From the day it arrived in their otherwise tastefully decorated home, Jill and Frank relegated the rocking chair to an obscure corner of the living room. They preferred a more modern look; straight lines, neutral colors. The chair featured ornately carved wood where it wasn’t covered with fraying upholstery in an old-fashioned floral print. It wasn’t much to look at it, and it was terribly uncomfortable to sit in. They only allowed it in their living room because, first of all, it was a wedding gift from Frank’s mother, and second, it had a history. It had been in the family for generations now, and, as the story goes, five generations of Frank’s family had rocked their babies to sleep in that chair. When she presented it to them, Frank’s mother joyfully exclaimed that this was where their children -- her grandchildren! -- would be rocked to sleep night after night. Jill was considerate enough say nothing but “thank you,” but she knew that when they had children -- if they had children -- they would buy one of those comfortable gliding chairs. There was just no way she’d rock her children to sleep in that old, uncomfortable chair.
After a while, they stopped noticing it, like we all do with most things we see every day. It became simply another piece of furniture that their brains barely registered when they walked through the living room. Until, of course, someone asked about it. It was so out of place in the room, people always asked. And it was a good story, so they told it. People liked the story, but inevitably, the conversation quickly turned to more relevant topics: work, politics, the economy, the Oscars, the weather, all the trivial and significant details of life.
*****
Most of our lives the resurrection is like an old-fashioned, out of place chair in the living room of our faith. Most of the time we barely notice it. Compared to the rest of the furniture it looks more than a little odd, but we tolerate it, since after all, it was a gift. If someone notices it and asks about it, we’ll tell the story as best we can, but most of the time -- let’s be honest -- we either fail to even see it or, if we do, we move quickly past, trying to forget how strange and out of place it seems, how uncomfortable it makes us feel.
But today is the day, the one day each year, when we willingly come into church looking for some assurance, some proof, that this strange promise of the resurrection is actually true.
And what do we get? Well, today, from Luke, we get an empty tomb and two messengers in dazzling clothes asking a confusing question: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Then, when the women tell the other disciples what they’ve seen and heard, what is the disciples’ response? Our translation says they thought the story was nothing more than an “idle tale.” Actually, the Greek is a whole lot stronger than that. The disciples, overcome with grief and confusion after the death of their dear friend and teacher, think the story these women are telling is, well, to put it nicely, nonsense, garbage, the lunatic ravings of delirious women. And even if these women really did see an empty tomb, well, what does that prove? Nothing. As the preacher Fred Craddock puts it, “An empty tomb in and of itself does not present a persuasive argument for the resurrection; an empty tomb means the body is not there.” (1) Nothing more, nothing less.
So this is what we get, here in church on Easter morning. An empty tomb and a story that, if we’re really honest about it, sounds as much like sheer nonsense to us today as it did to those disciples two thousand years ago. We certainly don’t get any proof, nothing more than an empty tomb that we can’t even see for ourselves. So without proof, how are we supposed to believe?
If it’s proof we’re looking for, we’ve got plenty of it all around us. Unfortunately, it’s not proof that Jesus actually came back from the dead, breathed air into his lungs and felt the beating of his heart. It’s not proof that God loves this world enough to send Jesus to show us that love in flesh and blood, word and deed, death and resurrection. The proof we see all around us is that death has the last word. Sorrow and suffering rae everywhere. Everyone we love dies. Money makes the world go ‘round. Power corrupts. God is dead. Religion is a crutch. These are the things we can count on. These are things for which we have proof.
The women who came to the tomb had all the proof in the world that Jesus was dead. They saw him nailed to a cross! They watched him die! They saw his corpse, lifeless as a lump of clay, laid in the tomb! And now that the Sabbath is over, they are hoping that they might tend to that dead body, that corpse, and show it the respect it deserves. When they see the empty tomb, it doesn’t change anything. In fact, it just proves to them the indecency of those who hate Jesus so much that they take away his body so his friends cannot not anoint it with spices and prepare it for a proper burial. The empty tomb proves nothing. Not then, not now.
The empty tomb proves nothing, but what happens when it sparks a memory? “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” ask the messengers in dazzling white. “Remember what he told you...”
Do you remember? Do you remember what Jesus said to his followers not so long before his death? The Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and after three days rise again. It sounded like so much nonsense to the disciples because it didn’t make any sense! It was another of Jesus’ strange comments that the disciples forgot the moment they heard it because what could it possibly mean? They didn’t want him to die and certainly not by the agony of crucifixion. And people who have died simply don’t rise again, whatever that means, not even Jesus, as wonderful as he was. Why would they remember such crazy talk, such utter nonsense?
But, having seen the empty tomb and at the urging of those messengers, the women did remember. And once they remembered Jesus’ words, something stirred deep within them. After all, they had just spent three years of their lives traveling with Jesus, following wherever he went, listening to him, watching him perform miracles. And in all that time they spent with him it seemed that even the most improbable promise he had spoken had lodged deep in their hearts and now, standing in front of an empty tomb they felt the first stirrings of hope: that Jesus did rise from the dead, that somewhere not far away he was walking and breathing and feeling the beat of his heart; that love had conquered evil; that life, not death, had the last word, not just today, but for every day to come! Because these women had followed Jesus and heard the promise, they did not need proof to recognize when that promise was fulfilled. They simply needed to remember what they already knew.
When this country was first settled by our English and Scottish ancestors, there was a region in the Smokey Mountains where the Native Americans were still so dominant that they completely destroyed a military settlement. They killed all the white male soldiers and took the rest of the settlers prisoner. They soon released all the women and children, but they kidnapped all the boys and young men and adopted them into their tribe.
One woman saw her husband murdered and her two sons, ages two and four, hauled away by the Native Americans. For years, this woman roamed all over Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, hoping against hope that she would find her sons alive. She traveled from reservation to reservation looking for them, but her search was in vain. After fourteen years had passed, she knew that the boys would now be sixteen and eighteen years old and were unlikely to remember the mother they had not seen in so many years. Still, she showed up at yet another reservation and the sergeant with her lined up all the boys in the correct age range...of course, these were no boys, they were young men with war paint on their faces. But in spite of the war paint, the mother saw two of the young men and instinctively recognized her sons. She called out their English names, but they did not respond. She called out their father’s name but they showed no sign of recognition. She began to recite events from the family’s history, but still they remained impassive. Finally, the sergeant said it was time to go.
“No,” said the mother emphatically. “Let me try one more thing.” The mother went over to those two grown up young men. She closed her eyes and pictured them as babies in her arms. She recalled rocking them to sleep in an ornately carved, uncomfortable chair. She remembered the old Scottish lullaby she had sung to them hundreds of times, and she began to sing. As she sang, tears began streaming down the war-painted faces of those two young men. As she sang, those warriors remembered the promises implicit in their mother’s arms as she rocked them to sleep: that she would take care of them, that she would always love them, that if they strayed from her she would go after them and search high and low until she found them. They remembered those promises that they had not understood when they first received them, and in that moment of remembrance, they recognized the promises fulfilled, and everything changed, because they knew with certainty who they were and whose they were. (2)
It really doesn’t matter why you are here today. It doesn’t matter if you believe what we celebrate -- that in the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, God has conquered death once and for all -- or if you think it is, at best, an idle tale, and at worst, a cruel hoax. What matters is that today you have heard again the promise of God: that death and evil and sorrow will not have the last word but will lead the way to new life where love reigns; the promise that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has claimed you with a love that will not let you go. You have heard the promise in scripture and prayer and song, and whether you believe it or not, when you are lost in the dark tombs of despair and God searches high and low to find you -- and God will search, relentlessly, tirelessly, to find YOU -- when you are lost and God finds you and offers you resurrection, new life, where you thought there was only certain death, then you will remember. You will remember and recognize that the promise you heard today has been true all along. An empty tomb may not be proof, but it changes everything. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Fred Craddock, Luke: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. WJK, 1991.
2. From the sermon “Remember Your Baptism,” by the Rev. Mark Phillips, First Presbyterian Church of Mineral Ridge. Used with permission.
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