BUT...

Luke 24:1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

On Thursday we heard how this rural preacher called Jesus, who advocated for mercy and not sacrifice, who cared more about real people and their needs, than putting on a perfect religious performance, gave his disciples one final command, to “love one another.” Then on Friday we heard the story of how this rural preacher’s Way of love, diversity, compassion, justice, empathy, radical inclusion, equity, and mercy crashed headlong into the Empire’s Way of power, hatred, greed, manipulation, marginalization, oppression, and violence.  In short, on Friday we heard the story of how Jesus fought the law… and the law won… leaving him and what every Empire calls a “weak and ineffective” Way of love, compassion, justice, and mercy, both dead AND buried.

BUT…  and that’s where we pick up the story today… with that first word of today’s Gospel… BUT.  BUT on the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb.  Can you feel how incredibly powerful that thing they did that morning really was?  They didn’t make their way to the tomb knowing that Jesus had been raised from the dead.  NO!  They made their way to the tomb absolutely SURE he was NOT!  They were the ones who had stayed and watched him die.  They were the ones who had kept their eyes open when most had turned away.  They were the ones who had watched his dead and lifeless body placed in that tomb.  They were the ones who knew better than anyone else, that when an Empire puts a person in a hole…any sort of hole… that person stays in that hole.  BUT… they went out that morning to do the next right thing anyway.  WOW!  wow. 

Pastor Martin Niemöller, before he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, read to his congregation a piece from Matthew’s Gospel that reminds disciples in every age that we are to be “the salt of the earth”…“the light of the world.”  The rising Nazi movement in the 1930’s wanted churches to fall in line.  To support them or at least stay quiet.  (What’s old, it seems, is new again.)  Pastor Niemöller insisted however that the Church stay “salty.”  He told them our faith has a distinct message… a “saltiness.”  Our saltiness proclaims hatred, racism, Religious Nationalism, anti-semitism, and transphobia to be sins.  Our saltiness proclaims every human being has equal worth, dignity, and deserves due process.  Our saltiness proclaims that it is the poor and the meek, the widow and the orphan, the foreigner and the refugee, the demonized and reviled that have God’s most profound blessing.  It is that saltiness that reminds us nothing can separate us from God’s love and so we MUST stay salty! 

BUT… not salty just for saltiness sake.  We are to stay salty so that we can do the next right thing… like the women did that first Easter morning.  We are to add our saltiness to those voices who speak out boldly against evil.  We are to add our saltiness to those who lift the lowly, welcome the stranger and heal the broken.  We too are called to do the next right thing… seeking out ways to enhance the flavors of love, peace, healing and justice.  That’s what salt does, you know, it enhances flavors and you and I are called to be salt.  We’re called to lift up, bring out, and enhance the bits of the world that bring out life, even in the midst of death.

  

Niemöller also told his people they were called to be light to the world.  He told them we too often worry that the gale force, blow hard, winds of Empire will put out our flame and because of that we are tempted to hide our light away under a bushel basket and wait for the winds to die down.  BUT… Niemöller reminds us... Jesus said, AWAY WITH THE BUSHEL!  Put your light on a candlestick!  It is not for us to worry about the light.  That is God’s worry.  Our calling… like the calling of those women on the first Easter morning… is to shine the light we have directly into the darkness by doing the next right thing… no matter how small or insignificant that next right thing might feel to us in the moment.

  

These stories of Holy Week have hit profoundly harder this year, than in any other year of my life.  The darkness feels darker.  The pain seems deeper.  The hopelessness more profound.  BUT… and THAT is the word for Easter this year… BUT… those incredible, amazing women have shown us what to do.  They’ve shown us that when the dark is at it’s darkest, when the pain is at it’s deepest, when our hopelessness is at it’s most profound, the thing we are called to do is to get up and do the next right thing.  Why?  Because, as those women showed us, it is in walking that path along the Way to do the next right thing, that we too will get to see that the stone has been rolled away.  That there are men standing their in dazzling clothes.  That there is light shining where before there was only darkness.  That the end is not, in fact, the end at all, that there is relief from the pain and that there is reason to have hope.

Those women have the message for us this Easter!  They are showing us that it is simply in getting up and walking that path to do the next right thing that we too will discover that Jesus and his Way are not, in fact, dead and buried forever as every Empire always insists, but that Jesus and his Way of love, compassion, empathy, justice, radical inclusion and peace are NOT there in the tomb.  That they are very much alive and as you and I walk toward doing the next right thing in the current Empire's dark shadow, we too will find that Jesus and his Way are far from dead and buried.  We too will find that in fact they have risen… risen indeed.  Alleluia!  Amen.