Luke 24:1-
EASTER NONSENSE
There is a lot of nonsense out there around Easter today. People will be looking
for eggs hidden in neat places. Rabbits seem to have something to do with the eggs
(as if rabbits lay eggs!). Some people look at Easter as a pagan celebration. They
say it comes from pagan rites at the coming of spring and the earth’s rebirth. Apparently-
A large group of people this morning don’t get it. They really don’t. They don’t understand what is happening. And in this, they aren’t much different from the first people who happened upon Easter. We hear the words describing the day and the reaction of the people to the first Easter as saying, “Their words seemed to them like nonsense.”
That first Easter had its share of nonsense connected to it. It was nonsense to think that women could single handedly roll a big stone away. It would be nonsense to think that the posted guard to keep Jesus in the grave would be much help in letting them open the grave and break the seal Pilate put there in the process to put their ointments on Jesus’ body. That wasn’t going to happen. What were they thinking? Nonsense!
It was nonsense to think Jesus would be there. How could you keep the Maker of Rocks and Boulders imprisoned in a tomb of stone with its pebble (to him) outside blocking his way? It would be nonsense to think that God would be in the tomb. It was also nonsense to suppose that Jesus, the slain man, wouldn’t be there. How could he not be there? People don’t wander far from their graves. You don’t have to police graves to keep dead people there. The only thing the dead can do is to decompose. Of course Jesus is going to be there in the tomb. He’s dead. It would be nonsense to suppose anything else could possibly be the case.
Most people consider it nonsense that someone could rise from the dead in the first
place. The old Greeks did. This is where they parted company with the disciples.
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others
said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council.
A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member
of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. Acts 17:32-
Of all things to believe in this whole wide world, the very hardest thing to believe is that people will come back to life after they are dead. There is nothing harder to believe than this. Even though someone might appreciate you telling them this about their dead relative at the perfumed funeral parlor, if they don’t believe in Jesus and his rising, what they hear you saying will be nonsense to them. They may be polite and let you say it. But in their heart of hearts it will be nonsense. Death is it. Death is final. Period. Over. No more. To say that a life that is over is not over and is going on and just beginning…this is nonsense of the greatest sorts. People who come who don’t believe in Easter and in a resurrection from the dead to a vibrant living life have to be muttering to themselves, “This is nonsense.”
It doesn’t mean that we still don’t wonder. (The word “wondering” is used twice in the account.) There is much to wonder about here. A great and mighty wonder… While they were wondering about this…wondering to himself what had happened.
If it isn’t true that Easter really happened, then what you are doing this morning is the greatest nonsense that you could possibly do. Why get up early and sit in a dark church waiting for a sunrise? Why have these songs that we sing every year at this time. Why invite seminarians to come and sing and have them get up early and be here? Why all this nonsense?
Because it is not nonsense. It is true. Easter really did happen. Jesus really did rise from the grave. Easter really will happen again when we reenact what took place and rise from our graves too. Easter for that reason is not nonsense. Easter for that reason is the only thing that makes sense!
We need help when we preach nonsense. For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 1 Corinthians 1:21 The angels helped at the first Easter. They used words. They spoke words and then then commanded others to speak their words. These are not just ordinary words but words orchestrated by God himself. Angels urged the women to go and preach to the men and tell them that Jesus had risen. What they spoke was deemed as nonsense. But they kept on speaking the words they had been told. The Greek grammar and use of the imperfect tense tells us that they kept on saying what seemed to be nonsense. They didn’t give up with one telling.
Angels come into view of the nonsense and the wondering of our Easter Sunday too. Surely the angels are still here and still needed for this today…just like they were at the first Easter. Surely we pray with Martin Luther, “Let your angels be with us (this morning) that the wicked foe may have no power over us…no power over us to cause us to disbelieve, to cause us to scoff and doubt, to cause us to get distracted, to cause us to miss the point. Angels ministered to Jesus after his forty days of testing. Angels strengthened Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. We pray that they strengthen us in Joseph’s Garden today to say, “This is not nonsense. This is truth! This happened! This is for me! He has risen! He has risen indeed!”
We need the Holy Spirit at Easter. In some ways the Holy Spirit seems like a silent figure in Lent. But how important he is as he “calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies and keeps us in the true faith.” Indeed! “Then they remembered his words…” Paul tells Timothy, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel…” 2 Timothy 2:8 We preach and have the Holy Spirit cause people to remember. That’s what we need to do as nonsense tries to reassert itself. We need to remember. This isn’t a new story. This isn’t something we have not heard before. Our trouble is that we forget. So we need to remember, “Lest we forget, lest we forget.” The work of God’s Holy Spirit is to keeping us from lapsing into unbelief and calling the words nonsense.
But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
The same thing is true today. Unbelief continues because the reality seems like nonsense to so many. So we struggle on with nonsense. In everything. God’s ways are higher than ours and not our own. Lent didn’t make sense to anyone who was there first. Unbelief affected and infected them all. That’s why twice the word “wonder” is used. That’s why we hear, “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”
So you have to wonder why Peter got up and ran to the tomb… It is right after the nonsense of it all. Sometimes we have to act (and do act) on the face of nonsense. You know what is nonsense? That God loved Eric Hartzell so much that he saved him and then told him he saved him and then told him that he is going to take him to heaven….that is the greatest nonsense of all. But it happened. Why would God do it? How could God do it? But God did do it! And Eric Hartzell has gotten up and run to the tomb this morning. So have you. You came with your name too. In full view of the nonsense of it all…we all believe it. And maybe it is true for us also what was true for Peter and John, “They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”
The above is personal, but Easter is personal. Easter has people’s names in it. Simon Peter, John the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved, James, Joanna, Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses, Salome, Thomas. If you think that Thomas wasn’t there, Jesus made sure that Thomas knew that his name was in Easter too. He came a week later and said to him and to us, “You have believed because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed.” Easter has your name in it. It isn’t nonsense to say it. It is the truth.
We all understand that we act a certain way if we really consider something nonsense. It might be mildly amusing to hear it once or to even hear it once a year. Apart from that, you don’t listen to the nonsense often. You wouldn’t. Nonsense doesn’t improve by being repeated. It just gets tedious. But if what you hear about Easter is not nonsense, then you will be hearing it as often as you can. If it really is what it says it is and if it says what it says it says, you and I will hear it all year long. It will be what we long to hear from one week to the next…and to hear it in the company of those fellow believers in Easter who are close to us.
So what really does makes sense? In view of what some people call nonsense, what are you going to be doing?
You know what the first people to Easter thought made sense? They gathered together. They started the church. The took the message to the ends of the earth. They lived it. They gathered money. They died for it. They brought their children. They baptized them. That made sense, they thought. Easter really isn’t about nonsense. It is about sense. It is truly about doing the right thing in life. Believing that Jesus died for us and rose again from the dead.