NL 339: Resurrection - Luke 24:1-12

image: Micheletb, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

April 4, 2021

Luke 24:1-12

Initial Thoughts

  • Preaching, proclaiming, “offering God”

    • “A theological lecture talks about God. A sermon offers God. “ Marty, M. E. (2009). Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C (Vol. 2, p. 348).

      • Embrace the mystery, don’t feel like you have to defend Easter.

    • Why is Easter important to you?

    • Why is it important for your congregation?

    • What does Easter compel you to do?

  • Technically this is the last reading of the Easter Vigil and not the Easter morning reading

Bible Study

  • Women to the tomb

    • Bringing spices so Jesus wouldn’t smell bad as people come to pay respects

      • Couldn’t do it earlier due to Sabbath

    • Women traditionally anointed the body of the dead - maybe - not definitive

    • They go expecting a dead Jesus, not an empty tomb

    • Awkward sexist vibe - they don’t believe the women (who support Jesus’ ministry 8:1-3, who watch Jesus’ trial and crucifixion 23:49, Witness Jesus burial 23:55, Go to the tomb and discover the resurrection) but they do believe Peter (the denier)...

    • Luke emphasizes the women more than the other gospels, even recalling their witness later in the Road to Emmaus story.

    • Women’s Bible Commentary paints a more ambivalent view of Luke’s attitude toward women. (Jane Schaberg and Sharon Ringe)

      • “The point seems… to be that the faith of the men who are Jesus’ successors is not based on the word of women, on indirect testimony. Nor is it based on the empty tomb. Peter verifies that it is empty, but the sight creates amazement, not faith.”

      • “Luke’s Jesus is the prophet of the Wisdom of God, but he does not call a community of equals. Women are included in Jesus’ entourage and table community, but not as the equals of men. Women speak prophetically but they suffer as prophets no one hears. Women are models of “listening to the word,” but their prayer and study,... does not lead beyond itself to decisive action to there being recognized as teachers in their own right.” 

  • Why do you look for the living among the dead?

    • We want to cling to what we know (death) instead of entering into what we do not know (resurrection)

    • Tendency to follow the status quo than to risk the unknown (the devil we know…)

    • “Matters of faith are never finally proven, nor faith generated by an incontrovertible argument. Faith is communicated by witness, but that witness is not reduced to how believers have felt about their experiences of Jesus Christ.” Fred Craddock, Interpretation: Luke.

    • How many of our churches are cluttered with the dead? Not people, but ministries, structures, governance, and rituals which have been stripped of meaning and are rotting away while we cover them with spices because we will not let them die?

  • Fear

    • Fear is a natural response to resurrection

    • We are not afraid because we have sanitized the story - too often we hear it as “an idle tale” one to be enjoyed but not transformative

    • Perhaps the women are afraid because when they see the stone rolled away, the missing body of Jesus, and the proclamation of the men/angels, they know that there is no going back - everything has changed - and that is scary

      • How many of us feel that same way as we emerge from COVID and realize what we have always known- there is no going “back to normal”?

      • What might he have to learn from those who have been forced to live into “a new normal” after the loss of a job, loss of ability, loss of a loved one?

  • Remembered his words - the resurrection is made real in both the proclamation and remembering Jesus life

    • Remember is central to the Gospel and to all of scripture. Remember who we are and whose we are. 

      • God remembers Noah Genesis 8:1

      • God remembers Abraham and Lot Genesis 19:29

      • God remembers the Israelites Exodus 2:24

      • Israelit did NOT remember God - Judges 8:34

      • God remembered Hannah 1 Samuel 1:19

      • The Psalmist remembers God Ps. 45:17; 77:3; 78:35; 111:4; 119:52, 55;

      • God remembers God’s people Ps. 98:3; 105:8, 42; 106:45; 136:23

      • God calls Israel to remember whose they are Isaiah 57:11

      • Jonah remembers God - Jonah 2:7

      • Peter remembers the words of Jesus - Matthew 26:75; Luke 22:61

      • In the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup - Luke 22:19

      • “Jesus remember me, when you come into your kingdom” - Luke 23:42

    • Testimony- proclamation is as central to Easter as the resurrection itself

    • They proclaim what they saw, heard and remembered - in what ways have you proclaimed when you have witnessed resurrection (the unexpected, impossible love and grace of God)? In what ways have you heard the good news when you least expected it? How do you remember Jesus’ teachings and life? What will you proclaim?

  • An idle tale

    • The closest followers of Jesus dismiss the women’s message “garbage , drivel, nonsense, crap, bullshit is what it means” Anna Carter Florence

      • “That’s a lot of crap”

    • Resurrection turns the world upside down

    • Resurrection should be hard to believe - 4 different stories which greatly differ from one another

    • Don’t pretend like it is easy

    • In the face of an awful political environment, cancer, declining environment, etc Resurrection seems impossible!

  • 9% success rate - Only Peter does something about the good news

    • We focus so much on numbers- here are the numbers- 91% of people will dismiss the good news as BS

    • But if we do not proclaim then it is 0%

  • Unlike in some of the other Gospels - Jesus never appears to the women in Luke. They witness his resurrection even though they do not “see” Jesus. In this, they provide a better example of discipleship and apostles than the 12 who believe only after seeing Jesus.

    • In Luke’s Gospel, Women speak prophetically (e.g. 1:47-55), but they suffer as prophets no one hears (24:11). Jane D. Schaberg and Sharon H. Ringe, “Luke” Women’s Bible Commentary, p. 511

Thoughts and Questions

  • “Threatened with Resurrection” by Julia Esquivel “This may seem strange to us, that the message of Easter may be threatening. But the truth is that the resurrection of Jesus, and the dawning of the new with him, poses a threat to any who would rather continue living as if the cross were the end of the story.” (Justo Gonzalez, Luke, p. 276)

  • Witness

    • The women are not commanded to tell anyone what they have seen, but, nevertheless, they do so, even when the disciples dismiss them, they keep telling the story - so that later, on the road to Emmaus, they remark on what the women have told them.

    • What is our testimony? What is our witness?

    • How has the good news of resurrection changed our lives so that we cannot return to our fishing nets?

  • How often do we look for the living among the dead? We look to dead ideals and customs for new life (we put new wine in old wineskins) instead of creatively venturing forth into the New Thing God is doing.

Year 3Eric FistlerLukeComment