Death Is No Longer the Sheriff--April 21, 2025

Death Is No Longer the Sheriff--April 21, 2025

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, [the women] came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24:1-5)

Okay, on the one hand, these angels come off as pretty tone deaf from the words they speak to the grieving women at the tomb of their rabbi.

On the other hand, maybe it's not that they are aloof or emotionally unaware at all--maybe they are just taking a new reality seriously, and it's taking these mourners a bit longer to catch up.

That is to say, the "two men in dazzling clothes" are clearly already in the loop about the resurrection of Jesus, so they know precisely why his body isn't laying in a grave.  Jesus is currently walking around in that body, alive, risen, and loose in the world!  These angelic messengers are already living in that awareness. It doesn't make sense to them that you would look for Jesus in a graveyard any more than you would look for a butterfly to be hanging out around the broken shell of its old chrysalis.  To be honest, that's the one place you wouldn't expect a butterfly to be any longer--it should have flown off to some new place, right?  These angels aren't trying to be callous or uncaring. Rather, they just know more facts (or are taking seriously the facts that Jesus had been trying to tell his followers before his death, but that surely they were not ready to understand at the time), and they are simply responding to the world in light of that new information: Jesus is risen from the dead. Death has been overruled.  It no longer gets to call the shots.  That changes everything.

Now, that's not at all to suggest that the women are somehow at fault or unbelieving as they come to the tomb on that first Easter morning.  They came expecting to find a dead body because that is what they have experienced every other time their lives have been touched by death before--it was final, unchangeable, and irreversible. (The two sure things in life, they say, are death and taxes, right?) They come to the tomb expecting a stone still in front of the opening and the deceased body of their Lord and friend to be inside, because the last information they had told them that his body was there, and they had no reason to believe that all of a sudden the rules of the universe had changed on them.  And to be sure, that is exactly what is at stake in this story: a change in the rules of the universe, as Jesus breaks the power of death itself!  That sounds as hard to believe as if I suggested to you that they were repealing the law of gravity tomorrow, or that beginning next month, hot will now be cold and left will now be right.  So to be fair to Mary and the other women at the tomb, they are simply responding to the world in light of the most current information they had at the time: Jesus had died, and dead people stayed dead, so they should expect to find his body behind the stone where they had left it.

It's amazing how a new piece of information can completely change the way you see the world or make sense of reality.  To the women, it made total and terrible sense to look for the body of their rabbi in the grave where they had seen it placed back on Friday night, because the best information they had at the time told them he couldn't possibly be anywhere else.  And to the angelic messengers, it made absolutely no sense to look for Jesus in a graveyard because they had the vital new information that he was alive and kicking.  Each was making sense of reality based on the information they had at the time.  It turns out that the angels just had a little bit more current news--and the very reason they are there in this scene is to pass it along to the women... so that they can pass it along to the rest of the disciples... so that eventually, someone can tell it to you and me.

I can remember, years ago as a young pastor still getting used to the rhythms of parish ministry, going to the hospital to see someone I had been visiting there.  And as I turned the corner to step into the room where I had seen them just the day before, I found the room empty, the linens stripped from the bed, and the cleaning staff wiping down the tray table and bagging up the trash.  When I asked about the patient I was there to visit, the staff person at first just said, "They're no longer here."  Well, of course, my first fear was that the patient had died and I didn't know it--I panicked that "no longer here" was a hospital euphemism for death.  But I thought I should double check, so I went to the nurses' station a bit down the hall, and they told me, accurately, the good news:  the patient had been discharged earlier that day and was going home--they were well enough to go home, after all!  For a brief moment, I felt like the women at the tomb of Jesus in this scene--feeling a sorrow in my gut because the information I had suggested death rather than life.  The nurse and the cleaning staff, of course, knew the truth the whole time--so they weren't sad or grieving when they said the patient was "no longer here." They were seeing the world in light of more information.  And in passing it along to me, I could then make sense of the world with the fuller picture and the better facts.

In a lot of ways, I think that's what it is to live in light of the Easter story: we are people who make sense of the world differently, because we have learned the truth that Jesus' grave is empty, that death does not get the last word, and that we no longer have to be ruled by fear by those who use the threat of death to intimidate.  We make sense of reality differently, because we have been told the news that the angels brought to the women, which the women bravely passed along, too.  And in light of the news of the empty tomb, everything is different.  It really is like gravity has been cancelled--or at least, like saying that the Powers of the Day who claim to control who lives and dies, who disappears behind a locked door or a sealed tomb and who gets to come back again, those Powers do not get the final word.  God reserves the right to veto the powers of death and the empires who wield it as a weapon and to bring back not only Jesus but all of death's prisoners.  God reserves the right to issue a ruling that overturns imperial overreach that tried to keep Jesus dead and tries to keep us despairing.  Christians are simply people learning how to make new sense of the world in light of that reality.

And so, for example, early Christians defied the Roman Empire when it threatened them with torture or death if they would not bow down to Caesar or do Caesar's bidding, because they knew that the worst the empire could do was to kill them, and the God of resurrection could overrule their death by raising them up to new life.  In other times and centuries, Christians formed communities to care for the sick, even at the risk of becoming sick themselves (we now call these places "hospitals," and yes, in a sense, Christians invented the notion of a public place for the care of the sick that was open to any and all), and they did this because they believed that even if they died caring for others, God was able to give us new life.  Flash forward to moments like the Civil Rights movement, and you see it again--protestors, marchers, and activists willing to have the dogs turned on them, or to be beaten by the authorities, or to be lynched, or even risk being bombed and killed, and for many of them, their hope was in a God who would not let such evil get the last word.  When you have the perspective of resurrection, you are no longer hamstrung by fear of death in the same way.  When you see the world in light of an empty tomb and a broken Roman seal on the stone, you realize that the bluster of empires ancient and modern is really just a lot of hot air.  When you take the word of the angels seriously, you discover a courage that leads you to tell the news, to defy death, and to be free to give yourself for the sake of others because death itself doesn't get the last word.

That's why the angels ask the women, like it is the most obvious thing in the world to them, "Why would you go looking for the living among the dead?" They are beginning to see the universe in light of the resurrection, and that's what they give to the women as well.  And now, you and I have it as well. There are things we do not need to be afraid of anymore.  There are things we can be free to dedicate our lives to now, without becoming consumed by anxiety that death is the end of the story.  And there are people around us aching to be set free from the grip of fear, waiting for a reason to see life with some hope in spite of all the terror and grief around the world.  Maybe we are sent today because the women all those centuries ago were brave enough to receive new information and then to pass it along--and maybe someone else is waiting for us to bring them the news: Jesus is risen from the dead, and death is no longer the sheriff in these parts.

Who might that be?  How might we be changed with that news ourselves?

Lord Jesus, change our vision in light of your resurrection.