“Keep Your Eyes Open” - March 27, 2016 (Easter Sunday)

Luke 24:1-12

Nobody really wants to think about death.  We find all kinds of ways of putting it out of our heads.  That’s probably one reason that a lot of people try to celebrate Easter, the day of Resurrection and new life, without paying any real attention to Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion.  Even less take time for Ash Wednesday, the day of being told, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” 

It’s normal, I suppose.  It’s painful to give too much attention to our own frailty and mortality.  Bruce Feiler wrote a book about his travels through the lands of the Bible at the tail end of the Iraqi War.  He recounts a moment when he managed to get a call through to his wife from Baghdad.  To get a signal, he had to stand in the street, exposed to the possibility of sniper fire.

“I’m wearing my body armor,” I said.  “It’s unbelievably heavy.  I pulled my back out.  And it’s impossible to take a nap in the car, the armor is so boxy. …It’s odd, but in some ways it was much more stressful worrying about coming here than actually being here, once you get over the sound of gunfire all the time. …Twenty people were killed this morning at a police station.  But the strangest thing about life here is how differently you process the information.  Unless the attack is immediately in front of us, or where we might be in a few days, it’s amazing how quickly the mind tunes it out.  The survival instinct is a powerful thing.”[1]

Yes it is; and part of it is not wanting to think about death and dying.

Another way to handle it is to look squarely at death and say, “Okay.  It is what it is.”  The biblical book of Ecclesiastes does that.  That’s where the group Kansas got the words for one of their hit songs:

“I close my eyes only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity:

Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea,
All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see:

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.

Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.
It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy.

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.
Dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind.”[2]

In some ways, that’s probably an equally healthy or unhealthy approach in comparison to the whole avoidance thing.  I suppose you can overdo things either way.

            It was the realistic approach, though, that was taken by the women who went to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning.  There was no question that he was dead.  They had seen the execution.  A member of the ruling council, Joseph of Arimathea, had provided a tomb and he and his colleague Nicodemus had seen to a hasty burial on Friday, before the Sabbath began and no work of any sort could be done.  The quick burial was probably why the women had returned with spices to prepare Jesus’ body.  The work had probably had to be left half-done because of the Sabbath catching up to them.  They were there to do what had to be done.

That’s the point at which it all turned strange.

“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.’” [Luke 24:2-7]

How do you deal with that?

            You could say that, as sometimes happens when people are faced with the fear and the grief and the confusion of the preceding days, the time of Jesus’ arrest and torture and execution, a time when his followers lived in terror for their own lives, that delusions began to set in.  You could say that they had imagined those men in white talking to them.  That was the reaction of the other disciples when they ran and told them what they had seen and heard.  Luke says,

“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 take, and they did not believe them.” [Luke 24:10-11]

Of course, then you have to explain how multiple people had the same hallucination.  You also have to explain where the body went.

            Life with Jesus was always odd enough and full of enough moments of unexpected wonder, though, that Peter, at least, gave them enough credit to go and see for himself.  It seems, too, that he didn’t waste any time about it.

“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 happened.” [Luke 24:12]

And from there on, Luke starts describing how Jesus started to show up in unexpected ways to them as individuals and as a group.  He met two of them walking on the road about seven miles outside Jerusalem [Luke 24:13].  He appeared to Peter the same day, although Luke doesn’t give us any details [Luke 24:34].  While they were all checking in with each other about these events, he showed up suddenly in the middle of the whole group and then ate a piece of fish to prove he wasn’t a ghost [Luke 24:41-43].  That kind of thing went on for a period of forty days, until they watched him disappear again, this time into heaven [Luke 24:51].

            So, how do we process all of that?  Is it just an ancient tale, one of four versions contained in the same volume, each with slightly different details?  Is it the product of wishful thinking – an extreme version of that kind of avoidance of the reality of death that we all face?  Is it something that we would be better to write off as the mass delusion of a group of his followers in the face of the loss of leadership and the movement’s defeat?

            All I can do is invite you to stay open, the way that Peter did, to the possibility that there was more to Jesus than met the eye.  If you do that, if you can handle the open-endedness that brings to life, then the amazement follows.  Accepting that Jesus lives means accepting that you never know where he might show up.  Physically, he is no longer among us but he promised that when he went to God’s full presence he would send his Spirit to be with and among his people.  That Holy Spirit has been showing up unexpectedly ever since and doing wonders in human lives all the time.

            People continue to leave behind the slavery to death that is so much a part of life.  Because death is not the end, it has no hold over us.  We don’t have to fight tooth and claw against the effects of aging, but can accept it with grace as the gift of longevity.  We don’t have to hold onto our possessions as if they could protect us, and generosity can take the place of greed.  Jesus’ disciples have a long history of stepping in and taking care of the sick, even at the danger of exposure to disease, and of working as peacemakers even when it can mean being caught between opposing parties.  They can speak the truth to the powerful even when the powerful grow angry, and comfort the weak even when they have little strength of their own beyond the good news that the meek – not the strong – shall inherit the earth.  And when their time on earth wraps up, they can see that as a relief instead of a cause for regret, a transition rather than an ending.

            Look into the grave seeking Jesus and you will not find him.  Do you know where you will find him, though?  Everywhere else.  Keep your eyes open.

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[1] Bruce Feiler, Where God Was Born: a Journey by Land to the Roots of Religion (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 181-182.

[2] Kansas, “Dust in the Wind” from Point of Know Return (1977).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH2w6Oxx0kQ