Sermon for Easter Sunday - The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello - April 17th, 2022

To view a video of the Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello’s sermon, click HERE.

Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Luke 24:1-12

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

This is the question the two angels ask the women who had come to complete the burial rituals they had not had a chance to do when Jesus had been placed in the tomb.

I imagine them standing there, spices and oils in hand, looking around the empty tomb, devastated that Jesus’ humiliation, begun at trial, followed him even after death, assuming someone had stolen the body they came to honor.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

It is not, it turns out, how it first seems to them. Jesus' body has not been stolen, the angels explain. “He is not here, but has risen.”

It was true. Just as he had told them he would be.

Dare they believe? Dare they tell the others what they now know?

These women -- the first evangelists; the first to tell the Gospel truth that Jesus had risen -- had to ignore what their eyes could see. They had to look past the empty tomb, the burial cloths discarded to one side, in order to see what their eyes could not.

For these women, and for us, the tomb was not empty. Not at all. The tomb we call empty was, in fact, filled to the brim.

That tomb was full. It was full of hope. It was full of possibilities. It was full of life that would know no end. The tomb was full of evidence that the power of God’s love was greater than any other force that dared stand in its way.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

How often we share these women’s best instincts. How often we, too, seek the living among the dead.

As a parent, this is something I know too well. As your child grows and becomes more and more who God is calling them to be, a parent’s longing can often be to look for the child they once knew, though they are no longer there. The heart aches to hold the child in a lap, though they no longer fit; to tend a bruised knee, to give a piggy-back.

Trips down memory lane and pining for simpler days are fine, as long as they don’t prevent you from loving and celebrating the child they have become and are still becoming.

We do this with the church as well. We sometimes seek the church of the past with the best of intentions. The church of our childhood, kept safely in the tomb of our hearts, is filled with memories, good or bad. And we return to the tomb expecting that church to be waiting for us.

It can be hard, even disorienting, when we discover that the church we left behind is no longer there. It is new, perhaps unknown to us. Maybe the church has changed, or maybe we have. If we cannot leave behind what was, we will never be able to join in what might be.

Why do we, in the church, seek the living among the dead?

This is an essential question for us to be asking ourselves as we find our way through this pandemic, unsure of what things might look like in the future.

A desire for things to return to “normal” is to seek the living among the dead. Our question as post-Easter Christians, our prayer and our mission is to ask where life is now, not where it once was.

These women; Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women who were with them; these women are not only the first evangelists, they are the saints we need for our day.

They do not yet know what it will look like or what it will mean that Jesus is risen from the dead. They do not know, at this point in the story, how it will be that Jesus will reveal himself to them; in what form he will appear, how they will know or what it will look like.

They do not yet know where new life is, only where old life is no longer.

But they do not wait. They do not need to know what comes next in order to proclaim what currently is.

These women stand in the midst of an empty tomb and see it filled with the potential that Jesus is very much alive; not as he had been, but as he will be.

These women do not hold back from proclaiming their truth to those who would disbelieve. They did not care that it would not make sense, that others could not yet see what they had seen.

This is a critical moment for these women and the rest of Jesus’ followers. For the scenes that follow; the post resurrection appearances of Jesus -- are dependent on them knowing the possibility that Jesus might just appear.

If they could not consider the angels words, if they could not hold out hope that the tomb could not contain the love of God, they would never have known it when it appeared.

Jesus could not be on the beach, grilling fish, if he was back in the tomb. He could not be walking with them on the road to Emmaus, if his body was someplace else unknown.

In order for them to see the fullness of God’s Love in the world around them, they needed to see the emptiness of the tomb.

They needed to stop looking for the living among the dead, and seek the living Christ in the life of the world.

This morning, these women are our evangelists, proclaiming to us the Good News that Jesus Christ is risen today.

And these women are our saints; our inspiration and our example of how it is God asks us to stop seeking the living among the dead. To stop seeking life at the empty tombs of our lives. To allow for the potential that new life is around every corner; a possibility that exists only when we stop insisting it can only be found where it once was.

We do not need to know where it is that the Risen Life of Christ will meet us on the roads of our lives. We need only know that the empty tomb we are in is not, in fact, empty, but full.

It is full of possibilities.

It is full of hope.

It is full of love.

It is full of life.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

© 2022 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello