Easter Sermon 2016 (Luke 24:1-12)

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. (Luke 12:1-3)

I always find it somewhat bewildering how, when we come together each year on this special day to celebrate the miracle of Jesus of Nazareth being miraculously resurrected from death, our central Bible reading for today tells us nothing about the resurrection as such and, in this case, doesn’t even feature Jesus!

Today – Easter Day – is all about Jesus. Even so, in the wonderful account of this triumphant, holy day that we get in the Gospel according to St Luke, Jesus doesn’t make an appearance. Instead we get two unidentified men who proclaim triumphantly ‘He is not here!’, and that’s a funny sort of catch-cry, if it is intended to convey tidings of comfort and joy!

‘He is not here!’ These words, I remember, were emblazoned across the communion table in the old chapel at Moore College (the seminary I attended), and they seemed rather out of place there too! Our hope when we come together for prayer and worship is generally that He is here! How is it that we come to so victoriously proclaim His absence?

Indeed, the whole scene at the empty tomb that we remember and retell in word and song every Easter Day is unmistakably one of confusion and mixed emotion. We come to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, yet Jesus cannot be found!

There is no Jesus and there are minimal details as to exactly what has happened to Jesus. All we get is this challenge from the two peculiar men: He is not here! Evidently this was confusing for the women at the tomb and, in truth, I still find it confusing!

I read a book recently about how the brain works, entitled “Your brain at work” by David Rock. As many of you know, I’m a prolific reader of sorts. I say ‘of sorts’ because I haven’t read an actual paper book in about twenty years but I listen to my audio books every day (while I drive, while I jog, and while I clean the kitchen at night) which gets me through about a book per week, and I got so much out of this book that I read it twice!

I learnt a lot from “Your brain at work” including how you can only hold a maximum of four things in your conscious mind at any one time, and only then if three of them aren’t too complex. Holding four words in your head simultaneously isn’t too hard but four sentences is a struggle unless three are familiar slogans.

I learnt that there is a complex relationship between stress and mental focus – that too little stress can be as bad too much stress when it comes to giving your complete attention to a particular task. This is something that boxing had taught me already, mind you. I know that if you’re too relaxed when you enter a boxing ring it’s as dangerous as being too tense. In order to avoid getting knocked out you need to take just the right amount of stress with you into the ring!

And the other thing that this brain book reinforced for me was the degree to which our expectations of events determine how we feel and what we think and how we experience those events.

The book detailed how we get increased dopamine levels in our brains when something exceeds our expectations – when we get, for example, a much better mark in our exam than we had expected, or when we receive an unexpected award or get an unexpected promotion at work!

The other side of this, of course, is the emotionally devastating effect of dealing with events that don’t live up to our expectations, which led the author to recommend that we try to maintain generally low expectations most of the time since, if we have low expectations as to how things are going to turn out, we will get a pleasant rush every time things turn out OK and, conversely, we won’t be distraught every time they don’t!

I didn’t take well to that particular recommendation in the book as it reminded me of those odious fellow-students at school and university who would always exit an exam bewailing how miserably they had performed, and yet you knew that when the results came in they were going to be amongst the highest achievers!

Even so, I found the chapter on the effects of expectations to be extremely enlightening, most especially in detailing how our expectations shape our perceptions – how we see what we expect to see and fail to see what we don’t expect to see, and indeed sometimes manage to refuse to see things that should be extremely obvious simply because we did not expect to see them.

When I look at the Gospel reading this morning – the story of the women at the tomb and the subsequent meeting that takes place between these women and the male disciples of Jesus – I see a lot of these elements at work. People are dealing with failed expectations and are not only confused but are blinded to certain realities because things are not turning out as they expected!

If we start where today’s story starts, the women who come to the tomb are expecting to find the body of Jesus there, and they don’t know what to do or what to think when their experience does not align with their expectations.

The expectations of these women were, of course, reasonable. They had been with Joseph of Arimathea only two nights earlier when he had laid the dead body of Jesus in that tomb, and they knew that nobody would have moved it, and they knew that dead bodies don’t move themselves, and so they had every reason to expect that the body of Jesus would be right where they had left it, and yet … He is not here!

The two odd men are there with clothes that (according to the literal meaning of the text) ‘gleamed like lightening’, and I have no idea what that is intended to convey as lightening is not a colour but an activity. Is this meant to suggest that the men were wearing outfits that were flashing with mysterious electrical activity, or does it simply reflect that from the very first retelling of this story there was a significant degree of confusion as to what exactly had happened?

Recognising the confusion, I think, is the key. It helps us to understand why the women didn’t have the presence of mind to quiz the two men a little further – to find out exactly who they were and exactly what they knew about Jesus. The behaviour of the women is entirely consistent with that of people who are confused because things are not turning out as they had expected!

The dialogue between the female disciples of Jesus and their male counterparts exhibits a similar degree of confusion, I think, that has behind it a similar conflict between experience and expectation. In the case of the men especially, I think, the backdrop that we need to keep in mind is the extent to which the whole life and ministry of Jesus had failed to live up to their expectations. As two of these disciples later say of Jesus on the road to Emmaus “we had hoped that he was the one to deliver Israel.” (Luke 24:21)

As twenty-first century Australians, we look at verses like that one with a degree of disbelief, I think. We have read the teachings of Jesus. We have heard the same things from Jesus that they heard. We know what Jesus taught them through his parables and preaching. How is it that these men managed to hang on to the belief that Jesus’ whole purpose was to deliver Israel from Roman rule?

And the answer to that of course is expectations. They were expecting God to send someone to deliver them from the Romans. Jesus had clearly come from God and so they expected Him to deliver them from the Romans, and so, regardless of what He said, their expectations shaped what they heard, to the extent that Jesus died being as misunderstood by His own disciples as He was by those who crucified Him!

And so the male disciples of Jesus dismiss the report of the women as nonsense. Peter goes one better than his male peers by checking things out for himself, but he experiences the same clash between expectation and experience which leaves him befuddled too, and so our happy Easter story ends with the followers of Jesus experiencing a variety of emotions ranging from disillusionment and anger to confusion and fear. Hallelujah! Happy Easter!

There is one moment of clarity in our story this morning, mind you, and it comes when the women remember what Jesus had said to them.

The two men, we are told, say to the women “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 24:5-7)

And we’re told that the women do remember! The author of my brain book refers to this as an “um duh experience” as against an “aha experience”. In other words, this isn’t so much a moment of fresh insight as one of those times when you realise something that you actually should have realised a whole lot earlier.

An ‘um duh experience’ is thus inevitably a humbling experience, as it means recognising the extent to which our perceptions had up to this point been distorted by our expectations. The women manage this, but the men can’t get there, and so for them the penny still fails to drop!

Things do improve, of course, though it takes not hours but days and weeks before the entire band of disciples is fully on board with the new reality – Jesus is risen, and this changes everything! Even so, it all sunk in quite gradually, and so perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves if it takes us a while to get on board with the new reality too.

This is the common testimony you hear from church people all the time – that ‘I was brought up in a Christian household and believed all the right things and then one day it really hit me – Jesus is alive and this changes everything!’ And the basic issue is always the same, I think – it’s one of squaring expectations with experience.

I have no idea what expectations people bring with them when they turn up to church on Easter Sunday morning. I expect we come with a variety of expectations, and most of us are probably reasonably confused. Not many of us, I suspect, come expecting to meet the risen Jesus!

We surely should expect to meet the risen Jesus. If we could remember what He has said to us then we would expect to meet Him here (and all over the place). Even so, I doubt if many of us do come with that expectation, and so when we do meet Jesus it tends to come as a hell of a surprise!

He is not here! That’s more in line with what we expect, I think, and generally we do find that our experiences line-up with our expectations, even if that means failing to recognise Jesus when He’s standing alongside us!

I said at the beginning today that I still find it bewildering how today’s story of the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t feature Jesus at all, and it is bewildering. At the same time though it is a powerful reminder of how the Gospel narrative is a story that is shared amongst peers!

Unlike the Islamic belief that the Qur’an was dictated to Muhammad by God in a way that by-passed all human agency, we recognise the Gospel stories as human stories that have been passed down to us by our brothers and sisters in the faith who tell us of their own experience of Jesus. This is not to discount God’s involvement in the retelling of these stories but it is to say that what we get in the Gospels is God as experienced by us.

Yes, God speaks to us through the Scriptures, but I hear our brothers and sisters in the faith speaking to us through today’s Gospel reading too, as what we have here is their record of their experience on that confusing and disturbing Sunday morning that followed the crucifixion of Jesus.

I hear the voices of our mother and fathers in the faith speaking to us through this story. The fog of their confusion still permeates their testimony at every point and yet I can hear them saying to us as clear as a bell ‘expect the unexpected!’

We come burdened with our own history of disillusionment and pain that colours our expectations and distorts our perceptions and yet, through the fog of our confusion … He is not here. He is risen! Remember what he told you. Let the penny drop. Everything has changed! Nothing is as it used to be. Be amazed and embrace the new life, for He is risen indeed!

First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, on Sunday the 27th of March, 2016.

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Click here for the audio.