Luke 24:1-12: Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Presented to Swift Current Corps Easter Sunday, 04 April 2010 and The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries, 21 April 2019 by Captain Michael Ramsay

This is the 2010 version; to read the 2019 version, click here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2019/04/luke-241-12-why-do-you-look-for-living.html

Now I must admit that when I was a kid I used to be quite good at hide-and-seek and I still have a great way to not get caught – Rebecca and Sarah-Grace, cover your ears – you see, when I am hiding and they are looking for me, I keep my eyes open and watch to see where they are or listen to discover where they are looking and as soon as they have looked in a particular spot, I will move from where I am to that spot where they just were, knowing that they won’t look there again. This works really well with a house with an upstairs and a downstairs because as soon as the kids come upstairs, one can make a beeline straight for the downstairs.

Hide and seek: Did you ever play hide and seek? There is one thing that you notice playing ‘hide and seek’ with mostly little kids – younger than my two – but sometimes with older ones as well. It is really quite neat. Most of them when they are hiding, they close their eyes. So when you call out, ‘1-2-3, I see you’ – you will sometimes hear – ‘no you don’t! …I have my eyes closed’ or ‘1-2-3, I see you’ - ‘you can’t; I’m invisible still…I still have my eyes closed.’ This is not totally unrelated from our text today, as people are here wondering why they can’t see Jesus.

In our pericope today the disciples and the women are convinced that they know where Jesus is and what is happening. They look in the spot where they know he went, the tomb for the dead, but Jesus has moved. He is back in the land of the living. And so the angels ask, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

The people in our story today have no expectation that Jesus will rise from the dead. Even though he alluded to the fact that he will rise from the dead (Luke 9:22, 44; 18:32-33) and even though he himself has raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11), no one had ever been raised from the dead like this before so they did not expect it – and really can we blame them? When is the last time you went to a funeral and the funeral home director or the minister opens the coffin and says, now where did your uncle John get to? Did anyone see John? Hmm, I wonder if he has just become alive again and walked out the door. I hate it when that happens…

The women head out to the tomb it says with spices in hand. Luke 23:56 tells us that the women in Jesus life prepared these spices before the Sabbath began but waited until after to anoint the body;[1] so what is the purpose of anointing the body? Some have suggested that it has to do with an embalming practice of sorts but, of course, the Jewish people never practiced embalming;[2] however, it does still have to do with a burial rite of the first century Palestinians (cf. Shabbath 23:4,5).[3] The women are preparing to see a dead man. They don’t believe yet in the imminent resurrection.Mark – in his gospel - lets us listen to the women’s conversation en route to the tomb. On the way to the grave, what are they talking about? What’s on their minds? Are they discussing the possibility of the resurrection? Are they wondering if…maybe…could he have risen from the dead? No. What Mark records in his gospel is that they are concerned with the rock in front of tomb. Who’ll roll it away they wonder? They think they are going to see a dead man sealed in a tomb. They don’t know he’s alive.It must to them then seem like everything that the women and the disciples had pinned their hopes and dreams on was for nothing. Do we ever get like that? Do we ever get disillusioned? This must be what it feels like for the women at first, seeing as they head out with these spices. They are in mourning going out to pay respect to a dead leader rather than a risen saviour. They are out there looking for the living among the dead.

Do we ever get like that? Do we ever look for the living among the dead? Do we ever come here to church as if we are headed out to a funeral rather than a victory party? Do we ever come here on Sunday morning to pay tribute to a dead historical figure and read eulogies about his life? Sunday – do we treat it like a funeral service?

Look – church services have some of the same trappings as funerals / memorial services. In a funeral we sing some favourite songs; in church we sing some favourite songs. In a funeral we read some favourite scriptures and at church we read some favourite scriptures. We often have flowers and pictures of the deceased. There are often flowers and pictures, depictions of Christ in church. At a funeral we talk about the life of the person who has passed away. In church we speak about Jesus; do we do it as if he has passed away? Do we ever come here as if we are looking for the living among the dead?

I think of some comments that I read on-line recently. I often scan newspapers and such quickly on the computer to see what the top headlines are and what is going on in our world. Nowadays a lot of these stories have an option for people to post comments at the bottom of a story. I was reading this one story recently. It was a horrible story actually. The CBC headline said ‘Christians celebrate Palm Sunday’ or something like that and when you clicked on the article it had nothing much to do with that at all.[4] It was just an open attack on the Roman Catholic Church, highlighting some of the sex abuse scandals that the press likes to report ad naseum. The headline said ‘Christians celebrate Palm Sunday’ and then the article just attacked the church. This is certainly a sign of the times in our country as we move further and further away from our Lord and Saviour but one of the things that struck me was the comments underneath posted by the general public, readers of the article. There were a number of commentators upset at the article, of course. There were a lot of anti-Christian comments as well, however, and people attacking religion in general and Christians in specific. One comment someone made caught my attention. This person wrote that with all of this fighting going on about the church, Christ is probably ‘rolling over in his grave’…now I don’t know if you catch the significance to this comment or not – Christ is probably ‘rolling over in his grave’- but someone did because the reply to that comment went like this… Jesus won’t be rolling over in his grave because he is no longer in the grave. He has risen from the grave. This is an important distinction. He’s not dead; he is alive. We should not look for the living among the dead.

In our story today, we are told that the women who go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body are perplexed by all this (Luke 24:4) because Jesus isn’t lying in his grave, like their other friends and relatives that have passed away. They are perplexed and while they are staring at where is body is supposed to be … suddenly these two men (Luke 24:4), angels (cf. 24:23, Matthew 28:2-5; Mark 16:5), appear beside them! Can you imagine? It says that the ladies are frightened – no kidding – can you imagine? Again, you arrive at a viewing before a funeral. Uncle John, or whoever, isn’t in his coffin where he is expected to be, and the room that he is supposed to be kept in for safekeeping is wide open and while you are standing there with your cards and flowers in hand - suddenly two brightly shining angles appear beside you. This would be quite a thing. Is it any wonder that the women were afraid? Who wouldn’t be just a little bit startled at all this? Is it any wonder too that when the women told their friends this story that their friends didn’t believe them (NIV); it says that they thought the women were talking nonsense (NIV) or making up some idle tale (ESV, Luke 23:10-11). And really what would you think? Would you think that an executed person – a person that you may have seen executed yourself - would be found among the living or the dead?

The women go on, of course, to tell the disciples all that these two angels, these two men in shining clothes, told them[5]: “‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again’” (Luke 24:5-7; but cf. Matthew 28:7, Mark 16:7; cf. also Luke 9:30-31) It is after that that they remember Jesus words and begin to realize the truth of the resurrection and what exactly Jesus has been talking about all along (cf. 9:22, 44; 18:32-33). You see they had come to the tomb looking for Jesus – who is alive – among the dead. Now even in the midst of all this unbelief, Peter runs out to the tomb to take a look for himself, verse 12, and he takes a look and he sees the Jesus burial clothes, the linen strips lying there and he doesn’t quite know what to think (cf. John 20:3ff.). It says he left there wondering exactly what had happened.[6]

Now – of course – 2000 years later, we know what happened (cf. Mark 16, Luke 24:36ff., John 20:19ff., John 21; Acts 2-4, 10,13). We have a mass of eyewitness accounts and historical documents explaining to us that Jesus, the Son of God, Jesus rose from the dead (cf. Mark 16:9ff., Luke 24:13ff., John 20-21, Romans 1:3-4; 1 Corinthians 15:3-5; Philippians 2:6-11; Colossians 1:15-20; cf. also Gospel of Peter 35-42). Even in our Bibles here, all four Gospel accounts relate how Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour of the World rose from the grave (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20). Historically, legally, theologically there is no compelling evidence to direct us to any other conclusion than that he rose from the grave,[7] defeating death but that doesn’t make it any less surprising when you are in the midst of it but the good news is of course that they all do get it – and I invite you to read the end of the story in your Bible this week. There is only another page to Luke’s Gospel if you have been reading it along with the rest of us as we have been looking at it the past few weeks. And even if you read the whole book of Luke from cover to cover, I can’t imagine that it would take you much more than an hour to read. It is exciting too because as the days and weeks unfold, a number of the disciples – hundreds of them – actually do see Jesus (cf. Luke 24:12-29). They see that he rose from the dead and they get it. They understand that what they thought on Palm Sunday was right: Jesus is the King of Kings and the Prince of Peace. He isn’t just a dead good moral leader or a failed revolutionary, he really is not only King of the Jews, as was written on his cross (cf. Mark 15:26; John 19:19-21; Luke 23:38; cf. also Matthew 2:2, 27:12; Mark 15:2-12; Luke 23:3); but indeed he is Lord of heaven and earth. He has risen from the dead. He is real and we have a real access to God today.[8]

I am reminded of an object lesson that I saw from an Officer – Captain Gord Taylor – when he was posted in Maple Creek a few years ago. It made an impression on me. Do you remember those bracelets that were once so popular? They said WWJD or What Would Jesus Do? Now these are good for a couple of reasons: 1) when we see them we hopefully think of Christ and 2) Hopefully they can be a wonderful tool for evangelism as people see them and ask us about them we can share our faith with them. Gord made a very good point about those bracelets though: He said that instead of WWJD, What Would Jesus Do, they should say, Jesus what should I do?

Do you get the subtle difference? The difference is that he is alive – so we can actually ask Jesus what we can do. This is the difference that I invite us all to recognize here on this Easter Sunday. Jesus isn’t just a dead leader - moral, political, or otherwise, whose code of ethics or political ethos we should follow, Jesus is Lord whom we should serve. Rather than just talking about what we think he would do in a difficult situation, we can come to him in any situation and ask him, “Jesus, what should I do?” This is important. We don’t just need to talk about a person who lived 2000 years again, we can speak to the directly to the ruler of heaven and earth, who is alive, who is here and who is -in essence- standing in our midst.

Let us call upon him now.
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[1] CF. RCH Lenski. The Interpretation of St. Mark’s Gospel. P. 737, for a different opinion: he believes that these indeed may be entirely different spices.[2] Walter Wessel: Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM: Mark, The Resurrection (16:1-8), Book Version: 4.0.2 : it was a single act of love and devotion probably meant to reduce the stench of the decomposing body. Palestine's hot climate causes corpses to decay rapidly. Thus the action of the women seems strange. Perhaps they thought that the coolness of the tomb would prevent the decomposition process from taking place as rapidly as it otherwise would.[3] Leon Morris Luke: An Introduction and Commentary, (TNTC3: Downers Grove, Il.: InterVarsity Press, 1988), note on Luke 25:53-56, Disc: Tyndale Old and New Testament Commentaries (US) (3.0f) version 2009-10-09T22:50:34Z.[4] CBC News, 'Christians observe Palm Sunday' Last Updated: Sunday, March 28, 2010 11:06 PM ET (cited 28 Mar 2010) Available on-line: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/28/pope-palm-sunday.html#ixzz0jgY29PGv[5] Luke Timothy Johnson, ‘Luke 24:1-11’ in Interpretation 46 no 1 Jan 1992, p 57:
“Luke's diction in describing their ‘shining clothes’ recalls to the careful reader the "two men" (Moses and Elijah) who conversed with Jesus at the transfiguration (Luke 9:30-31) as well as the "two men" who interpret for the disciples Jesus' ascension (Acts 1:10). We recognize in these intertextual signals an allusion to Luke's presentation of Jesus as "the prophet like Moses" whom God raised up.”[6]Cf. Walter L. Leifled.The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM: Luke/Exposition of Luke/VI. Concluding Events (19:45-24:53)/C. The Resurrection and Ascension (24:1-53)/1. The Resurrection (24:1-12), Book Version: 4.0.2 : “Peter leaves, "wondering" (thaumuzon) to himself about this. In Luke people "wonder" about things that are hard to understand. The word does not in itself imply either belief or unbelief. We conclude that Peter is still incredulous at this point, not because the verb implies it, but because his visit to the empty tomb fails, in spite of the evidence, to evoke a statement of belief from him (cf. John 20:8).”[7] Cf. NT Wright, ‘The Challenge of Easter’ (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP: 2009), pp. 30-32.[8] Frank J. Matera, ‘John 20:1-18’, in Interpretation 43 no 4 O 1989, p 406: “Jesus is most present to the church precisely because he has returned to the Father. Although the church no longer experiences Jesus in a physical way as the disciples once did, its experience of him is real and intimate because of the life-giving Spirit he has sent upon it.”