Early in the morning, just as the sun was coming up, the women who had been with Jesus at his arrest, imprisonment, and death went to the tomb to do what women always did when someone died. They journeyed to lovingly anoint the body with burial spices. They went to grieve the way women grieve . . . by doing what they could. . . .  something . . . anything that would express their love and their sorrow.

I’ve seen it my whole life long . . . I’ve watched women receive notice of death, sometimes in the middle of the night,  and move into action. They clean, they cook, they hold a hand and say comforting words. They do things: needed, useful things. It seems automatic, programmed, even unconscious. Often deep in grief themselves, their hands are busy when their hearts seem to have stopped.

These women did what women always do.

But this was not to be one of those usual times.

That’s the word that begins our reading this morning, ‘but’ . ..

“But on the first day of the week. .. “

‘However . .. yet  . ..  nevertheless ..  . even so . .. still . ..  not withstanding . .. despite that . .  in spite of that . . all the same  . . .though . .. just the same . . . although .. ..”

All those many ways of saying the same thing is not the same old thing . . . there is change here . . .

We know from that word, ‘but,’ that something different has happened. Something unexpected.

But . . .

However  . .. .

For the stone was rolled away: the body wasn’t there and the women were perplexed.

Who wouldn’t have been? Not once in scripture do we have record of any disciple, male or female, who expected this resurrection, or was not surprised by it. No one says on Good Friday, “Oh, yes, Jesus said he was going to die and then be resurrected on the third day. We’ll just wait for his return.”

Even though it hadn’t been that long since Lazarus had been raised from the dead; there is still the expectation that the dead will stay dead.

It’s the scandal of the resurrection.

For it’s true, isn’t it? We are here to celebrate this resurrection, but we are not comforted by it.

We are embarrassed by it.

We don’t know what to do with it. We don’t know how to explain it. And we like things we can explain.

For if we can explain it, we can control it.

We are not comforted by those who dismiss it as a ‘mystery of faith.’

We are troubled by the absurdity of the whole thing, and the arguments that have surrounded it.

If the whole thing was invented, it was poorly done. If it was a hoax, more care would have been taken to pull it off.

Perhaps we wish it to be explained in a more thorough way. Or at least have it passed on by someone we can trust.

There are no credible witnesses. . . only women, and women, as you know, could not even be recognized in a court of law.

Yet, we are told, that the angel who guards the temple tells women that Jesus “is not here, but is risen.”

In John’s account, it is Mary Magdalene who is the first to encounter the risen Christ. Who can trust her? Not even her male counterparts believed her, why should we?

In our text from Luke today, there is no encounter with the risen Christ.

Just the empty tomb.

The shocked women are joined by the men who are just as mystified. You can imagine their confusion, their dismay. The other disciples, incredulous, were stunned and we are told they considered the report of the women to be an “idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

Peter runs and peers into the empty tomb, “amazed at what has happened.”

Later, some disciples will encounter Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

But for now, all we have is the bewilderment of the women and Peter looking into the empty tomb, confused.

Perhaps, Peter connected this empty tomb with Jesus’ predictions, and with what had happened to Lazarus, and remembered what the psalmist tried to articulate: “This is the Holy One’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23)

That would be faith.

Luke is a good choice of gospel accounts for most of us. Because if the disciples didn’t know what was going on, what had happened, if they were confused; what about us?

Two thousand years after the event, we still struggle with the resurrection. We still stand at the empty tomb and ask, Can we really believe this?

What does it mean? What happens now?

In a group of pastors I spoke with last week,  it was almost uniformly agreed that most folks have an easier time embracing  the crucifixion than the resurrection.

Death, we get. We don’t like it, it makes us sad, but it’s natural, and inevitable. And we accept it. And, if we were really honest with ourselves, we would see how our culture worships death.

Pay attention to how it is feared – held in awe – and how it is glorified – for that is what is happening when violent death is presented to us as entertainment on the small and large screen. Our culture’s focus on safety comes from our worship of death. Death remains the most powerful force in our world. We make heroes of those who die . . . another way of glorifying death. And safety has become our national idol, motivated by our fear of death. Death and it’s angels (loss of any kind) form an unholy pantheon that receives the oblations of our culture.

Fear of death morphs so quickly into fear of life that we can’t even see it happening.

What we fear we create.

I am reminded of a friend of mine who lost a beloved pet as a child. It hurt so much to lose that puppy that he refused to ever own another pet, for fear of losing another pet and going through that pain again. And so his fear of loss kept him from ever having the love he desperately longed for and needed.

To live fearing death is to never really live. To spend one’s whole life already dead. A life practicing death.

Resurrection, on the other hand, is beyond our comprehension.

But the resurrection is about far more than life and death. It is about faith in God. It is about faith in God’s reign in our lives and in our world.

Faith in a God who can strengthen us and encourage us even in times of loss.

The real question posed to us this day is whether or not we can appropriate the resurrection into our own lives, whether we can practice the resurrection as something vital and present, in our day and time.

Can we see this as metaphor not about our own fear of death, but as a much larger affirmation of God’s reign in our lives and in our world? Can we see in the empty tomb that our lives matter, all lives matter because of God’s reign in the world? Can we see that there is nothing to fear – no loss so great – not even death—that can not be dealt with through the strength God gives to us?

Can we, in the graveyards of our lives, among the tombs of our lost dreams and expectations be open to God’s surprising us into new things?

For Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara, the empty tomb itself is the key to both our understanding the resurrection and to living the resurrection in our own lives. In her essay, published in Searching the Scriptures, she writes that the empty tomb "returns us to the manger, the place of the child, the place of the rebirth of hope. The empty tomb returns us to ourselves, women and men capable of giving birth and rebirth to the divine, the essence of our own flesh."

Mysteries, you may have been told, are things we cannot understand.

But that is not exactly true.

When my girls were small, together we watched a mama dog deliver a litter of squirming puppies, their eyes still closed. In the midst of the girl’s questions and my answers, I had a different understanding about mystery. We know from biology class about the fertilization of eggs, the division of cells, the development of fetuses and giving birth. But the more we know and the more we understand, the more magical and mysterious birth and life  become. That is mystery.

The mythical nature of Jesus’ birth and the resurrection are both meant to express the belief of those early followers that there was something about this Jesus who was beyond our ability to understand or reason. But also something ‘this worldly.’ Like us, he was born. Like us, he would die. A human being walking among us, teaching, healing, eating, drinking, weeping, laughing, loving, getting angry, needing sleep. He was our brother, our friend. But there is mystery, as well. For he put his faith fully in God. He lived and practiced resurrection. His life, his love, his presence continues. Christ is with us, even now. Here and everywhere among those who seek to live the Way of Christ.

There is more to life and death than we can see. More to who we are meant to be than we have grasped.

We aren’t meant to figure it out . . . . we are meant to live it out.

The empty tomb is not an end in Luke, and it is not meant to be an end for us – it is meant to be a beginning, an invitation to us to practice resurrection in our own lives and in our own histories.

To live our lives trusting in the power of God, seeing the hand of God in our lives, expecting the hand of God in our lives, even when all we might actually see at the time is emptiness.

To practice resurrection is to live in hope, without fear of what ever the world might bring our way . .. without fear or anxiety no matter what happens.  ..

knowing that God can work good through whatever might come.

To practice resurrection is to move beyond our tendencies to ‘seek the living among the dead.’

It is all too easy to see Easter as a celebration of spring, of the natural order of things.

But we would lose the truly radical nature of this message by doing so.

The season of Spring is about continuity. Cycles and constancy.

The resurrection is about change if it is about nothing else.

It is about a truly radical change.

It is about God doing a new thing, breaking the mold, and shaking the very cosmos.

This rising has changed everything. It has given us the gift of new life. An opportunity to live life fully, hopefully, faithfully.

As Paul has written in the earliest account of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians, Jesus’ resurrection is the ‘first fruit’ through which our own is guaranteed.

In practicing resurrection, we, share in the hope expressed by the psalmist, by Paul, and by the early followers of Jesus.

 Just as that first crocus or daffodil or tulip or dandelion each spring contains the promise of new life bursting forth all around, we, too, have within us the promise of this new life.

We shall not die. We shall live. We shall not live amid the tombs, we shall seek the living elsewhere . . . we shall practice resurrection!

This is the day that the Holy One has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.