Text: Luke 24:1-12

Many years ago, when I was in college, the glee club sang a song called, “Careless Love.” It was a sort of cowboy ballad for men’s chorus that pined over a faithless lover, one who had too easily professed his love, only to ride off into the sunset in search of the next adventure and his next amorous conquest. I suppose that many of us, at one time or another, have let the words, “I love you,” slide carelessly off the tongue. In the heat of the moment, in the rush of emotion, in the passion of an intense connection, we have made a pledge we had neither the capacity nor intention to keep. Careless love has no role in the Easter story; Christ’s love for God, for creation, for us, was carefully thought through and deliberately played out.

This week, I was privileged to have a glimpse of another kind of love – committed love. In the last days of his life, I spent some time with Bill and Ruth Owen. Whatever the details that go with a lifetime of living together, there was clearly a commitment to loving one another that served them well over the 62 years they were married. I suspect in significant ways that love survives Bill’s death. Among other things, true love always contains an element of commitment, of being present and intentional about relationship over time. True love finds a way to weather the changes of life, the ups and downs, the challenges with the joys. Christ’s loving commitment to God, to creation, to us, shines through all his life and ministry, even when those of us he has counted on let him down, fail to show up, deny him and betray him.

Then there is, in the life and ministry of Jesus, ample evidence of dangerous love, the kind of love that might cause one to lose one’s life in the service of the beloved. In the last weeks of his life on earth, Jesus walked a way from Galilee to Jerusalem that was fraught with danger. There were not just the natural dangers of a sometimes rugged countryside – blazing sun, choking dust, thirst, hunger – but also the threat of bandits, the challenge of those who would not welcome readily a Galilean peasant, the threat of Roman soldiers and of the religious authorities of his own Jewish faith. He would be criticized for his choice of company, for his table companions, for not observing properly the religious rules. Some would even be angry with him for healing the sick, feeding the hungry, liberating the possessed, and proclaiming God’s way of love and compassion, of peace and justice.

By the time he got near Jerusalem, we know his enemies were actively plotting to kill him. All this talk of peace and justice, of love and compassion, all this healing and feeding and casting out demons was stirring people up to believe that their lives really could be different, that love of God and neighbor, with a little healthy self-love thrown in, really might transform their lives, was too much for those who thought they were in power to take. This man, his teaching, his actions were dangerous, dangerous to the status quo, to the careful collaboration the religious authorities had worked out with the Romans. So, because of their fear, their perception of threat to their very comfortable way of life, they decided to make life dangerous for Jesus instead. They would find a way to kill him before he stirred up any more trouble.

What did Jesus do, knowing full well that they were plotting to kill him? Did he retreat? Retract? Go into hiding? Cut a deal with those who were threatening him? No, he rode right into Jerusalem in a chaotic and colorful procession, sitting regally on a donkey, while the people praised him as their king, the Messiah sent from God. Then he marched into the temple, clearing out the sacrifice sellers and money changers, calling them thieves. Following that inflammatory action, he spent the rest of the week right there in the temple courtyard, preaching and teaching, in direct confrontation of those who were out to get him. Dangerous actions born of dangerous love!
Being a true lover, a committed lover, not a careless one, what else could he do? True love is dangerous love. It always runs the risk of getting us into trouble. We know, in Jesus’ case, it led to a midnight arrest, a travesty of a trial and his execution on trumped up charges as an example to anyone else who might come along to challenge to the authority of those who thought they were in power.

Oh, when they buried him in such a hurry, in Joseph’s tomb, when they rolled that big old stone in front of the entrance, when they placed their guards at the entrance, you better believe they thought they were done with him. One more threat to their supposed power and authority averted, one more rabble-rousing peasant dispensed with, one more attempt to stir up the people and lead them out of their poverty and oppression crushed. They retired to their fine houses to celebrate the Passover in peace or they hurried off to party in Pilate’s palace. Their work was finished; they would live to rule another day. The “King of the Jews” was dead.

The scene changes. It’s an early morning setting, the sun breaking over a stone cold tomb, a group of women emerging from the morning mist, approaching the cave in the rock with more than a little apprehension. They had all spent the preceding Friday afternoon on the side of a rocky hillside watching the life slowly ebb from their beloved teacher as he hung on a Roman cross. The men had mostly hid in fear for their own lives, but these women could not abandon their beloved teacher in his time of suffering; their love for him would not allow them to hide. Love compelled them to be present, even in their helplessness. It was the only way they knew to express their love. Perhaps, it was less dangerous for them than for the men among his followers as women were considered fairly inconsequential in that culture. Still, it had to be dangerous for them to stand there, keeping watch, loving hearts overflowing with tears.

They knew their place, it was to be with the one who suffers, and they knew their role, they needed to anoint the body that had been so quickly buried. They were up before dawn and off to do their work. As they emerge from the haze into the garden, they rub their eyes in wonder and disbelief. It appears the stone has been rolled back from the entrance and the cave stands open. They’re speechless. What can this mean? Grave robbers? Followers, or enemies, stealing the body undercover of night? Clearly, something is not right here, not at all what they expected. Is it another risky act of dangerous love for them to show up, in faithfulness, to give appropriate care to their friend’s dead body?

Well, they had come this far. What was to be lost now if they investigate further? Perplexed and frightened, they peer into the darkness of the cave, sidling in one by one, as their eyes adjust to the dim interior. Slowly it dawns on them, as the day has begun to dawn all around them, there is no body. It simply isn’t there. As hearts begin to sink in confirmation of their fears, those ever familiar figures in dazzling clothes, the ones with whom we are so familiar, appear before them for the first time. They must have been blown away. The text says they were terrified and bowed their heads in the presence of such blinding light.

I have to confess that the words the “light figures” utter are among my favorite in the Easter canon. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” I almost used this as my sermon title, but I decided using the word dead in the title of an Easter sermon probably isn’t cool. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” What a powerful, perplexing, life changing challenge. The great irony, of course, is that they weren’t seeking the living. They had come precisely to anoint a dead body; that’s what they were expecting to find. “He is not here…” Yes that seems obvious. “…but has risen.” Risen? What can that mean? “Remember, how he told you…” Words and images began to flood their memories. He had talked about dying, which they had seen with their own eyes…and then there was that more obscure piece about rising again in three days. Yes, yes, he had said something like that but they had somehow thought he was talking about resurrection at the end of time, not now, not so soon.

Before they have time to finish processing all that is happening to them they find their feet carrying them back to the place where the other disciples are in hiding with this amazing news. But nothing comes easy for these women. Are they received with shouts of joy? Do the men gather round to hear every detail of their remarkable story? No, they are dismissed for what Tom Wright calls their “stupid, useless talk.” The others dismiss their idle tale as the nonsensical chatter of a bunch of hysterical women. Again, love leads them to danger, to the danger of being written off, disbelieved, ridiculed, but love will not be quiet. The story will be told - for their love of God, their love of Jesus and maybe even their love for the recalcitrant disciples. Love like that can get you laughed at, put down, dismissed but it won’t allow you to hide the truth of your own experience. Dangerous love!

Now Peter, maybe we’ll call him sneaky Pete, is carrying around a large load of guilt. He knows the shameful way he denied being a follower of Jesus, denied even knowing him. When his love for Jesus got too costly, he caved. It wasn’t strong enough to carry him through the danger of being confronted in public. He must have started thinking that, if, just possibly, what the women were saying was true, he would have some explaining to do. He may have been worried how Jesus might call him out in front of the others. He might have been afraid of what his punishment would be for losing faith, though the weight of his guilt felt like all the punishment he could ever handle. He might have remembered some of Jesus’ teaching about love and forgiveness and hoped, in his heart of hearts, that there might be some healing forgiveness for him. Whatever his motivation, he heads off for the tomb on his own and finds it empty, just as the women said. He returns to the group full of his own sense of amazement. Clearly something mysterious is going on.

It is interesting that in none of the gospels do we get a picture of the Resurrection itself. There are no eyewitness accounts. We are left with the testimony of those who went, very early in the morning, seeking some sort of physical closure with their dead friend, only to be confronted with a new order of things. Surely, resurrection is unnatural. Our Seasons of the Spirit resource says, “The Resurrection is an incredible event – not just in the popular sense of spectacular, but also in the sense of ‘not credible’ or ‘not to be believed.’” They go on to say that “Though firmly asserting that Jesus is risen, Luke shows that the Resurrection can not be fully apprehended by human minds and hearts” (Seasons of the Spirit, Congregational Life, Lent Easter 2007, p. 76.)

For the first followers, as for us, the lure and practice of dangerous love, of God’s love in Jesus Christ, challenges what we think we know about reality in the same way it challenged what the Roman and religious authorities thought they knew about power and control. As the choir sang a couple of weeks ago, “They buried my body and they thought I’d gone, but I am the Dance and I still go on.” Or as we sang this morning, “In the grave they laid him, love by hatred slain,” but “Love lives again that with the dead has been…” In order, to understand something of the Resurrection, we have to let go of old assumptions and take on a new frame of reference. It requires dangerous love or love willing to face danger, to let go of the security of a settled worldview, to consider that love, dangerous love, is the power that rules the universe and fuels our lives, not might that attempts to control and dominate.

The Seasons of the Spirit material, again, says, “The empty tomb is God’s new frame and cannot be compared to other experiences. The Easter message is not just about a change in Jesus, but also about change in all faithful followers. To live as an Easter people is to live with a mystery and to allow that mystery to transform us” (Seasons of the Spirit, Congregational Life, Lent Easter 2007, p. 76.) As an Easter people, let us be challenged by the words of a frail poet from another century, “Whoso loves, believes the impossible” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning.) To live as an Easter people is to risk dangerous love, the kind of love that both challenges the status quo and the powers that be, that insists that all are welcome in God’s realm, that compassion and care, that peace and justice are the way of life in the coming culture of God.

I love the older words for our song of praise this morning, words that challenge a stale reality and affirm the true mystery of the Resurrection: “Where’s thy victory boasting grave?” “Love’s redeeming work is done…death in vain forbids him rise…ours the cross the grave the skies, Alleluia.” Amen.