Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.
Early in the morning on the first day of the week,
they came to the tomb, the women who had followed Jesus.
Perhaps it was the women who came because they were the ones
who were traditionally assigned the task of embalming the body,
or perhaps they came because they were less likely than the male disciples
to be caught and persecuted as followers of Jesus,
or perhaps it was because they had known a special kindness from the master,
that Jesus treated them not as being subservient to the men,
but as being equally cared for and loved by God.
In any event it was women like Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James who came to the tomb early that morning.
Who knows what unspoken thoughts were coursing through their minds
as they made their way to the tomb,
but clearly the one thought that never crossed their minds
was that they would encounter an empty tomb.
No one was thinking of a resurrection.
But the tomb was indeed empty, with the stone rolled away.
Understandably they were perplexed
but they were about to get a whole lot more than just perplexed,
for suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them
and the women evolved from being perplexed to being terrified.
Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here, but has risen.
With these words the angels reminded the women what Jesus had told them,
that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified,
and on the third day rise again.
What the women thought of that, we aren’t sure,
but they returned from the tomb
and reported what they had heard and seen to the eleven disciples and to others.
But, our text records, their words seems to them an idle tale
and they did not believe them.
An idle tale.
That would seem to be an understatement.
A silly story, crazy talk, utter nonsense,
we might think of some other choice phrases too impolite to say out loud in church. After all isn’t that what most of our modern world thinks as well?
I mean what do you do with a resurrection?
Who in their right minds would believe that a man can rise from the dead?
Certainly not people like Richard Dawkins,
the Oxford professor and author of, The God Delusion,
or the director James Cameron
who served as executive producer for the documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus.
It would seem that even grasping at highly tenuous evidence
to try to make a case for the final resting place for Jesus’ bones
is more palatable than having to say yes to rising from the dead.
So no wonder when the women returned from their early morning outing,
the rest of the community weren’t in a hurry to quite believe their outlandish tale.

Had the story stopped there, we might all be still at home this morning,
perhaps thinking of calling up Al Gore and asking what happened to our global warming and getting ready to watch Tiger Woods and company
struggle through the frigid final round of the Masters golf tournament.
But as Luke records in our text this morning, the story does not stop there.
The words of the women seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them.
But, but, Peter got up and ran to the tomb,
stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves,
then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
He went home, amazed at what had happened.
What does that mean?
Did Peter see Jesus?
From the words of the text it would appear that at this time he did not,
that all he saw were the linen cloths.
But later in the chapter Luke recounts the story of the travellers on the road to Emmaus who were told by the disciples that the Lord had appeared to Simon Peter.
Certainly by this time Jesus could indeed have appeared to Peter and to others,
“but the predominant atmosphere in our text
is one of confusion, disturbance and doubt.”
(Fred Craddock, Interpretation – Luke)

Which makes Peter’s response all that much more remarkable.
You see, I think that Peter’s response of amazement
is as honest as it gets when it comes to resurrection.
I think that the text is right on when it implies that when Peter first went to the tomb,
he did not see the risen Christ.
He might have later on that day, but early that morning, he did not.
What he saw was a mystery.
What he saw was a missing body
and the linen strips which had covered the body lying by themselves.
What he saw was the possibility of hope.
And it amazed him.
I think it is quite remarkable that Luke didn’t write that Peter went home,
knowing that Christ had risen,
but that he went home amazed at what had happened.
It seems so much more honest,
after all how else do you respond to the possibility
that someone could rise from the dead?
When it comes to resurrection
you don’t come to some sort of empirical conclusion based on the physical evidence, rather you come to be filled with mystery and awe,
you become amazed.

That’s what faith is.
Faith is not some sort of cool, rational, reasonable judgment
reached on the preponderance of evidence.
Faith is amazement at the possibility that all is not what we have come to expect.
Here’s what faith looks like.
When the early church first began to communicate the resurrection of Jesus,
they chose to greet one another with the phrase, Christ is risen.
And the response has always been, he is risen indeed.
Can you imagine how different it would be if someone were to say, Christ is risen,
and people responded,
why yes, based on the preponderance of evidence that would seem to be true.
Faith begins with amazement,
with mystery, with awe, with the possibility of hope.
Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.
There’s no need to explain or to rationalize or to be reasonable about it.
Our faith is unreasonable, it’s irrational, it’s unexplainable.
After all it is rooted in the amazing belief that a person can rise from the dead,
that we, you and I, will also rise from the dead,
that after we die, we will be resurrected to eternal life with Jesus.

Today is Easter Sunday,
or as one preacher puts it, it’s the ecclesiastical equivalent of Super Bowl Sunday
and with the weather we’ve been having it sure feels like it.
“It’s the day when we see some of the largest congregations of the year,
some of you no doubt pressured and even coerced into coming for the big one.
And we ministers are gullible,
we are a people of strange and relentless hope,
thinking that you come here to hear us talk
and that we will be so eloquent and compelling that you will all be back next Sunday.” (John Buchanan, Surprised by God. Easter Sunday 2001)
But really, how eloquent and compelling can my words be?
By my calculation this will be either the seventh or eighth Easter Sunday sermon
I have preached here at Grace
and I can tell you in all honesty that there has never been a Sunday
when my words have been able to adequately convey the amazing good news
that is simply the best news in the world.
All us ministers try to tell it,
but in reality how can we tell it any better than what the scriptures say?
Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here, but has risen.

Thomas Long says that all Christian preaching begins here
and all Christian sermons are reverberations of this Easter news,
first announced by the women to the apostles.
And it is announced to us this Easter Sunday as well,
to us who are here week after week,
to us who are here for the very first time.
It’s the same message but our response can be different.
We can respond to the claims of the resurrection by saying,
its just an idle tale,
or we can respond with amazement,
with awe and with the hope that all is not what it seems to be.
We don’t have any more empirical evidence than Peter did that first Easter morning. There is no body, but there can be hope.
Its not a reasonable judgment, but an amazing faith.
In his memoir, The Seven Story Mountain,
the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton writes of encountering the poetry of William Blake and being convicted of the dead, selfish rationalism
which had been freezing his mind and will
and then becoming convinced that the only way to live
was to live in a world which was charged with the presence and reality of God.
Early in his pilgrimage Merton wrote,
very soon we get to the point where we simply say, I believe, or, I refuse to believe. (Philip Yancey, Rumours of Another World)

Christ is risen.
Either we believe or we refuse to believe.
Either it is the best news in the world or it is an idle tale.
There’s no middle ground.
Philip Yancey in his book, Rumours of Another World, writes,
I ask myself, why do I believe?
Why do I struggle with another reality that is utterly unverifiable?
Why do I continue to make that defiant leap of faith?
Ultimately Yancey concludes that its not so much
that the invisible world impinges on this one,
but that the visible world hints,
in ways that move him most,
at a lack of completion.

Easter is the hope that all is not as it seems.
Easter is the amazing faith that in spite of what we empirically know,
there is something more,
something that completes.
Easter is saying I believe
when everything around us screams at us to say I don’t believe.
Easter is the invitation of God to move our focus from here to eternity.
C. S. Lewis once wrote,
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in.
Aim at earth and you get neither.
From here to eternity.
We have a choice my friends.
Christ is risen, either we believe it or we don’t.
I hope we won’t be looking for some sort of reasonable, rational evidence
why we should believe.
We won’t find it here.
Rather, here we will find an invitation to amazement,
to a faith which embraces, not pragmatism,
but mystery and awe and hope.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that we will get it all right away
or indeed ever in this lifetime,
but it does mean that we need to try to live out that amazement in meaningful ways.
It means, among other things, going to Mexico as a 15 year old
and hauling buckets of gravel and sand for hours on end
so that concrete can be mixed to build a foundation for a new home
so that a poor family can know a resurrection of hope.
It means going as a 70 year old and working in the cook crew,
emptying dirty water trays into freshly dug latrines so that the workers can be fed.
It means cooking today after church for the homeless at the Mustard Seed
or spending a few moments visiting someone you know might be alone this Easter.
To believe means moving our focus from the things of this world
to the things of God’s promised kingdom,
not by ignoring this world but by serving this world as a child of God.
It means responding to the call to eldership,
even though you know that you don’t have all the gifts.
It means trusting that God who calls also equips and enables.

“It means not clinging to the world as we want it to be,
but working for the promised kingdom that God describes.
It means not bowing to the pressures of achievement
and the stress of success at all costs,
but working for the promised kingdom
where kindness and humility and gentleness count for more.
It means not holding fast to the hatred that resides so deep within,
but working for the promised kingdom
where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female.
It means no longer buying into the mentality that the winner takes it all,
that charity begins at home, or what’s in it for me,
but working for the promised kingdom
where we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep,
that when one member of the body suffers, we all suffer.
It means that we no longer believe in the necessity of violence or the inevitability of war, but that we work for the promised kingdom
where strength comes to those who are weak
and security and power and trust come from God alone.”
(David A. Davis, Shattering the Domesticated Gospel)

My friends, Christ is risen. It’s the very best news in the world.
We can either believe it with sheer amazement
or we can dismiss it all as just an idle tale.
We can either live with our hope entrenched only in the here and now
or with our hope rooted firmly in the eternity of God’s promised kingdom.
The Word of God, the promise of God,
is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
But our response can be different, this time, today.
God invites us to live with amazement,
not necessarily without confusion, disturbance or doubt,
but with the possibility of hope,
with a faith which begins with saying yes to mystery and awe,
with a faith that begins with amazement.
Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!
Prayer: God of amazing grace, Christ your Son, our Lord, is risen.
It is the absolute best news in the world.
It is the best news for us who need good news,
for us who know a longing for completeness,
for us who know in our heart of hearts that all is not as it seems.
Jesus’ resurrection is our hope, not only for the life to come,
but for the eternal life which begins here and now.
May your people live with amazement at the possibilities of your love and your grace
and may we live as community of hope and compassion as we follow our risen Saviour. Our prayers we bring in his name and for the sake of his kingdom, Amen.