Luke 24:2-5
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.”
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” This may just be my favorite question in the whole Bible.
I love this question so much because it represents the absolute and completely new reality resurrection creates and offers. Actually, it does more than introduce. It interrupts and even intrudes into reality as we know it to introduce something entirely new and different.
Think about it. On one level, the question is ludicrous. “Why do we look for the living among the dead?” we might imagine the women responding, “Because he’s not living, he’s dead! We saw him crucified with our own eyes. What more could you ask?”
But as much as that answer reflects the reality as the women – and all people to that point, for that matter – know it, it fails to admit the possibility of a new reality. And so the heralds in dazzling clothes (read: angels) ask, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” as if it is the most natural question in the world. Because, in light of the new reality God has just created, it is. Jesus is not dead but alive and, indeed, no longer subject to death or anything else of the old reality and order.
On this point we should be clear: the Son of God did not evade, avoid, or escape death, but rather endured it…and then triumphed over it. God in Jesus, that is, took on every aspect of human, worldly reality – including death – embracing it fully and completely out of love, but then did something new, created something new, made something entirely new possible: life that endures and flourishes beyond death.
No wonder the women were at first perplexed, and then terrified, and then eager to bow their heads. How else can we respond when reality itself – everything, in fact, that we have ever counted on – has been changed?
Because that’s what resurrection means – the creation of a new reality, and with that new reality comes a completely fresh beginning and utterly open future. If Jesus can be raised from the dead, in other words, then nothing is impossible.
Which means, I think, that the angels aren’t done asking this amazing, world-upsetting question. They may not always appear in dazzling clothes; maybe they’ll be dressed more like a co-worker, or child, or friend, or neighbor.
Nor will the question always be the same. Perhaps one time it will be, “Why are you satisfied to be in that dead-end relationship?” while another time it is, “Are you sure that job honors your gifts and commitments?” Maybe on one occasion it will be as challenging as, “Don’t you think you are better than this?” while on another it will be more comforting: “Have you really given up on yourself? I haven’t.” Maybe it will be simple: “Can you trust that the future is still open?” Or perhaps just faithful, “Have you forgotten that all things are possible with God?”
All of these questions, I think, are examples of how God’s messengers still ask us the audacious, vital question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Because when God raised Jesus from the dead God created a world of infinite possibility. And time and again God sends us messengers, I believe, to invite us to question the reality we’ve inherited or come to accept and look with fresh eyes upon our circumstances and situation and trust that, indeed, even in the very presence of death God is still making all things new.
Prayer: Dear God, kindle our imaginations and open our hearts to the new reality you have created and offered to us and all people. Let us receive your promise of new life and possibility from those messengers you send us, and let us be messengers to those around us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Post image: He Qi, “Empty Tomb,” 2001.
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