It’s early in the morning on the day following our Lord’s crucifixion. Several of the women, Mary Magdalene included, head to where Jesus is entombed to anoint his body with various embalming spices. However, when they arrive, they discover that the stone has been rolled away from the tomb’s entrance and are even MORE startled by the sudden appearance of two strangers in dazzling garb. Too frightened to even LOOK at the men, they inquire of the women, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here; he is RISEN! Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, AND ON THE THIRD DAY RISE.” Remembering their Lord’s words, Mary and the others rush back to the others to tell them everything they’d just seen and heard. Unfortunately, the disciples have FORGOTTEN what Jesus said so they take the women’s account as nothing more than an “idle tale” and refuse to believe them.

The two men at the tomb robed in radiant attire are assumed to be angels. In the first chapter of Acts (ALSO written by Luke), we’re told that Jesus took leave of his disciples by ascending upward and disappearing into a cloud. As his followers watched him vanish from sight, two men in bright clothing stood by and asked, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him GO into heaven.” In both accounts—Christ’s resurrection and his ascension--the two men begin by asking the same question “why” and then chiding the persons for looking for Jesus in all the wrong places. Jesus is not to be found in either a tomb OR in the sky. Rather, he is alive and present in places and in ways that these followers could NEVER expect. 

In his book, Therefore Stand, Wilbur Smith notes that “of the four great religions of the world resting directly on personalities rather than upon some philosophical system, the Christian faith is the only one that talks about an empty tomb in relationship to its founder. Everyone else is dead, but JESUS is alive.” Years ago, I visited the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon where the grave of William Shakespeare is located and remember being told back THEN that rumor had it that the bard’s skull was stolen from his grave by a local doctor back in the late 1700s. Before the altar of that church, there is a stone slab that bears the inscription:

"Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbeare,
To dig the dust enclosed here. 
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones."

A team of researchers using ground-penetrating radar determined that there definitely IS a body buried beneath that stone but where the bottom half of the skeleton is INTACT, the upward portion had been DISTURBED. This has led those archaeologists to conclude that the rumor just may BE true, that the great dramatist’s skull really IS missing. Apparently the curse did very little to deter grave robbers. Still, the reality remains that Shakespeare is dead and his bones are there to prove it. The same could be said of the many pharaohs and emperors, the kings and presidents in their elaborate tombs which were specially built for them- they’re STILL in them. Not JESUS, however! He who was “born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried” is NO LONGER dead but ALIVE- alive for you, alive for me, alive for the ENTIRE WORLD! 

As you read the four Gospels, it’s interesting how so many of Jesus’ statements concern the theme of “life” and “living.” At various times throughout his ministry, he uttered such comments as our God is a “God of the living and not the dead.” “Let the dead bury the dead.” “Why look for the living among the dead?” “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” “Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” “Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” and “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus was ALWAYS about life and never death, and that’s why his commission to his disciples was to go out and tell the world about the dynamic, living reality of his personal presence; of him who loves them unconditionally, who desires to change their lives and live in permanent relationship with them. He who was dead is now ALIVE and desires to make THEM just as alive as HE is for whoever Jesus touches, they inherit HIS life and become just as alive as HE is. 

It is a fact that life is CONSTANTLY evolving with evolution itself being a FORM of resurrection- a passing from the old into the new, from the inert to the dynamic, from the past to the future. For Jesus, TRUE life was never fixated upon the past but oriented towards the future. That’s why he loved SINNERS- not for what they did or what they WERE but for what they could BECOME! Pope Francis, in an Easter sermon a couple of years ago on this morning’s text, had THIS to say:

“Why do you seek the living one among the dead?”(Lk. 24:5). This question helps us resist the temptation to look back, to what was yesterday, and pushes us forward into the future. Jesus is not in the tomb, he is the Risen Lord, the Living One who always renews his body which is the Church and helps her walk, pulling her towards him. “Yesterday” is the tomb of Jesus and the Church, the tomb of truth and justice. ”Today” is the perennial resurrection to which the Holy Spirit impels us, gifting us full freedom.

Look at those disciples- with the death of their leader, something had diedin them AS WELL. Only a week before, they’d been part of a great procession which had marched into Jerusalem waving palm branches to the cries of "Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" They were convinced he was their long-awaited Messiah who would make Israel GREAT once again, the one who would rally the Jews and overthrow the Roman occupation. "We had hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel," they said. But he was KILLED INSTEAD which meant that for them, the magnificent journey was over. Thus it was now time for them to return to their pasts- back to their homes in their own hometowns to pick up where their old lives had left off. It had been a painful lesson but it was now time to put their youthful idealism behind them and settle down; to resume their trade, find a wife, and begin raising a family. The time for dreaming was over while the time for cold, hard realism was just BEGINNING. No longer were they disciples but farmers and fishermen once again. 

Seeking the dead among the living, that’s what GRIEF does all the time- IT LOCKS PEOPLE INTO THEIR PASTS. Few persons have ever displayed grief to the extent England’s Queen Victoria did after her beloved husband Albert died of typhus in 1861. For the next forty years, she remained in a state of perpetual mourning, dressing in full black and having her entire court dress the same way. The author, historian Robert K. Massie, had this to say about her:

For many years after Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria withdrew, dividing her time between Windsor Castle (where he was entombed) and two houses which Albert designed, Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands and Osborne House on the Isle of Wight….She refused to accept the Prince Consort’s absence. His rooms were left for forty years as if he were alive and might walk in. Every evening, his clothes were laid out with warm water and a fresh towel. His coats and trousers, hanging in his closets, were rigorously brushed and pressed. In their bedrooms, the Queen hung his portrait over the empty pillow. She fell asleep clutching his nightshirt and kept a cast of his hand on her night table so that she might reach out and hold it. As, in the Queen’s mind, Albert still lived, she must be the messenger who could interpret his wishes and be certain that his commands were carried out.

Some years ago, I was invited to address a meeting of Compassionate Friends, a support group for parents who have lost a child. It is said there is no greater loss than when a father or mother has to bury a child- we always expect the children to bury the parents, don’t we. I was introduced to the leader of the organization who went on to share with me how she came to found this group. It was after her son passed away and she realized that she didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. As she described to me how he died after an extended illness, she began to convulse and shake with sobs SO loud and SO deep that they seemed to shake the room we were in. Finally, I had to ask her how long it had been since her son had passed- was it a year? Two years? “OH NO,” she said- he had died FIFTEEN years before. I couldn’t help but suspect that for WHATEVER reason, every meeting had become an opportunity for her to relive his death all over again. I left with the feeling that for all those years, she’d been unable to let go of him, that is, to put the past behind her by releasing him back to God so she could then move on with her life. 

As important as the grief process is for recovering mental and emotional health, the Bible offers us more than PERMISSION to grieve. It does so within the context of hope in a God who is faithful and has OVERCOME death. In First Thessalonians, Paul writes about believers who have died: “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who have fallen asleep, or to grieve like the others who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” (1. Thess. 4:13-14). Paul makes it clear that Christian hope does not eliminate the need for grief; rather, Christian grief is INFUSED with Christian hope.

If GRIEF locks us into the PAST, then FEAR CONFINES US TO THE PRESENT. Fear hinders our ability to trust in God and the work of his Spirit in our lives and the world in the HERE AND NOW. It is a state of mind that governs our perspective on the world and cripples the way we live our lives. The fearful person regards life as a great enemy ready to destroy them at their first misstep. Therefore he treads softly, slowly, ever cautiously, hesitatingly, ready to retreat at the first sign of trouble. Fear makes us rigidly organized and well ordered, like a well-oiled clock. We insure ourselves against any novelty or surprise as we want to know with utmost clarity what lies ahead for us. The fearful Christian is never spontaneous, rarely creative, and has little in the way of imagination or hope or joy. He is always seeking the living Christ among the dead and thus never actually FINDING him!

When we first meet those disciples on that first Easter day, we find them in the Upper Room with the doors and windows locked “FOR FEAR OF THE JEWS.” Here we find the disciples paralyzed by powerlessness and indecision, incapable of envisioning any kind of present or future without Christ present to lead them. It wasn’t until later that evening when Jesus suddenly appeared in their midst that those doors and windows were thrown wide open and the fresh winds of love and faith and hope and joy were allowed to fill their hearts once again. Their glorious adventure, which had come to a sudden halt three day earlier, could again RESUME!

If GRIEF locks us into our pasts and FEAR paralyzes us in the present, then FAITH IS WHAT LIBERATES US, ENABLING US TO FOCUS SQUARELY ON THE FUTURE. It does not FEAR life but instead, regards it as a GREAT ADVENTURE. Like Job, faith believes God's promises and stubbornly holds fast to them. Faith realizes how very little control we actually do have over events, that because our lives are ultimately in GOD'S hands, we should trust him. Faith is bold, courageous, willing to risk everything in the knowledge that even should we FAIL, we can LEARN and GROW from our failures AS WELL AS our successes. 

Look how Jesus took ordinary folks like farmers and fishermen and tax collectors and filled them with a hope and excitement and a profound sense of adventure they had never known BEFORE. That was because when they were with him, they learned that they couldn’t help BUT become alive and oriented towards the future. With JESUS in their lives, they found themselves animated by new hopes, new convictions, new insights, new ideals and new habits along with a new allegiance with the past now over and gone forever. This is why St. Paul could tell the Christians in Corinth, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, all things have now become NEW.”(2 Corinthians 5:17)

One of the strongest convictions a Christian can have is that life is an incredible drama filled with great experiences, and if we allow God a place in that drama, he can turn it into a wonderful adventure story. When life seems commonplace, dull, and routine, there is often little joy, little hope; but where there are goals and challenges to pursue, then life becomes vital and exciting, hope-filled and adventuresome. The Bible teaches us that GOD HIMSELF is an adventurer in an unbelievable adventure of grace. After all, did not God abandon heaven to immerse himself in our world, to create us in his own image, and then endure the risk of our rejecting him? Was not the task of overturning the effects of our disobedience and reconciling his creation back to himself THE GREATEST ADVENTURE OF THEM ALL, one culminating in the sacrifice of his own SON! 

I sometimes wonder if we’d rather see Jesus IN THE TOMB rather than discover it EMPTY, that we’d prefer if we DIDN’T find him AT ALL. What I mean by that is that life without Christ is safe because it is life without risk, life without sacrifice, life on OUR terms rather than HIS. After all, a DEAD God NEVER makes demands on our lives, NEVER challenges us, NEVER gets in the way of what WE want to do. On the OTHER hand, when you seek the living Christ, he demands that you forsake all else and make HIM number one in your life. He asks that you love others as you love yourself, INCLUDING your enemies, and that you subordinate your goals and desires for the benefit of others. To serve such a risen Jesus is hard and risky and costly and it demands our all, even our OWN death.

Therefore, instead of the RISEN Christ, we settle for cheap substitutes, always looking for a LIVING savior among a multitude of DEAD, LIFELESS alternatives. We often seek the living Christ in the romanticized imaginations of poets and painters and hymn writers in which Jesus never outgrows the manger, or else it is the Jesus with a benign smile on his face- holding lambs in his arms and patting little children on the head and little more. We search for him there but we never find him because while HE grows up, we NEVER do. 

We look for him in great books of theology and philosophy, but for all their brilliance, all THEY offer is a sterile intellectual Jesus who is incapable of touching life as it is REALLY lived. 

We long to find him in those TV preachers who promote positive thinking or the promise that “God wants to make you rich” but such messages are ineffective against the awful powers of sin and death we never stop contending with. 

We try to locate him in some legalistic moral system, perhaps thinking that we can save ourselves through our own efforts, when all it does is elevate our pride and mistake us into thinking we are far better than we are. 

We try to find the living Christ in the church’s empty creeds and formal rituals, thinking that by going through the motions or by obeying its customs we can resurrect him but there’s no life in ANY of them. 

Then there are those who hope to discover him in a certain church building or a particular denomination or even religious tradition whether it is Reformed or Orthodox or Pentecostal or some other only to learn that Christ doesn’t make his home there EITHER. Looking for life among the dead can only result in a DEAD END for the truth is that such a Christ can NEVER heal our hearts, NEVER lift our spirits, NEVER fill us with overwhelming joy, NEVER hear our prayers or speak to our souls. God can ONLY be found in a living, loving, trusting relationship with his RISEN SON who loves us unconditionally; in a relationship that yields faith and hope and peace and joy; in a relationship that imparts to us NEW life—HIS life--yesterday, today, and forever. My friends, stop looking for life in all the wrong places when he stands in our midst this morning and invites us to enjoy REAL life in the ONLY place we ever WILL find it- in Jesus Christ, the RISEN LORD himself. Let us pray…

O God, who by your great love gave us Jesus Christ and by whose power Jesus was raised from the dead, give us the gift of faith to believe that the grace of Jesus Christ may fill our hearts this very day. In his name we pray. Amen.