Luke 24:1-12

Resurrection 
 
How many of you have ever been to an art museum? I remember going on a field trip when I was a student at Calvin College (now Calvin University). We went down to the Chicago Art Institute.
 
I enjoyed it. Most of what I saw made sense to me. But I have to admit that I had a harder time making sense of modern art. Perhaps you can relate to this.
 
Modern art is not representational. It’s abstract and tends to portray its subjects through symbolism. It can leave you wondering, “What is this?”  “Is this really art?”
 
Now in a class on a field trip, you don’t necessarily want to make your opinion public, lest you betray your ignorance.
 
You keep your misgivings to yourself, that is, until someone smarter than you, whose intelligence you respect, expresses how much he admires the work and why.
 
Then you re-evaluate it. You say to yourself, “hey, if smart people see something in this, maybe I should give it a second look.
 
This happened for me when I encountered Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus—not at the Art Institute but in the pages of an art history book.
 
Angelus Novus depicts an angel with wings spread wide, facing the viewer. The angel’s body is sketched with sharp lines and simple shapes. It has a human-like face, large eyes, and a slightly open mouth. The background is a muted brown, drawing the eye entirely to the figure of the angel.
 
At first glance, my response was: “What is this?” It seemed almost as if the angel were drawn by a child experimenting with shapes and colors. It felt more like an unfinished doodle than a work of art.
 
But then I read an interpretation of it by Walter Benjamin—someone smarter than I am, whose intelligence I respect.
 
Benjamin called it the Angel of History.
 
History offers a haunting image of death and destruction. The angel, with its wide-open eyes and spread wings, gazes at the wreckage of history—a single, unending catastrophe.
 
It longs to stay there, to repair the damage and awaken the dead, but a storm propels it into an uncertain future, to which its back is turned, so that it can always see the wreckage of the past piling up before it.
 
Walter Benjamin wrote these words about Klee’s Angelus Novus in his essay “On the Concept of History” during an unsettling time in his life.
 
It was 1940, and he was living in exile, having fled Nazi Germany due to his Jewish heritage.
 
At the time this essay appeared, Benjamin was in France, interned in a camp for “undesirable foreigners” before his eventual release.  
 
He then attempted to escape to Spain, but was denied entry at the border. By September 1940, this great scholar was dead.
 
Benjamin’s brilliant interpretation of the painting was shaped by his own experiences of exile, loss, and the catastrophic events unfolding in a Europe that was then at war.
 
The angel’s inability to repair the wreckage of history reflects Benjamin’s own despair in the face of overwhelming destruction.
 
If even angels cannot bear the burden of history, how can we, mere human beings, carry it?
 
The weight of the wreckage is too heavy for our shoulders. We are not strong enough.
 
But today is Easter. And today we have a message for Benjamin, Klee, and for everyone else who is open to it.  
 
God is strong enough. In his omnipotent mercy, he bore this burden on his own shoulders in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. And he proved his strength by raising Jesus from the dead.
 
A few of us have had lively discussions after worship these past few weeks. We’ve been talking about the generation now coming into adulthood, known as “Gen Z.”
 
What observers have noted about this generation is that they are asking foundational questions—about life, love, work, and faith. With regard to Christianity, one of us noted, they want to know about its core.
 
This is it. Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead. That is its core.
 
Listen, everything is at stake here.
 
You believe that God is good and that what he created is good. Really? How do you know? Show me your evidence. That’s your opinion, but not necessarily mine.
 
You say that God is on the side of life and not on the side of death. Really? How do you know? That too is no more than an opinion.
 
You believe in an afterlife. You say there is a heaven where all the good people go after they die. Really? How do you know? Frankly, that seems pretty far-fetched to me.
 
But if Christ has been raised from the dead, then these beliefs become intelligible, filled with actual content, and not the empty product of wishful thinking.
 
It is at the site of the empty tomb that God comes to meet us and addresses our deepest needs, questions and hopes.
 
Now let’s make sure we’re clear here. I’ve said from this pulpit before that Christianity is not about a system of ideas. It is really about a claim. This Jesus, who was crucified, is the very one whom God raised from the dead.
 
This is the claim of the eyewitnesses.
 
Here I am talking about those who knew Jesus, who talked with him and learned from him. They saw him die, and then they saw him again, when he appeared to them alive.
 
The witness of those first disciples, our mothers and fathers in the faith, is a reliable witness, supported by grace (Mark A. Villano).
 
It is reliable, because there was no predisposition in them whatever to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. This was not something they expected, secretly longed for, or even conceived of.
 
When the women left to go to the tomb on Easter morning, they fully expected to find Jesus’ dead body there.
 
They don’t yet know that something’s happened that’s changed the world forever.
 
To them the world is still the same place where all the living can do is to bring spices to mask the stench of death.
 
The women are stricken with grief, overwhelmed by sorrow, their minds still reeling from their painful loss.
 
We can infer this from the fact that they gave no thought about how to remove the stone before they set out. There’s no suggestion in our Gospel lesson that the problem ever occurred to them at all.
 
But it doesn’t matter, because when they arrive there the tomb is open.
 
Their grief turns to perplexity. Something’s amiss here.
 
Just then two men appear, in clothing as bright as lightning, standing beside them. Their garments are like Jesus’ own clothing in the transfiguration (9:29).
 
No doubt Luke means for us to understand them as angels.
 
Only these are not the angels of history. Unlike Benjamin’s angel, they are not paralyzed by the wreckage of history; rather, they declare victory over death.
 
Unlike Benjamin’s angel, they do not silently witness death and destruction; rather, they boldly announce life and new creation.
 
Unlike Benjamin’s angel, they do not face the past, so that they always see its wreckage piling up before them; rather, they point the women to a new future.
 
They are angels of hope. They stand on the far side of our history—not disconnected from it, but fully involved in it. They represent its destination. They are heralds of the true future of everything.
 
However, it’s not the vision of the angels, as impressive as that is, that prompts the women to consider an alternative explanation for the empty tomb.
 
Rather, it’s when they remember the words of Jesus to them. In order to understand the significance of the empty tomb, the women must “remember.”
 
Jesus predicted his passion twice while teaching his disciples in Galilee. The women “remembered his words,” namely, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day be raised.”
 
Their perplexity, turned to fear, now turns to clarity. They are no longer in distress.  
 
They do not continue looking for the body. Nor do they continue their conversation with the angels. Instead, they resolve to go to the Eleven and to all the rest and tell them what they witnessed.
 
Luke is showing us here something worth noting. To recognize the truth about Jesus is an effect of the Word of God.
 
Luke makes this clear later in the chapter when he recounts the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They meet a stranger who begins talking with them.
 
It’s the risen Christ, only they do not recognize him. It’s only as he explains the Scriptures to them, it’s only as he shows how the Law and the Prophets foretold that the Christ had to suffer before entering into his glory that their hearts begin to burn within them.
 
Afterward, he sits down with them to share a meal. And they recognize him in the breaking of the bread.
 
Listen, we too find the witness to the risen Christ nowhere else. When the Word of God is preached, when the Eucharist or Holy Communion is celebrated, the Risen Christ is present and at work within them. He assures us through these means of grace that he is the risen and ascended Lord.
 
Like the women at the tomb, we have testimony to the resurrection better than that of angels. We have Christ’s own word to us.
 
And that word is proclaimed to us this Easter Sunday. “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9).
 
The women for their part believed. Their actions reveal that they responded affirmatively to this word.
 
They remember the words of Jesus and they proclaim the good news of his resurrection to the apostles without delay.
 
But the first recipients of the proclamation regarded it as an “idle tale” and did not believe the women. 
 
Their response must have frustrated the women. Bible students wonder: “Why didn’t the apostles listen to the women?”
 
We can contemplate a further question and ask: “why don’t people listen to preachers?”
 
They hear it as an idle tale, as nonsense.
 
Luke uses a strong word here. It refers to stories told by sick people, whose illness has made them delirious, or by people who, for whatever reason, have a distorted perception of reality.
 
People then as well as today respond to the message of the resurrection of Jesus with doubt and disbelief.
 
And some even heap scorn on the preachers, regarding them to be sick people with warped minds.
 
But the Word of God is not without effect.
 
There’s always at least one positive response. Often it is a tentative response. It is exploratory.
 
Peter does not accept at face value the women’s testimony. He needs to spend time himself in the empty tomb, examining the grave clothes. Like many today, he has to discover and own the message for himself."
 
And that’s okay. We have to give people time to consider the claim: Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, for us and our salvation.
 
They need the patient support of sincere Christians.
 
That’s what the church is there for. The church needs to be a place where people feel free to ask questions about faith, where people feel that the only stupid question is the one they don’t ask.
 
The church needs to give them time to deepen their understanding of what it means to be a believer in the risen Christ.  
 
For example, C.S. Lewis was converted to faith in stages. He first came to realization that God exists, and only later did he come to place his faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
 
In conclusion, Luke tells us about the reaction of the women and the apostles to the empty tomb, not only because it completes the narrative he has to tell about the resurrection.
 
He writes it to make an appeal to whoever hears it. He writes it so that we may believe their witness.
 
The church understands his intent. That is why it continues even today to proclaim the message of hope for all peoples, all generations: Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead.
 
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his friend Eberhard Bethge while awaiting in execution in a Nazi concentration camp.
 
Easter? We pay more attention to dying than to death. We are more focused on the act of dying than on overcoming death. Socrates mastered the art of dying: Christ overcame death as the last enemy. There is a real difference here. One is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection.
 
It’s not from the art of dying, but from the resurrection of Christ, that a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world.
 
If a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal would be changed.
 
To live in the light of the resurrection—that is what Easter means.
 
Bonhoeffer’s words here reflect his conviction that the resurrection of Jesus is the source of new life, recreating and renewing all things in Christ.
 
“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind” (Isaiah 65:17).
 
The resurrection of Jesus is a source of healing, wholeness, and renewal, as is depicted in our Old Testament lesson for today. We learned last time that all these good things mentioned there are captured in the word “shalom,” a Hebrew word found in the Old Testament that is rich in content.
 
Shalom is captured less in words than in images--images of prosperity, abundance, the flourishing of all life—human, plant, and animal.
 
In scripture, the renewed creation is often depicted under the image of a great banquet, gourmet delicacies and the finest wines.
 
One of the most striking Easter celebrations I have experienced in recent memory was an Easter vigil at a very large church. The worship lasted until 1:30 in the morning. We then exited in the dark through long corridors. At the end, was a door, which, when opened, afforded us a lit view of an enormous spread in the dining area below.
 
There were meats, breads, fruits and vegetables and deserts. And then there were wines and beers and even liquor! Nothing could have said "Easter" better than what was there before us!
 
This morning we have before a table on which there is bread and wine. Today especially we see it as a foretaste of the great feast that we will enjoy at the renewal of all things.
 
"Look, the risen and victorious Christ says, I am making all things new." Alleluia. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. 
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