Sunday, April 11, 2010

Reflection on Luke 24:1-12

I vividly remember an Easter dinner spent with some friends of the family. Just as we were settling ourselves around the kitchen table to chat while the meal cooked, the mother of the household came in quickly and declared to everyone the weatherman on the radio had just announced that there was going to be a huge, late snowfall. She said that the boys needed to go out to the barn and get the snow plow back onto the tractor ASAP. That announcement elicited a two second pause in the conversation, and then it resumed with the swift action of raised coffee cups to sipping mouths. No one did anything.

Just minutes later, the Father came storming into the house, announced the oncoming storm, and told the boys to get out into the barn and get the tractor ready. “I’m not going to let any of my guests get stuck here,” he stated authoritatively. And, immediately the boys were putting on their coats and were out the door. You can imagine the mother’s reaction. The mother’s jaw dropped to the floor as she stared at the father. Confused, the father replied, “What did I do?”

I am sorry, but women, is that not just how it goes. You say something and it is considered to be about as important as Groundhog’s Day, but a man says the same thing and it is like Jesus has risen from the dead! Well, you can take a little comfort from the fact that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women…yes these, the first evangelists in the world, were so important to the early church that they get to bear for eternity the name, “the other woman…” you can take a little comfort that no one believed them even when someone did rise from the dead.

Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women were the first evangelists and the first preachers in the world for the Christian church, and they never hesitated in that job. As soon as the two angels in dazzling clothes approached the women…well I suppose that they may not have been angels, the Bible does not say that, they may have been just a couple of lost choir members bumbling around… whoever they were, as soon as these lost choir members in their white robes told the women that Jesus was not dead, but had risen, they were off to share the good news…that no one believed.

Not only did the disciples not believe the women’s story and brush them off as insignificant, but they considered the whole story a bunch of manure. No, the original Greek Bible does not always use family friendly language, but that just proves the point even more of how utterly ridiculous the women’s story seemed. “People raised from the dead, yeah right! What a load of manure.” People raised from the dead is rediculous. Death is anything but.

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

“Death is a natural part of life.”

“We all labor against our own cure; for death is the cure of all disease.”

“Only death has the last word.”

In this world, the women’s words are crazy! They go against the very law of nature. Death is death. It is the end. After death, there is no more. Death is the one thing that we can count on. Anna Carter Florence, a biblical commentator, once shared the sentiment, "if the dead do not stay dead, what can you count on?"

What the women are saying is illogical.

“People do not raise from the dead. And, in any case, we did not see it. It cannot be true.”

The only logical response is unbelief. Therefore, we keep to what we already know to be true, death.

Wow, did you hear what I just said? Did it sound as bad out there as it did right here? “Therefore, we keep to what we already know to be true, death.” Wow, is there not something a little pathetic in that? It is a life of just getting by from one day to the next because we all know it will come to an end soon. It is a life of just living paycheck to paycheck. It is a life of just getting from one episode of American Idol to the next.

Wow, have we really resigned ourselves to death? Is it really healthy to keep Jesus in the tomb? Is it really healthy to live there in the tomb with him? Really? Is death really where we will find our answers? Is death really something to construct our lives upon?

The lost choir members in white have a question for us…alright, the angels in the tomb have a question for us, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

People’s lives are not changed by a monotonous lifestyle of living paycheck to paycheck. People’s lives do not flourish if death has the last word. Are you really certain that death has the last word? "Really? How can you be so sure?" Jesus’ resurrection forces us to reconsider these deep beliefs of our lives. Yes, death is real, but it is not the last word. In Jesus, life gets the last word.

What if? What if the women are not full of it? What if death is not the last word? What might a life that is not focused on death look like? What might a life with Jesus look like, if the women are right that is, and in Jesus life gets the last word? Would life have meaning? Would it build up rather than tear down?

I am not sure that I can tell you for certain, but is it not worth checking out anyway? Go ahead and run beside Peter, the one disciple who listened to the women…you can tell he was married, he actually listened to the women, smart man…go ahead and run with him, and find out what this life in Christ is about for ourselves? What could it hurt? Certainly, it cannot be worse than death. Why not seek life with Christ? Christ has already claimed you for life with him! What is there to lose?

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