Preached on at The Great Vigil of Easter, April 20, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Dr. Mark Lloyd Taylor.
Romans 6:3-11
Luke 24:1-12
Empty Tomb, by Gary Smith
Why do you look for the living among the dead? That’s the question our gospel reading poses this morning. One of many questions asked across the twenty-four chapters of Luke’s version of the Jesus story. Some are rhetorical questions that don’t require an answer. Others aren’t really questions at all but accusations or veiled threats. Jesus asks his followers questions. People in need ask Jesus questions, begging for help. The demons ask him apprehensive questions sensing that the end of their tyrannical reign is near. Religious and political authorities throw questions at Jesus – interrogating him; trying to trap him or trip him up; manufacturing evidence against him.
This morning’s question is a real question. Not a trick or a rebuke masquerading as a question. It reminds me of a pair of questions asked at the beginning of Luke’s gospel when the angel Gabriel appears and makes a pair of startling announcements: to Zechariah that his wife Elizabeth – who was barren – would give birth to a son and name him John; and to Mary – a young woman engaged to a man named Joseph – that she, too, would conceive in her womb and bear a son to be named Jesus. In astonishment, Zechariah asks the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” And Mary, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:18, 34)
Why do you look for the living among the dead? Startling to be sure, but different from the stories of Zechariah and Mary. Announcement and question get reversed, as do the roles of question-er and the question-ed. On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee – Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women – come to the tomb. They find the stone rolled away, but when they go in, they are perplexed not to find the body of Jesus. Suddenly, two men in dazzling clothes stand beside them. Not angels, perhaps; but men. Not in white robes – exactly – but in clothes that dazzle, that shine like a star or flash like lightning. The women are terrified and bow their faces to the ground, to the earthen floor of the tomb. The two men stand beside the women, not in front of or above them. Beside them in accompaniment? Companionship? The men bring news – but unlike with Zechariah and Mary and Gabriel, the men ask the women an astonishing question, not the other way around. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” And only then do they make their announcement: “He is not here, but has risen” (Luke 24:5).
This is not yet the story of a vision or an appearance of the risen Christ. We’ll hear such stories later this morning at our second mass of Easter and over the next few Sundays in this Easter season. This morning, at early dawn, the risen Christ is present only in absence, the absence of his dead body. Present only in the question: Why do you look for the living among the dead? A question that acknowledges the women’s astonishment, but also offers them an invitation. Look up, not down. Look ahead, not behind. Look again. Keep looking. But look elsewhere for Jesus, not among the dead. An invitation to transformation. As unexpected as a bolt of lightning. As dazzling as a star. For what is impossible for humans is possible with God.
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Why do you look for the living among the dead?, the men in dazzling clothes ask the perplexed and terrified women. Because it’s the one and only place they knew to look for Jesus. Their crucified Lord. They had seen him taken into custody and abducted from the garden. Mocked. Abused. Paraded through the streets of the city. Dehumanized. Publicly executed. They had paid careful attention to where the tomb in which he was laid was located. Now that the sabbath had ended, they were prepared to provide Jesus proper rites of burial and make up for the rush job of two days earlier. They brought spices to anoint his body. Where else would they look but in his tomb?
Now, I do not believe that this morning’s story with this morning’s question denies that the dead have their place. We remember the dead – those we love, but see no longer. We cherish them. We observe burial rites of our own. We commend the dead to God and lay them to rest in the earth. No! This morning’s question is not: Why do you honor the dead by making space for them, by taking time to mourn and celebrate them? Instead, it’s the question: why do you look for the living among the dead? As if they were dead?
Women from Galilee: Look up, not down. Look ahead, not behind. Don’t stay here in this tomb, between these narrow, stony walls. Move out into the light of a dawning new day. Jesus is not here. He is risen. Look elsewhere. Your search continues. This is not the end of the story. Just the beginning. A rite of initiation. A kind of baptism. But now you know where not to look for the living – don’t look among the dead.
The question posed to the women inside the empty tomb is asked of us this morning as well. Why do we look for the living among the dead? Well, because there is just so much death and dying around us these days. So many life-threatening situations and health-diminishing conditions. Death-dealing social, political, and economic structures and choices and actions. Massive death and death in miniature. It’s everywhere: in the news and on all our devices and even in the most causal of our conversations.
Just from my experience this past week: Ukrainian children and their parents killed by Russian bombs walking to church on Palm Sunday. School shootings in Texas and Florida. Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. military – whatever you thought of that war – now with their temporary protected status in our country revoked and destined to be sent back into the clutches of the Taliban and their regime. Still, and over and over and over again, the images of all those men – gang members or ordinary husbands and fathers – heads shaved, along with all human dignity; shackled; forced to bend over and look only at the ground in front of their feet; guns at their heads, hands and forearms on their necks; shuffling along on their own way of the cross, maybe never to escape from those cages. But also our beloved companions here at St. Paul’s undergoing cancer treatments or in assisted living facilities. Even a day-long, nerve-wracking wait for the automatic deposit of one’s Social Security benefits to appear and with it resources to live on for another month. Government itself twisting the law. Strangling the law.
To sum it all up, on Thursday, after listening to a couple of hours of bad news on NPR, my wife Debra spontaneously composed this variation on Carole King’s song “It’s Too Late.”
Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time /
There’s something wrong here, there can be no denying
America is changing and maybe we’ve just stopped trying /
And it’s too late baby, now, it’s too late
Though we really did try to save it /
Democracy has died and we can’t hide /
And we just can’t fake it
Oh-h-h no-o-o no!
Where else can we look except among the dead?
But! But the words of the Apostle Paul also need to ring in our ears this morning. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of God, so we too might walk in newness of life. Our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. The death Christ died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:3-4, 6, 10-11). Don’t look for the living among the dead. The new among the old. Freedom among enslavement. No! Look up, not down. Look ahead, not behind. We die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with Jesus.
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We have been asked many other questions this Easter morning. Alexander Norman Andrew – the newest-born member of the body of Christ – and all the rest of us, no matter how long it’s been since the day we were born and named or the day we were born anew and named again, sacramentally. Questions like: Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? Different words, but it’s still the question put to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women. Why do you look for the living among the dead? And the questions just before we accompanied Alexander to the baptismal font. A tomb of sorts, yes; but more so a womb of new life. The active verbs in those last six questions transform everything – turning us to Jesus Christ as our Savior, so that we might follow and obey him as our Lord. Up, not down. Ahead, not behind. Will you continue, we were asked? Persevere? Proclaim? Seek and serve and love? Strive and respect? Cherish, protect, and restore? We will with God’s help. We will look for the risen Christ among the living.
A little later, when we are sent out from this place in mission to a dying world, Alexander, in his dazzling clothes – brighter than any star, flashing like lightning – will lead us. He will bear the cross of Jesus, now raised high as a sign of victory over sin and death in all their many forms. Inviting us – astonishingly – to walk in newness of life.
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Resource:
Carole King, “It’s Too Late,” Tapestry (Ode Records, 1977).