Spiced
Luke 24:1-12

April 8, 2007


I had one of those persistent English teachers who wanted to ban the word “but.” We were using too much as a crutch in our simple essays “but,” “nevertheless,” “although,” “yet,” “moreover,” as ways of trying to prove our arguments without explaining them. “But” is often nothing more than a grunt that you hope your reader will understand, and most of the time the reader won’t have a clue unless you use real words to explain your idea. But, if you’re supposed to produce a 150 word essay, a few “buts” can really add up.

The final chapter of Luke begins with “But” and in the short 12 verses read this morning there are six “buts.” I don’t care what the teacher says, But makes the difference, because it stops you and says, something is different. Something is different here, wholly other!

But, I hope you have not come here today with high expectations of hearing all this Easter Third Day stuff explained rationally and convincingly. I have tried to do so in years past, but I know now that I am not that good, not that rational myself. Sure enough, someone somewhere will be able to argue more convincingly, more rationally against the resurrection of Easter. Besides, there is nothing natural about Easter, though it comes every year with regularity. There is nothing obvious about it. Easter does not explain itself. As preachers in the Black Church declare, the Evil One wants to explain away Easter, wants to steal not the body but the soul of the Third Day.

It was all so brutally normal. Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, laid in a rock-hewn tomb. The Galilean women hung around at the edges and watched where and how they laid him in the tomb and returned back to their lodgings to prepare the spices and ointments. All that is mentioned of Saturday is that it was the Sabbath day of rest according to the commandment they rested. They did what was normal even in the most unnormal of times.

But. At earliest Sunday dawn they went to the tomb carrying all their Friday spices. Embalming was for Egyptians, so the Jews used lots of spices to disguise and slow down the decay of the body, and moreover, it was simply a beautiful a thing to do for the most terrible of conditions. As much as 75 pounds of spices and ointments might be applied to the body, and if that were the case here, no wonder a number of women were needed to come along to help. No one ever seems to have thought much about the huge stone sealing the tomb.

The women expected to find a tomb full of death, but instead discovered only an empty bodiless space. They could not get their minds around the emptiness until the tomb was filled with a light cascading it seemed from two men they had not initially noticed. There is supposed to be no light in a dark tomb and certainly not two live men, so naturally the women were frightened and kept their eyes downward.

But, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” It’s obvious that is our problem. Everywhere we go, everything we do is a vain and futile search trying to make dead stuff the focus of life. Money isn’t alive, drugs and alcohol are not alive, fame and power are only figments of our imagination until they are endowed with God’s imagination to fill us with life. We keep trying to make dead stuff alive just as there are those who want to keep Jesus dead.

The two men kept speaking, remember what Jesus had told you. Later tonight the stranger on the road to Emmaus will scold the two forlorn disciples that they had not remembered what they already knew. The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise. It’s all there already. The Kingdom of God is alive already in the midst of you, and you keep forgetting.

The women remembered Jesus’ words, and now it all made sense, now it was obvious - this is reality. They returned from the tomb and told all of this to the Eleven and all the others, Bible lessons and all. It seemed an idle tale, a term used in Greek medical texts to describe the babblings of a person with a fever or a mental disorder.

Peter heard it, probably grumbled knowingly with the others about this mad hatter’s tale, but then jumped up to run, not walk, to the tomb and see the emptiness of the no longer used burial linen cloths and then went home, not able to wrap his mind around it either. Isn’t that combination of actions funny - declaring their story crazy, but then immediately running to see if it’s true. That’s nonsense! Let’s check it out! Something you and I never do!

The evangelist keeps putting that “But” into the text, keeps saying “you think this is the normal way life should be lived, but really something else is going on.” It has been popular for a long time to want to make the Bible speak to the modern world, to be relevant to our needs and dilemmas, to open up a dialogue with modern industrial technological wired society. But, the Bible doesn’t want to speak to the modern world; it wants to change the world, to create a new world that you cannot be part of unless you submit yourself to these antiquated texts. So, it uses archaic language, but I want to insist on using that old language because it tells us in no uncertain words what a difference it creates.

If you have come today for a rational explanation of Easter, then in the back of your mind you are probably asking the question, “But, will I agree?” The Bible is not concerned about whether you agree or approve or think it’s civilized, but asks a blatantly political question, “But, will you join up?” You can’t stand back from the Biblical text and gain an objective view; you have to step into the text and be one of its subjects, get caught up in that messy stuff, become part of the movement, and then you will experience the difference.

Sometimes it comes down to a word like this. Harvey Cox, long time professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School, points out that Jesus is described in the Biblical texts not just as “dead,” but as “crucified.” To bring a dead person back to life is a way to defeat mortality, and there are many doctors who work with all of their being to do just that. But to restore a crucified man to life means to strike a decisive blow at the system that caused his death.

The Resurrection is not some nice fairy tale ending, no beautiful phoenix rising out of the ashes as some Christians now want to institute to replace the violence of the cross. Every mention of the Resurrection of Jesus who was crucified is to strike a blow against all death systems at work in our world, and there are not a few.

Have you forgotten that you are spiritually a Semite, that you and I like Jesus are Jews in the marrow of our bones? This is Passover as it was then. When you participate in a Seder meal the tone of Passover is politically subversive of any regime that imposes slavery and death upon God’s people. Passover draws you into the slavery of Israel in Egypt and what is passing over except the Angel of Death that brings liberation to a people enslaved? We just don’t say Jesus is dead, we proclaim him, unashamedly and unapologetically, as the Crucified One, to serve as a subversive memory that is the basis for hope in the worst of possible human circumstances.

During the gloomy heyday of the Soviet Union a young Russian officer passed through a small village which had gathered to celebrate Easter. Dead certain of his faith, the young officer intruded into the service and scolded the peasants that such gatherings were simply not allowed. He went on to praise communism, the new Saviour of the proletariat, and to ridicule the nonsense and irrationality of Christianity, and especially the absurd idea that Christ was resurrected from the dead.

When he had finished, that awkward silence of a subdued people followed. The young officer felt his chest swell with pride that he had truly educated these poor misguided peasants. But, from the back of the crowd came a voice declaring, not by rote, the words from the Russian Easter liturgy, “Christ is Risen!” The crowd exploded, as if by reflex, “He is Risen Indeed!” They had finished the Gospel.

Those peasants were hopelessly antiquated in their faith, shouting in a language no longer meaningful for a modern world. Voices are chiming in from every part of society, declaring like that young Marxist that our Christian faith and odd words are nonsense and useless. Even in the church, there are people who insist that by speaking such an ancient tongue we are killing the Gospel.

They are right. It is nonsense. He is not here. He is risen!

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan