Breaking News: Luke 24:1-12 - Resurrection of Our Lord

My phone constantly asks me if I’d like to receive “breaking news alerts.”

If, by that, they mean alerts about tornadoes or hailstorms, like the one we had back in March, I’d say “yes.” Incidentally, I do have severe weather alerts enabled in my phone, but the only alert I got was a text message from Elizabeth warning me that a storm was coming and that it was bad.

But big media’s idea of breaking news is any headline or report that’s going to keep me glued to my device so that they can earn ad revenue and maybe even brainwash me. It is as if they are using breaking news to break my brain.

We are living in a time when we are so bombarded with information that it’s getting harder and harder to know what sources are trustworthy. Yet most of us have already made up our own minds, for better or worse, about who we believe will tell us the truth.

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

Today in our Gospel, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other unnamed women deliver the breaking news that Jesus is alive. They had gone to Jesus’s tomb, taking burial spaces to anoint his body. But the stone was rolled away, and the body was gone. Suddenly, two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them and told them the news. Immediately, they go to tell the men what they’d seen and heard. But the men don’t believe them. They dismiss their testimony as delusional nonsense.

Peter ran to the tomb, and he saw with his own eyes the stone rolled away and the burial clothes lying on the ground. But he still didn’t believe it.

Why?

It’s not like the women were strangers. One of the women was James’s mother. They should meet the definition of “reliable witnesses.” They had shown themselves to be more faithful to Jesus than any of the men, as they stayed with Jesus to the bitter end. 

Unfortunately, in that day and age, a woman’s testimony was not considered reliable. And there was, of course, the news itself. Jesus told his disciples many times that he would die and rise again.  But the disciples didn’t believe him then, and they still don’t believe him now.

But their doubts are not dissimilar to our own.

Jesus was risen, but the disciples were broken men with broken spirits. They had lofty expectations of Jesus, that he would rise in power to drive the Romans out of Jerusalem, take back the Temple from the religious elites, and restore the Kingdom to Israel. But the foes they thought Jesus would defeat were the ones who nailed him to the cross. And there was the very real danger that they would share his fate. This is why they spend the many days between Jesus’s resurrection and ascension hiding out.

Their grief at losing Jesus was unimaginable. So was their guilt because they failed him so badly. They denied him, they deserted him, they hid themselves away while he died in agony.

It’s no wonder, then, that they didn’t believe. And they aren’t going to believe for some time.

Faith is a complicated thing. You are not going to believe something because somebody tells you that you should.

You are going to see things and suffer things that will be very traumatic to your faith. You’re going to make mistakes; you’re going to fail. Things are going to happen that are so terrible you never imagined God allowing them to happen. Your faith will be broken, as the disciples were broken.

God didn’t send the female disciples to the men to rub their faces in their failures. God sent them to minister to them. God sent them to resurrect their faith and to restore them to discipleship.

This didn’t happen right away. But the women planted seeds of resurrection hope which will bear fruit in due time, as the risen Christ will minister to them at other times, at other places, and in other ways.

Therefore, if you are in a place today in which you are struggling to trust God or you are finding it hard (if not impossible) to believe, you are in good company. Take heart. You are hearing these words because God has abandoned this world to death and destruction, and because God has not abandoned you to despair.

If you have faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you will see that this hope and this promise of resurrection is not an idle tale but the ultimate truth prevailing upon all reality.

Part of being church together is that when your faith is functionally dead, the faith and the love of others will carry you through those times. In fact, your faith will be fortified through all the times that you have failed, and God has forgiven you; through all the times you’ve fallen, and God has rescued you; through all the traumas and the tragedies that have broken you and God has raised you up again.

The Christian journey is all about dying and rising, every day. You who once were dead are now alive, just as Jesus once as dead and is now alive. It’s a new day and resurrection has dawned. Despair is becoming hope, sorrow is becoming joy. The tomb is empty. Christ is risen. Alleluia. 

 

Luke 24:1-12 (NRSVue)

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ² They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³ but when they went in they did not find the body. ⁴ While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. ⁵ 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. ⁶ Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, ⁷ that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.” ⁸ Then they remembered his words, ⁹ and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰ Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. ¹¹ But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹² 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.