities of hostility where there seemed to be no safe way forward. They risked their lives and gave their lives, because they believed that death had been defeated— they believed in the power of the resurrection.

Do we really think that they would have risked their lives if they believed that the resurrection was just a myth, a memory, or a metaphor? We could ask the same question about the Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel, who suffered 30 years of catastrophic political violence in her country under the rule of dictators who savagely murdered thousands of indigenous people. Where others gave up hope or took up arms in resistance, Julia searched for a path toward peace and emerged as a voice for nonviolent resistance by using her pen to tell the world about the immense suffering of her people. Her bravery and faith is beautifully captured in a poem she wrote, “They have threatened us with resurrection.”

She said, “There is something here within us which doesn’t let us sleep, which doesn’t let us rest, which doesn’t stop pounding deep inside…what keeps us from sleeping is that they have threatened us with resurrection! At each nightfall, though exhausted from the endless inventory of killings since 1954, we continue to love life, and we do not accept their death! In this marathon of Hope, there are always others to relieve us in bearing the courage necessary to arrive at the goal, which lies beyond death. So join us then, on this vigil, and you will know what it is to dream! You will then know how marvelous it is to live threatened with resurrection! To dream awake, to keep watch asleep, to live while dying, and to know ourselves already resurrected!”

Why do we seek the living among the dead? Why do we seek to reduce the resurrection to a myth, a memory, or a metaphor? Is it because our lives have become so safe, so comfortable, so privileged, and so far from the suffering and death of the world that we don’t feel the desperate need to believe in the

4 resurrection? Is it because we prefer a dead religion to a living God? Is it because we are afraid that if we truly believe in the resurrection that our lives would have to change? The truth is all people need the resurrection, because all of us are afraid, all of us face death, and all of us are looking for life among the dead. But there are many different ways to respond to the resurrection. In fact, there were three different responses on that very first Easter. The women chose to act on what they’d seen and heard, but the other disciples choose not to believe the words of the women. Peter chose to run to the empty tomb. But even he didn’t believe or tell anyone what he saw. Instead, Peter simply left the tomb and went home amazed.

Easter is an amazing day and the resurrection is an unbelievable event. But if there is anything we can take from the story of the empty tomb in Luke, it is that God is hoping for a lot more from us than disbelief and amazement. Easter is God’s clearest statement that the world has changed and those who follow in the pathway of Jesus are called to live a different life. Peter and the disciples are witnesses who teach us that it is not enough for us to leave here today amazed. We must move beyond amazement to action. Almost as remarkable as the fact that the tomb was empty on Easter morning is the responsibility that God places in the hands of those who discover it so. It was a handful of women who were first entrusted with the story of God’s triumph over the power of fear and death. At first they were afraid, but through the power of remembering Jesus’ words, the women were able to move from terror to faith, from silence to speech, and from powerlessness to action.

How would our lives have to change if we believed that the resurrection was more than a myth, a memory, or a metaphor? What action would be required? It would require us to put away all our fears, to stop looking for life among the dead things of this world, and to start courageously living like death no longer holds power over our lives. It would mean bravely risking our lives for something greater than ourselves— giving our lives to make the world more like the kingdom of God. And why wouldn’t we risk it all? What is there to fear? Fear is dead, because Christ is alive, and as the great poet Dylan Thomas said, that means “death has no dominion.” Jesus was resurrected and now death has no dominion over us, which is why somewhere in Mississippi, somewhere in Guatemala, and somewhere in a poor neighborhood in Charlotte this morning people are singing, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Why aren’t they scared? Why aren’t they hiding? Why are they singing? They are singing for the same reason we are singing, because they know Friday is not the last day of the week—the cross is not the end of the road—Sunday came—the tomb was empty—Jesus was raised from the dead—the grave has been defeated—God has triumphed over the power of fear and death—and that means that we can too. Alleluia! Christ is risen! Amen.