Idle Tale
Luke 24:1-12
April 4, 2010
On this day, in particular, in this multi-cultural and multi-conflicted nation and world, we should remember that we are a People of the Book. Along with Islam and Judaism, we hold central to our faith and way of faithful living a book that we read and listen to and expound upon as Holy Scripture. For all three of us it is not precisely the same book, yet there are parts that are the same and parts that are completely and radically different, yet we cover much the same territory and same personalities. Throughout all these scriptures, we spend most of our time reading and interpreting stories.
We have become experts at listening to stories. There are critics of movies, TV, music, theatre, art in every newspaper, but we are the critics of stories. A good story has to be perfect, every detail correct and believable, or else we suspect the entire story is suspect. We have trouble with stories that do not fit and are like a murder mystery that does not add up.
Today’s story cannot be accused of not adding up, being insufficient in funds and facts and logic, but just the opposite, for it is superabundant, overflowing, flooding and saturating our minds and spirits beyond the limit of our capacities. Those who are critical imply that there is too little here to believe, but that is why we have trouble with Easter: it is too much, too overwhelming for us to believe. Our minds and spirits can only absorb so much, so let us absorb a few more drops today.
It is hard to imagine with all of our retrospect, how little anybody expected what was going to happen. They assumed, logically and devastatingly, that everything they had been part of and hoped for had been emptied out. All they had left was routine and tradition; in fact, they were expected to follow the rules, even now. The three Galilean women had followed at a safe distance to see where Jesus’ tomb was and what kind. Did anyone else think of doing this, did they raise their hands to volunteer, or as happens to many of us in stressful times, someone says, “somebody’s got to do it, and I guess that will be me.” They went home and prepared the spices and ointments that Jews often would place upon the corpse, so that it would not smell badly, for a while, that is. They had to do all of this in a hurry because sunset would have been around 6:00 p.m. and after that the Sabbath would begin - and according to the commandment, the rules, all work should cease, for God rested on the seventh day.
Saturday was a day nothing happened. There is no mention of it in any of the Gospels, although the Bible seldom feels obliged to record every last day. Is there anyone here who has not had one of those empty days that is full of anxiety for what has happened and what is about to happen? There are those days that we are not allowed to do anything except wait, and waiting without doing anything is almost a form of death.
So the three women got themselves up real early when it was barely getting light and found their way back out to the tomb. Nobody says much, but considering how it had all happened, it just couldn’t have been that safe to be seen ministering to the body of a executed criminal, someone convicted of sedition against the Roman government.
Nobody said much, but once they arrived a big obstacle to their task had been rolled away, that huge stone, so they went right in and found nothing. They all look alike in the dark, did we go into the wrong one? They were perplexed - a good persnickety word implying that for a few seconds only they didn’t know what to think.
But they were in the right place, although having two men standing next to them in dazzling apparel is a harsh way of proving it. Two of these weren’t standing around in the wrong tomb. They did have something to say, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Who are these guys? We need more of them standing around in all sorts of deadly places today to remind us we have misplaced ourselves. Isn’t it the truth that we keep deluding ourselves into thinking that life can somehow be found in places full of death?
Then, these two guys do what should have killed the rest of the conversation: they begin a short Bible study. Isn’t that one of the more dynamic things about the church, to sit around and discuss the Bible? Who wants to discuss the Bible today amidst our great hymns and shouts of Hosanna, trumpets blaring, and magnificent prayers a-praying? Isn’t that just downright lame and boring? “Remember how he told you while he was still in Manitoba - that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and on the third day rise?” And the women remembered, they remembered his words. A dynamic Bible study, all right, so much so that they returned and told all of this to the eleven and all the rest.
Yet when they told their story and recounted the Bible study, the apostles - I thought they were still just disciples - thought that these words seemed to be an idle tale, and they did not believe them. The women remembered the words and the apostles thought the words to be utter nonsense. It’s why we make certain in this congregation that the scriptures from Easter are assigned to be read every year by a woman. Do not seek the ‘dead’ to do what only the living can do!
And that is the conclusion. Well, of course, it’s not the final end, other things do happen, Bible studies break out all over the place, among the living and among the dead. Jesus walks to Emmaus and talks - “Did our hearts not burn when he opened to us the scriptures?” - and breaks bread and just appears to his eleven and the others. It is all too much. Too many words that spill over in our brains, a superfluity of words and spirit, an excessiveness that over-saturates our souls, an embarrassment of riches for we are embarrassed we cannot take it all in. Instead, we reduce it down to a rational impossibility, as if all of our life, everything that we enjoy, all that we have accomplished is based solely upon facts that we can wrap our brains around like a simple mathematical formula. Whenever we think and act that way, we might be logical, but we are no longer real. Do not seek the living among the dead.
The most important thing we do and the thing that defines us as human beings is love, and the last time I looked love isn’t particularly logical or rational or sensible at all, and it operates according to no formula know to mathematicians. Love is an excessive, overflowing impossibility, and today we declare that it is our possibility.
We sit and sing and pray here in what was originally a Methodist space. The original Methodist, John Wesley, may have been uptight at times, but he knew intimately how the soul works, how it progresses and how it falters. In the early days of Methodism he would send out the newly recruited and not fully educated Methodist clergy on circuits to preach over a wide district. He knew that some of these new preachers were not exactly on solid footing yet with their own faith. Today we might say, whoa! Keep back those guys unsure of their words until they were sure enough. But Wesley encouraged them, “Keep preaching faith until you have it!” These less-educated fellows had their foibles, and one of them was being overwhelmed by an excessive faith they couldn’t quite grasp, but they could feel that it was out there. Of course, you never do have faith, never possess it to put it into your pocket; faith has you. Do not seek the living among the dead.
A while back I was talking about all the creeds of the Church that we recite from time to time, and the startling fact for some of our faithful is that the United Church of Canada is a non-creedal church, and that we are not alone in that status. A Greek Orthodox priest was lecturing one day to a university gathering on the creeds and their historical development. During the question time, an earnest student stood up and asked, “But what do you do when you have trouble believing some part of the creed? What can you do, when you, in integrity, cannot affirm the whole creed?” I can say that I have heard such a question hundreds of times before in the United Church.
The priest just responded, “You can keep saying it until you believe it. Give yourself some time; eventually it will come to you.” How Methodist of him!
Let us keep remembering and reciting and reliving these words of the Third Day, these incredibly excessive and overflowing words, for eventually we will know how full our souls are, and we will seek the living, not the dead.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan