"What Is Killing You?" Easter Sunday April 8, 2007

(First, read the text for this sermon: Luke 23:54 – 24:12)

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” That’s the question two mysterious men ask the women at the grave site of Jesus, in this morning’s story from Luke. The men who had followed Jesus are in hiding, huddled in fear. The women have remained faithful to Jesus. According to this gospel writer, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and…other women have come to Jesus’ tomb, to do the work that women did, when a loved one died. They have come to anoint Jesus’ body.

Think of what these women have been through. What shape do you think they’re in, emotionally, here on the first day of the week, at early dawn? By now, Jesus had been dead for two days. The women have not been able to tend to his body! According to this version of the story, a Jewish leader named Joseph, from a village named Arimathea, had taken Jesus’ body off the cross and laid it in a tomb, and he had done that hurriedly because the sun was going down and the sabbath was beginning. The women followed and they saw where the tomb was. But on the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

Do you think it was an easy time of rest for them? You know how, when you’re feeling especially anxious, you like to keep as busy as you can? You know how, when you just sit around, your anxiety builds and builds? Then you know what shape the women are in, emotionally, as this morning’s story begins!

Oftentimes, in ancient Middle East burial gardens, the entrances to tombs were covered by large stones. The stones were inserted into slots, so they could be rolled aside. In the story we read this Easter morning, when the women approach the tomb, the sun barely up in the sky, they find that the stone has been rolled to the side! The tomb is open! And not only that: the tomb is empty! Jesus’ body is gone!

The gospel story teller describes the women as “perplexed” about all of this (which is the understatement of the ages). And it gets worse. [S]uddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 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.” Or, as Eugene Peterson has the two men saying in his paraphrase of the story: “Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery?” As if: “Duh!”

But, of course, this is anything but expected. What’s expected, what’s assumed, is that death has won. The women, after all, had seen Jesus, dead, on the cross. They had seen Jesus, dead, put into the tomb. To all appearances, it is obvious that death has won.

* * *

What is killing you? What is death, in your life?

Is it literal: an illness you are fighting? Perhaps you are mourning over a loved one who has died? It could be the death of a relationship that’s causing you to struggle, mightily.

Or is it something more metaphorical? For instance, is it the burden of maintaining possessions that is killing you? Do you find yourself putting so much time and effort and worry into maintaining material things, that the anxiety kills joy?

A need to be in control all the time has a killing effect on some people. There is little joy when a person’s best effort and energy is spent trying to maintain order!

What has killed much joy in me over the years have been the expectations I lay on myself – for my own performance. What anxiety that causes! What fatigue and over-seriousness. In recent months, though, I have not been allowing those self-imposed expectations to kill me emotionally, since I nearly literally died this past fall! I’m much better able, now, to avoid worrying about the stupid little things that we spend so much time worrying about – that aren’t important!

The Easter gospel is that God intervenes into death, with life! The Easter gospel calls you and me to repent – that is, to turn away from what makes for death, and to turn towards God, who gives life! To use the baptismal imagery that we explored during these past Wednesday nights in Lent, the Easter gospel calls us to die to whatever it is that is killing us – so that you and I can live as the joyful, liberated, sparkling human beings that God created us to be! To live as Easter people!

* * *

Look at what happens with the women in this morning’s story from Luke. [The two mysterious] men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not 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, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Now, here’s the important part: Then [the women] remembered [Jesus’] words. Here, God creates faith in them! The Easter gospel now becomes the motivating force for the women! It restores their joy and excitement! Then they remembered [Jesus’] words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.

In the story, the women die to their hopeless assumption that death has won, in what has happened to Jesus. And now, God is able to raise them up to life, as God created human life to be – Easter life, full of delight and grace, forgiveness and love!

And so it happens with us. First we follow on the way of the cross. We die to whatever it is that is killing us. God the Holy Spirit works within us, to turn us away from it. And then God raises us up out of that muck. And there is salvation!

In the Bible, salvation shows itself when peace ends war, when food follows famine, when health supplants sickness, when freedom trumps oppression.[1] In our lives, God reveals salvation when God breaks through what is killing us so that we rejoice to receive each day, because each day is a gift of God’s grace. How joyful it is to receive all we have – each day, each breath – as a gift from God! How that entirely re-orients our assumptions!

What Good News the Easter gospel brings to us! Death does not win! Christ is risen! Alleluia!

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.


Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), page 226.