April 15, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Acts 10:34-43 preaching peace by Jesus Christ
or Isaiah 51:9-11 Sorrow and sighing shall flee away
Psalm 118:14-29 Confitemini Domino, or 118:14-17, 22-24
Colossians 3:1-4 Set your minds on things above
Luke 24:1-10 Why do you look for the living among the dead?
The first reports out that first Easter morning, according to Luke, are not medical bulletins about a resuscitated corpse, as you might expect on "General Hospital," nor any announcement of a miracle, as you might expect on TV Church, nor a mortician's certificate on the disposition of the remains, as from a horror flick. There is no positive statement at all, no answer. The women who came to the graveyard, Mary Madalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James, and as Luke says, "the other women" who had come with Rabboni from Galilee and were now in charge of his funeral, these women did not come to the graveyard looking for answers. They HAD all the answers. They knew the answers now, and they knew the results of all their efforts: Death was the answer. The answer to all the life of their beloved Yeshua, their "Rabboni"--a diminutive, as we call pastors "Rev" or "Padre" or "Reverend Mother" in affection. Their rabbi, who had preached good news--buenas noticias--to the poor, who had laid hands on their sick and lame, who had introduced them to God as the dear ABBA, who cared for foreigners, who was himself a Mother and a Father to God's dear children, yet who was more to be feared than Caesar, and more to be loved than the rules and rituals, who forbade warfare in God's name, refused to pay taxes for it, and proclaimed God's rule was at hand, to replace tyrants, unjust judges, murderous generals. This beloved, gentle rabbi of theirs had been arrested, tried, executed according to the law. Under Pontius Pilate.
To the question, "Is it worth it to resist injustice?" they had their answer: "You'll get into trouble with the authorities."
To the question, "Is it likely we'll succeed in changing their hearts?" they had their answer: "NO, they'll execute you."
To the question, "Will your friends stick by you in the worst of times?" they had the answer: "NO, the men have all fled in terror. Only us women folk are here, and no one pays attention to us."
The graveyard--that was the answer to all their questions; it was the "final solution" to the question, and one which Caesar adopted and which the Christian West has adopted for two thousand years to deal with Jewish people, and which now even the Israeli state itself has adopted for the Palestinian people. Kill the one who objects, kill the rebel, the conscientous objector, the Jew, the Arab, the Salvadoran, the Filipino, the Iraqi, the Turk. Lynch the Black, drown the homosexual, rape the resistance, deport the immigrant, the illegal alien. Quarantine the AIDS sufferer, jail the addict.
The graveyard is the empire's answer to all human problems. The final solution, the ultimate answer. Send in the troops, says Pilate, time and time again. Send in the Marines, says the U.S. President, or--better--send in the surrogates from our client States. Send the carriers and helicopter gunships to hush dissent.
This is the answer the women already knew when they went to the tomb. It is the answer all of us know, and it is, curiously, as part of our growing up and becoming what we are plased to call "mature" -- it is the answer that all of us expect to all of our own questions. It is the answer that life will (when it ends) bring all of us to learn. The answer is death. Letum omnia finit. The grave ends it all.
But then the women get to the tomb with the equipment to deal with this answer, the things needed for embalming--spices, which they had prepared, because they were adults and after weeping put on their sensible shoes and took along their kleenex and did what had to be done. They were strong, non-hysterical types (hysteria was thought after all to be inflammation of the hustera, the uterus, hence our word). They were more preoccupied, says Luke, with getting some help to roll away the great stone seal.
In the midst of their perplexity about logistics, two young men stood next to them in dazzling clothing, in trajes de luz -- sparkling suits -- gold lamé tuxedos -- like Mexican toreadors, in shockingly shiny costumes. In Mark's gospel, there was only one of them, but here in Luke there are two. The two would become an angel by the time they got to Matthew's account, and never show up in John's tale at all, but here are dressed in such a surprising manner that the women were frightened. These unflappable women who were not afraid of graveyards before sun-up, not afraid of death, turned out to be afraid of LIFE. For this was LIfe they wre looking at--the most wonderful looking beings they had ever seen, glimmering and glistening, scintillating and shining in the dawn. And this frightened them, and what the beings said frightened them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead. Don't look here--he has risen. Don't you remember?"
And then they remembered. It was a community of remembrance--Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who remembered, who did their anamnesis together, their remembrance of Love past, and who reminded the apostles of Jesus'own expectations for his betrayal, his handing over, his death and then his promise and hope that on the third day there would be a resurrection. But, being hard-headed macho men, "these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not belive them." The gospel begins as girl talk and gossip, and can be discounted by those in charge.
The women do not hear from these vibrantly alive mesengers an answer at all, but instead they hear a question, and they hear it as an invitation. The question is one which has been ringing down through the ages, and comes to us as a question again this morning. It is the qustion that will make all the difference in our lives; it will make a difference in 2001 as it did in every one of the other years of these millenia.
WHY DO YOU LOOK FOR LIFE AMONG THE DEAD?
Why have you come to a graveyard, is it all that you can expect of life? Why are you so prepared for death, with all of your embalming fluid philosophy, and so ill prepared for life? Why are you so ready to bury your friends in death and so unready to touch them into life? So eager to bury Jesus in history and so unready to live with him and what he teaches you today? So ill prepared to live vibrantly with your own friends now? Why are you so eager to arrange for funerals in Palestine this day, in Iraq this afternoon, and so unready to heal the planet and the warring families of humankind? Why do you seek the living among the dead? Oh, you were not expecting life? But that is what you get at Easter--an upsetting of your expectations. The institutions of death, which you have learned to cope with, and have made your peace with, -- it is these that are overturned, as the gravestone of Yeshua was toppled. The man who murdered Saint Oscar Romero on the eve of Holy Week some years ago in San Salvador found him at the altar, and the sherriff's police in the garden of Gethsemane, found Jesus praying with his friends in the dark, Peter and the disciples thought they had the answer--for Jesus'friends were armed, too, as Peter was in the garden--a lot of good it did them in either case. The military, who are always there (innocent fresh faced boys, of whom their mothers are proud, their girl friends adoring) are always available to do the dirty work of the rich and powerful. These are the ones we ask to do the final solution, always.
Why do you seek the living among the dead?
The question of Easter provokes us, how is it that we have thought that the instiutions of death will provide us with new life? (We have a chaplain "to the armed forces." Do we fund a chaplain to the Peace Corps?)
Where did we get the notion that by embracing and blessing the death of others we will find new life for ourselves?
Why do we perisst in thinking that the traitor, the liar, the killer, the masked and armed C.I.A. "asset" of our own human hearts, the Somoza of our own West Point, will be of any help to Jesus in his agony? Or to us in Caesar's thrall?
Like the women at the tomb, the church so often is equipped only to bury and embalm those whom the oppressive system we live in has murdered. Oh, legal murders indeed. Ask any of your noodle-spined Senators, who vote perennially to supply U.S. arms to tyrannies, ask them Who will roll away this stone?
The Christian church is always, like the women at the tomb, trying to find the living Christ amongs the dead institutions of a dying world and a moribund religious establishment. The Church is good at burials, and it can service the funerals of the young as gladly as the funerals of us ancianos. "Onward, Christian soldiers," it loves to twaddle. "Onward, Episcopalian generals!" "Onward, Methodist militiamen!" "Onward, Baptist brigadiers!" "Onward, Lutheran lieutenants!" "Marching as to war! O what a lovely war."
The next thing the dazzling messengers have to say at the edge of the Liberator's tomb: "Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee with you that there would be betrayal, there would be a judicial murder, there would be a resurrection."
Well, we don't want to hear it. We have had trouble for two millenia with those words: "Remember a resurrection is coming." We are not prepared for it now, any more than the women at the tomb, and prefer New Age folderol and milque toast "immortality."
Luke tells us that the women who had brought the embalming fluid fled the tomb to tell their friends, to tell the men and boys. For Luke tells us it was after this experience that the women Remembered His Words.
And then they went to the eleven and to all the rest and preached the gospel. The weakest, least powerful among the church had to inform the hierarchy. The simplest, poorest, most disenfranchised, least respected, came to tell the Pope and all the clergy the facts of LIFE.
Now, look for the living Christ. Look for the living Christ in the living Jesus, in the Galilee of the living Church. Amongst the poorest, the weakesst, the ignored. He goes ahead of you--there you will find him, even as he told you.
The poet John Banister Tabb wrote the story simply in "Two Easter Lilies":
Behold the reed of scorn
Like Aaron's rod
Hath blossomed to adorn
The risen God.
And she, the broken bloom
That balmed his feet,
Is first before his tomb,
Her Lord to greet.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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