Sermon: Easter Vigil, Luke 24:1-12
April 19, 2025
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman
The first report of Jesus’ resurrection in Luke’s gospel, which you just heard, frankly doesn’t leave us with much. The narrative points in the direction of the resurrection. But it doesn’t really definitively proclaim the resurrection. At best, we’re left hanging. At worst, we’re in company with those followers of Jesus who dismissed the women’s news of Jesus rising as an idle tale.
Let’s review the main features of the story and their effects on the players:
The empty tomb evoked perplexity on the part of the women who came to anoint Jesus’ body. But perplexity falls far short of assurance and belief that Jesus was alive again. His body might have been stolen. An empty tomb by itself does not necessarily mean resurrected new life.
The two men in dazzling clothes provoked terror in the women and a face plant as they “bowed… to the ground.” But such fear is not faith.
The words of the two men, that “the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again” caused the women to remember Jesus’ words to that same effect. But remembering the promise of resurrection is not necessarily the same as believing it.
All of this nonetheless motivated the women to return to the eleven disciples and the others to report to them what they found and experienced at the tomb. But reporting an empty tomb and the secondhand word of the two men does not exactly add up to proclaiming the resurrection.
Especially since the women’s account was dismissed in unbelief as an idle tale, silly talk, unworthy of attention, a tale to be rejected, dismissible as lacking credibility. None of this necessarily suggests any faith that Jesus was alive again.
Even so, the news was enough to goad Peter into visiting the tomb of Jesus to see things for himself. While he was amazed, or marveled, at what he found, there’s no suggestion in the story that Peter believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead. He might have marveled that someone managed to steal the body.
Thus, there’s nothing in Luke’s account at this point in the narrative’s unfolding that suggests in any definitive way that the women or anybody else believed that Jesus was alive again. Indeed, based on what we know so far, maybe it’s just an idle tale after all.
Where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us wanting more. Happily, we get more in the next passage in Luke’s gospel (which was not included in tonight’s appointed reading). Recognition of the risen Christ and the proclamation in faith that he was alive again is what’s next in Luke as he recounts what happened on the Road to Emmaus.
Perhaps you remember the story: Jesus shows up on the road with two disciples who were lamenting what happened to Jesus. They had heard about the women’s testimony, but were among those for whom it was an idle tale. At this point, they didn’t recognize their new companion on the road was Jesus. It was not until they invited him to stay with them that things began to shift. In fact, the idle tale became a true and trustworthy story at dinner. Luke writes, “When [Jesus] was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized [Jesus]; and he vanished from their sight.” That’s when unbelief became belief. And that’s when the two rushed back to Jerusalem to share how the risen Christ was made known to them in the breaking of bread (cf. Luke 24:13-35).
The Gospel writer Luke is making a crucial point here to his own community and to us: it’s in the sacramental breaking of bread in Holy Communion that we come to recognize the risen Christ. We know the words by heart: “he took bread, blessed, broke it and gave it to them.” That is to say, it’s here in our communal gatherings around this table that we come to believe that Christ is risen. And it’s here in our sacramental assemblies where we gain the faith-driven energy to go out into the world to proclaim that Christ is risen.
Without our sacramental togetherness here in church, we would be more prone to be left with perplexity, terror, some marveling perhaps, but a lot of dismissing Easter good news as an idle tale.
Thanks be to God, I’ve had my own Road to Emmaus kinds of encounters. In the Holy Land, there are two competing sites that claim to be the true place of Jesus’ death and resurrection: the Garden Tomb (or Gordon’s Tomb) and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I have visited each place. The Garden Tomb is the result of 19th Century archaeologists who claimed that because geological features looked like the place of The Skull, referred to in the bible as the site of Jesus’ death and burial, that this must be the place. There are indeed tombs there and it’s been developed into a lovely garden. But it felt to me more like a theme park, kind of two-dimensional, and while beautiful and serene, not a lot of spiritual there there in my experience.
And this is in complete contrast with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which many scholars believe is more likely to be the place of the death and resurrection. But what’s important in the church site is that there are centuries of living faith and devotion that permeate the whole place.
I was there on a Sunday morning when churches of various traditions – Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and more – were simultaneously celebrating the Lord’s Day. I attended the Syrian Orthodox liturgy, but could hear the chanting of the other traditions in the background. In that liturgical, sacramental context, I visited the place of the crucifixion and the place of burial from which Christ arose. But it was the layers of history in the church, millennia of proclaiming Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again, that made the difference for me and renewed my faith in the truth of the resurrection. And all of this was made more richly alive by the global diversity – catholic in the universal sense of the word – of real time, faith-filled piety in person.
In short, visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher became for me a Road to Emmaus experience, a time when Christ was made known to me in the sacramental breaking of bread in the richness of two thousand years of Christian history and liturgical practice incarnate in that place in Jerusalem.
Which brings us to the here and now, where at Faith-La Fe in Phoenix we derive the same benefit of living, faith-filled, sacramental encounter that leads us to proclaim to the wider world: Alleluia! Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!
It is here in this communal context that we recognize the living Christ again and again in the breaking of bread. For eight decades the faithful of Faith-La Fe – some of your dear friends and relatives – have gathered here just as we continue to gather. And Christ is made known to us here at this altar just as he has been made known to billions for two millennia throughout the world. At Faith-La Fe, it’s in English and in Spanish, supported by great music and liturgical ceremonial. Just as we’re doing again this evening. And will do again tomorrow morning.
And thus it is here, week after week, year after year, when we recognize the risen Christ anew at this family table of grace, we’re stirred to rise out of our idle-tale-doldrums to proclaim once again: Alleluia! Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!
And we leave this place to go back to the world with that same good news, just as the women and others did after their encounters with the risen Jesus. And we proclaim new life in Christ in word and deed, in works of mercy and love. And thereby the gifts of the living Christ are given to others such that they may also come to know new life in Christ. And they, too, may be awakened from the idle tales that characterize so much of what passes for life these days. And thus, together, we proclaim once again: Alleluia! Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.
