The Resurrection of Our Lord

April 8, 2007

Sermon by Pastor John Marboe

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. [Luke 24:1-12]

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. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 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.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Risen Christ.

As I’ve been reading the texts around Jesus’ death and resurrection, I’ve been noticing this year how much fear dominates the narrative. Think about it. Peter denies that he even has a relationship with Jesus, not once, not twice, but three times. All the male disciples run away when Jesus needs them the most; they run away and hide. Pilate, whom Jesus is brought before, is afraid to make a judgment over Jesus, and so he sends him to Herod. Herod is afraid to make a judgment and sends him back to Pilate. Pilate wants to set Jesus free, but he’s afraid of what might happen if he does.

Then after Jesus’ death and resurrection there is still a great deal of fear in the air. In our text today, the women see angels, and it says they bowed to the ground in terror; they were terrified. Later, Jesus appears to the rest of the disciples in the upper room, and it says they were startled and terrified, and they think it was a ghost.

Jesus then asks his disciples at that point, “Why are you frightened?” “Why are you frightened?” That’s a great question: “Why are you frightened?” Why are you frightened? Why am I frightened? Why are we frightened? What are we frightened of? How does fear dominate our lives?

Well, why are the disciples frightened? Could it be that it was because they didn’t yet believe in the resurrection from the dead? Well, that might be an answer a religious person would give—they didn’t yet know about the resurrection from the dead, so they were frightened. But if we examine the story, we realize that that’s not the case. There is indication in every Gospel that the disciples already believed in a resurrection from the dead.

Remember the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus, his good friend and follower, had died. His two sisters, Mary and Martha, called to Jesus and asked him to come and do something for them. Jesus arrives and said to the sisters, “Your brother will rise.” One of the sisters says, “Well, I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will not die but live,” and then goes and raises Lazarus from the dead. But you notice they already believed in a resurrection from the dead. And that tells us something: a belief in the resurrection from death does not necessarily set us free from being dominated by fear.

So, back to Jesus’ question. Why are the disciples frightened? Why so frightened? Well, as my daughter would say, “Hello! Wouldn’t you be frightened, too, if you were them?” What were they frightened of? They were afraid for their lives. They were afraid because the authorities, those people who were in charge of the city, had just tortured and killed their leader, Jesus; and they would likely do the same thing to his followers, if they had the chance. They are frightened. They are locked up in hiding in an upper room when Jesus appears to them. And then they think they’re seeing a ghost, and it’s all just too much. They are terrified!

What’s interesting to me is that this whole story, this whole narrative, is told with an eye to the fear and the effect of being dominated by fear. And Jesus asks the question, “Why are you frightened?” It’s a rhetorical question. Jesus is not demanding an accounting of their fear; he’s simply raising the question: “What is your fear all about?” “Why fear?”

Fear is a normal response to danger. But the story reveals how destructive human beings can become; how willing we are to kill, to betray, to go with the mob, to lie, to cheat, to deny justice, to pass the buck, when we are dominated by fear. And on the other side, the story reveals how we hide and withdraw, and lock ourselves up and become immobilized by our fears.

The world is a pretty scary place; for all its beauty, it is a pretty scary place. Terror and terrorism in our world is very much in fashion.

There is a lot of talk about sustainability. How can we be more sustainable? What is sustainable living? Which belies an underlying fear—which may be entirely reasonable—that our collective way of life is not sustainable.

Even ordinary life these days is pretty scary. Once a month I get in an airplane and fly to California in order to take some classes. Well, a couple of times ago I was sitting in the airplane sipping on my ginger ale, with my head comfortably back on a pillow, and the flight attendants came around and asked if there was anything else that I might like. And it suddenly occurred to me what we were all doing—five miles above the earth, over 500 miles an hour; all of us tucked into a metal tube, hurtling through space. Surrounded by jet fuel. That’s really scary. And we all act like it’s normal, sipping our sodas and munching our pretzels. I realized at that point the flight attendent’s main job is to keep our minds off the fact of what we are all doing.

These are very real dangers, and I only name a few of the many, many dangers that threaten our safety, our health, our loved ones, and our very lives on a daily basis. Fear is often a very reasonable response. But even so, the spiritual question, the deeper spiritual question is this: Will we be dominated by fear in the face of life’s horrors, and therefore make life more horrible? Or will we allow our fears to be overcome?

Easter Sunday is not a stand-alone festival in the church year. It is actually the third of a three-day long festival that includes Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. And right in the middle of that three-day festival is the cross on which a tortured, scared person is murdered. That’s the fear, that’s the fear, the very real fear we all have, which is loss of our lives, the fear that underlies all the rest of our fears.

As Christians, we say that we are saved by the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. Easter is about the death and the resurrection. If it were only the resurrection, we would be saved from nothing. It’s in facing that cross that we symbolically face our fears, and ultimately our great fear, which is the fear of death. And then, only then, is Easter good news, because then do we realize that death, and the fear of it, has no lasting power over our lives.

Belief in eternal life can be another of the many clever ways that we avoid facing, really facing, what we fear. But that’s not eternal life. Eternal life begins when our deepest fears are faced and we realize that life without being terrified is offered in the Spirit of Christ. Then eternal life for us has already begun, because death no longer has any power over us.

F.D.R. famously said in his inaugural speech in 1933, “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” And the Risen Christ said to his afraid disciples, “Why are you afraid?” It’s a very good Easter question for us all.

Amen.