Sermon for Easter Sunday—Running on Empty

The Resurrection of Our Lord

He is risen! He is risen, indeed, Alleluia!

I am always struck by the sense of duty that draws these women to the tomb on the first day of the week. Not having been able to anoint properly the body of Jesus before the Sabbath, the two Marys and Salome come to care for Jesus’ body while the temperature is still cool, before more decomposition can occur. They come out of duty, knowing what needs to be done, yet wondering how they will do it.

This is women’s work after all, but usually the stone of the tomb is not rolled and sealed until after the body has been cared for. Today they come wondering how they will manage rolling that large stone away. Will there be somebody who will do the heavy work of rolling the stone for them?

They do not question if they should be the ones doing the job; they are only considering how it will be done. To their amazement, the stone is already rolled away. What does this mean?

They run into the tomb, discovering a young man sitting where the body of Christ is supposed to be, but where is Jesus?

The young man begins to tell them the good news and the bad. “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”

In the world of GPS, this might be the time that one might check one’s co-ordinates. What do you mean that he is not here? We followed the instructions dictated by our locator. We turned on the prescribed road; we went to the cemetery; we turned on the right path; this is the place. He was dead! We have the spices for washing and anointing the body! Where could he go?

These women must have had that awful feeling we have when walking out into the parking lot at the mall, knowing exactly where the car was parked, only to discover that you walked out the wrong door and your car is nowhere to be found. “I know I parked it right there. Where did it go?”

The young man continues, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

I don’t know about you, but I am not surprised to discover that the women run, that terror and amazement seizes them. Nor am I surprised that they might even want to keep it quiet. I mean, seriously, when the laws of nature change, when you drop something and discover that it floats instead of falls, when up is down, when women and not men are chosen to be the witnesses of God’s activity to the world, when tombs for the dead become wombs of new life, would you just calmly walk out and tweet your friends?

Or, might you try to find another answer? Maybe I walked out the wrong door? My car might be on the other side; in a different place. Maybe I should call the police? Did someone steal my car?

Of all the accounts of the resurrection, this is my favorite. It addresses the limits of the human condition. When confronting something that is seemingly impossible, our first response is to deny it!

Later, when all of the facts are in, when we have time to embrace the reality of the new, then we can talk about the forces of change in our lives, then we can cope with our altered realities.

One of the vehicles I owned had a broken gas gauge. When I first discovered the problem, I panicked. Would I make it to the station in time? But when I got to the gas station, it only took five gallons of gas.

I tried to put more gasoline into the tank, but it only ran down the side of the car. I got back into the car and turned on the ignition, but the gauge still read empty. So, of course, I took it to the service station to be repaired only to discover that I couldn’t afford the repairs.

A friend said, “Well, if you’re running around town, stop and put a couple gallons in. You know your approximate mileage, so just keep track of the odometer and don’t let the tank get too low.” For years I drove with a gauge that always said empty.

Every once in a while, someone else would drive the car. They’d tell me that the tank was empty; I’d have to explain. When someone borrowed the car, I’d tell them not to bring the car back with an empty tank and laugh as they looked at the gauge.

The irony is that it is the only car that I never ran out of gas with. Because I was always running on empty, I made sure that I stopped to fill more regularly.

Today, we are confronted with some seemingly conflicted information. Like my old car, we come to the tomb to discover that it is empty, but it is that emptiness that fills our lives.

With the women, we come seeking Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified only to discover that he is not here! He is going ahead of us, into the world of ministry, into Galilee, to those places where we have seen him before—into the world of the lepers, the lame and the maimed, the blind and the deaf, the widowed and the orphaned, and the poor—to the dead of the world, to raise them up into new ways of living, into an altared place. There you will find him.

In knowing the proclamation of emptiness and the reality of that new way of living, we come again and again to be reminded of the emptiness of the tomb that fills our lives. We do not turn away from the amazement and the fear of what that emptiness means. Rather, we join with the women, the two Marys and Salome, with the disciples and Peter, with the angels and archangels, with the church on Earth, with the great cloud of witnesses; and we proclaim the great resurrection message of our new life in Christ. We tell the world that we are recognizing our altered and altared being in Christ, right here and now, when we say, “Τhe beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” We are running on empty, and we are filled.

Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!