4 16 Luke24.1-12 Turning Point

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Text: Luke 24: 1-12 Title: Turning Point Date: 04.16.17 Roger Allen Nelson History is marked by turning points. There are moments where things pivot, directions change, and events signal a substantive turn. Sometimes they are dramatic violent moments: the bombing of Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima, 9.11, police in Birmingham turning dogs and fire hoses on peaceful black protesters. Sometimes they are hopeful pivots: discovering a cure for polio, Martin Luther nailing 95 theses to a door in Wittenberg, the Cubs winning the World Series. History is marked by turning points. And then historians dig up the details of those turns in an effort to understand the what, why, who, and how. When the course of history changes we try to identify key historical fragments in order to piece together a coherent story as a way to understand the turning point. For example, if current tensions with North Korea escalate professors and pundits will pour over presidential tweets, conversations over cake at Mar-a-Lago, who was in the current inner circle, was there an emerging philosophy, what dynamics were left by the Obama administration, etc. You get the idea. When history turns we examine the evidence to understand the unfolding story. And, it’s worth noting that our lives are marked by turning points. There are moments where things pivot, directions change, and events signal a substantive turn. The first day of sobriety, the death of a child, getting a difficult diagnosis, coming out for the first time, an encounter with God. Pastors, therapists, and bartenders will tell you that many of us are trying to sort out those turning points as a way to make sense of our stories. Which is one reason why the resurrection story is so intriguing. With what is arguably the most important turning point in human history there’s sparse evidence, few details, and limited information. How are we to understand the resurrection when there is little but an instruction to remember what Jesus said? Consider…. After Jesus was crucified the hour was too late to dig a trench for a grave. That was the common practice of the poor ~ but you wouldn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t dig on the Sabbath.

So, the body of Jesus was being stored – as it were – in the grave of a friend. And, as custom had it, eventually the family of Jesus would take the body and bury it, or put it an ossuary ~ a box that holds the bones after the body has decomposed. Therefore, the women, who in some fashion had traveled with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, go to the grave to tend after the body. Only to find the grave empty. No telling what happened. No account of how it happened. No details ~ save two shiny messengers who chide the women about looking for Jesus in the graveyard and ask them to remember. In their words: Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee: The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.” Then they remembered his words. Luke’s telling of Easter morning is not marked by trumpets, or lilies, or even the gentle calling of Mary’s name. There is no resurrection appearance. Jesus is offstage, nowhere to be seen. Messengers proclaim his resurrection and ask the women to remember. And, maybe that’s it….. Maybe the resurrection is an exercise in memory. When we reenact, and retell, and remember, Jesus is alive among us. When we recount his words, Jesus is alive among us. When we stumble after the way of Jesus, seek first the kingdom of Jesus, celebrate the table of Jesus, Jesus is alive among us. History turned in the empty tomb because Jesus is alive among us today. Jesus is alive in our collective memory! Thanks be to God? A few months ago, I was asked to do the funeral for a beautiful baby girl. She lived for 113 days. Deeply and dearly loved, she died without warning, without cause, without reason. When I met with the parents there was a barren-jagged-wordless-wasteland of grief. Everything that they loved and knew was shattered. Life had turned ~ never to be the same again. The funeral was packed, friend and family overflowed into every open space. When the service was to start the father crumbled and curled up on the floor of a side room. Who can stand in face of such a loss?

What did I have to say them? That their baby girl would live in their memories? That Jesus is alive in our memories? What did I have to say to them? What would you say? Dear friends, if the resurrection is nothing more than remembering the words and way of Jesus, while it may be helpful, it is finally feeble and flaccid. If Jesus lives only in our memories then we stand mute in the face of this world’s barren-jagged-wasteland of grief. If the resurrection is just a matter of memory then pass the Easter eggs and fluffy bunnies. That’s all we’ve got…. The Apostle Paul puts it this way, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all others.” But! But, if the resurrection is more than memory, if Jesus literally-physicallyexistentially resurrected from the dead then everything is different, the nature of reality has turned, creation swings on a different hinge, and the death of a child isn’t the last word. Theodore Wordlaw gets at it this way: ….. if Jesus Christ really rose from the dead, then that means that he is loose in the world with power to raise us up from whatever is dragging us down – power to complete what we can’t complete ourselves. It means that the story of hopeless finality is in the end nothing but Friday talk. So, we get ready for Resurrection day, when what gets proclaimed from the empty tomb is a rebuttal so dramatic, so unnatural, so as to serve as the very hinge of history by which we divide all of time. I like that line: “he is loose in the world with power to raise us up from whatever is dragging us down.” For, as Jesus is somehow alive, not just in our memories, but loosed on the world... Then our failures don’t finally hold sway but forgiveness does. Then terrorism doesn’t win but peace prevails. Then death is finally trumped by life. Then chaos may have a day in the sun but shalom will finally reign. And! Jesus alive and loose in this world means that whatever vestige of death we struggle with, whatever disappointment, or brokenness, or addiction, whatever it is that beats you down, whatever it is that defeats, whatever it is… it doesn’t have the last word, Jesus does.

In one of my first Easter Sundays at Hope I wrestled with the resurrection as “myth, metaphor, or meaning maker.” And while it might not have been a walk-off home run I thought it was at least a stand-up double. After the service a fine, faithful, and fit-to-betied member of Hope pulled me aside to say, “On Easter Sunday I don’t want to hear about your difficulties with the resurrection…” Point made. Point well taken. However, 13 or 14 Easters later, I am still struck by the towering-triumphant-outlandishabnormal-completely-miraculous-and-utterly-mysterious quality of the resurrection. And, while our translation flattens it out by using the same word, “wonder.” The text actually reads that the women were gobsmacked, stuck, perplexed and that Peter was bewildered, and went away wondering. Those first witnesses didn’t know what to make of the resurrection. So, I think I’m in good company. And yet, 13 or 14 Easters later I stand more firmly in the reality of the resurrection. There’s lots of scripture that we read as myth, metaphor, and meaning maker. And when we “do this in remembrance of me” Jesus is alive among us. The literal historicity of all sorts of stories and miracles doesn’t really make that much of a difference to me…. But the resurrection? I can’t let it go. What manner of loving God would be a bystander to the chaos, suffering, and death of this world? But, Jesus is risen? Thanks be to God! With a stew of joy, bewilderment, tears, fears, astonishment, and faith the women return to tell the disciples. They proclaim that Jesus is alive. Only to have the men dismiss their word as fake news, an idle tale, the empty talk of the chattering class. Dear friends, may those women serve as a model for us. Without all the answers or all the evidence, with the memory of the words and ways of Jesus with the unfolding story of God reclaiming creation for shalom, let us proclaim the resurrection. Creation has turned! Death is defeated! Jesus is alive! Hallelujah! Amen.