“Nonsense or Godsense?”
Easter Sunday
April 20, 2025
“Nonsense or Godsense?”
Luke 24:1-12
Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
David A. Shirey
Note how Easter morning begins. Grey dawn. A posse of women trudging toward a tomb set to do the somebody’s-gotta-do-it task of anointing a dead body. Easter begins not with glad alleluias, nor with bright-shining angels. There is no joy. Easter begins with the expectation of death: "On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb” (Luke 24:1). The women went out expecting death.
You and I woke up this Easter morning with our own set of expectations. And I dare say, like those women of old, the expectations we woke up with about our world were seasoned with despondency, maybe despair, even death. I lived with my grandparents my senior year of high school. They had a morning ritual. My grandfather would drive up to the corner convenience store, pick up the paper, bring it home and slap it on the counter. Then my grandmother would pick it up, hold her eyeglasses just so as she scanned the front page, and say, "Aaargh! What's this world coming to?" Her question betrayed her expectation that this world is coming to no good. That God may have set the ball rolling, but it’s rolling downhill and picking up speed with each passing year. That what's wrong is only going to get worse. That the rifts in the human family are only going to deepen. We've come to expect that inner city means poverty and Africa means famine the Middle East means intractable injustice and Washington means dire dysfunction. A man sat through an evening broadcast in which all of the above was painstakingly documented. Frustrated, he grabbed the remote, turned off the set, saying, “They call that news?” This is all to say Easter began with women trudging out to a tomb expecting to find death and we woke up this morning with our own dark expectations.
But enough of such tomb talk! The women went expecting death, but what did they find? "They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body… Suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them … and said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; but has risen! (Luke 24:2-5). There's Easter for you! Easter is God shattering all our sad expectations. Just when we've resigned ourselves to a dismal future that, in Dan Quisenberry’s words, is just like the present, only longer – all heav'n breaks loose! After all of Evil’s (un)Holy Week treachery was complete, God said, “My turn now!” and God did a new thing. Its announcement trumpets through the ages: “You came expecting death. But he is not here. He is risen!”
Listen, we do ourselves a disservice when we think of Easter only in terms of its promise of life beyond death in the hereafter. It's that to be sure, but Easter also has to do with the promise of new life beyond the deaths we experience in the here and now – new life beyond the failures and frustrations, the separations and setbacks, the griefs and grievances, the injustices and inequities, the turmoil and tragedies that would be cause for despair were it not for the fact that before the sun or we got up this morning all heav’n broke loose and God raised Jesus and all creation to a brand new day.
Hear me when I say that the resurrection was first and foremost God’s vindication of Jesus – everything he taught and claimed to be. The cross was an accusation against him, an attempt to deny everything he stood for. He was charged by the powers that be with blasphemy and treason. The religious authorities charged him with blasphemy: He’s not the Son of God! Don’t heed his teachings! The Roman rulers charged him with treason: His kingdom will not come on earth as it is in heaven. Shut up and pledge allegiance to Caesar’s agenda! Jesus was tried by church and state, two powers gone sour (It happens). He was found guilty and sentenced to death. On the cross he was taunted: “If you are the Son of God, come down from there! If you are God-sent, call God to the witness stand to speak a word in your defense!” But Jesus didn’t come down from the cross and God didn’t come down from heaven. All that came down that Friday Noon were cackles and condemnation. Guilty as charged! But on the third day his appeal was heard by the Supreme Court and the lower court’s decision was overturned – rolled away like the gravestone. God raised him up. As the centurion said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mk 15:39). An Australian preacher chirped, he was
Vindicated! Validated!
Authenticated! Demonstrated!
Verified! Confirmed!
Established – once and for all. [1]
Therefore, we who believe can know our efforts at living life in accordance with God’s purposes are not in vain. If God raised Jesus from death, then God is stronger than death and its minions. Truth is more powerful than lies. Blessed are the peacemakers. “The moral arc of the universe bends to justice.” Hope springs eternal. And our desire to see loved ones who have gone before us is not mere wish projection but a promise to be savored and held confidently. Jesus’ resurrection is a preview of coming attractions – ultimate victory over death and its minions!
If my grandmother Clarabelle was still living, I'd pick up the phone and call her.
“Mama,” I’d say, “Have you heard the news?”
“Oh no, David. What is it today? I don’t know what this world’s coming to.”
“I do, Mama.”
“You do?”
“It’s coming to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ who is risen!”
This is the good news the women ran from the tomb to deliver. “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” (24:9, 10). Mark those words. Who did God entrust with the breaking news as Press Secretaries, Spokespersons for the Kingdom Come, Resurrection Correspondents? Who were the first preachers of the Gospel? Women. If you’re ever been questioned about the role of women at HRCC: “I notice you have women serving as elders, women as board members and Ministry Team Chairs, a female Moderator and Vice-Moderator, a female pastor. What’s up with that?” Just say, “We’re just following God’s lead on that first Easter Sunday. The first apostles, from the Greek word apostello (pronounced ap-os-tel'-lo), meaning sent – the first people God sent to proclaim the resurrection – were women.
I mention this because the women’s message was initially rejected by the men. Luke tells us, “The women told this [news of the resurrection] to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them.” (Luke 24:11). The women’s story seemed like “an idle tale” to the men. This is the only occurrence of the Greek word λῆρος (lēros) in the New Testament. I wonder if our word leery is related to it. I know what they said, but I’m leery.
Let me add this detail: in those days a woman’s testimony was inadmissible in a court of law. No woman could be called as a witness. The Mishnah, the record of Jewish law that was written down around 200 CE reads, "From women let not evidence be accepted because of the levity and temerity of their sex.[2]" Levity: silliness. Temerity: recklessness. A woman’s testimony was not deemed credible. I can still hear my grandfather, Gabe Shirey (What a piece of work!), when my grandmother, Mamie Mae, got to talking about something. She’d get to talkin’, get rollin’, and pretty soon he’d roll his eyes and say, “Cluck, cluck, cluck.” He was terrible! I imagine him having breakfast with Peter, James, John and the boys. There’s a knock on the door and he overhears some women talking about a stone rolled away, an empty tomb, and men in dazzling apparel saying, “He’s not here, He’s risen!” He rolls his eyes and clucks.
How about you? Do you believe the women’s testimony? The court of law in Jesus’ day ruled it inadmissable. My Grandpa Shirey ruled it unacceptable. The first apostles were leery. So I ask you: is the women’s testimony nonsense or Godsense?
Word has it this morning that this world is coming to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Nonsense or Godsense?
Word has it today that anybody of any gender, make, or model who is open to God’s leading can and will be used by God as a messenger of God’s truth and grace. Nonsense or Godsense?
Word has it today, as Frederick Buechner put it, that “the worst thing is never the last thing” because God will have the last word in every life, in every nation, in all creation. Nonsense or Godsense?
Word has it that as Wendy proclaimed on Good Friday, we cannot and will not be able to finish everything before we die, all the causes to which we’ve given ourselves throughout our lives. But if Jesus is risen, then God in Christ will finish them and we can take our last breath believing that with the next breath God breathes into us, we will arise to see all things made new, healed, redeemed, reconciled, made right. Nonsense or Godsense?
My friend and colleague the Rev. John Leggett at Second Presbyterian in Lexington will receive a phone call this afternoon. His phone will ring and the voice on the other end will say, "Jesus is on the loose!" Then the call will end. He receives the same call every Easter. It’s his roommate from seminary with his memorable way of saying, Christ is risen. Not risen and seated on a throne in Heaven. Rather, risen and on the loose in our world. Risen, and the way he taught and lived has been vindicated. Risen and we’re living at the dawn of a brand-new day. For some it’s an old wives’ tale, but to others it’s the Gospel Truth.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Let all God’s people, men and women, say, AMEN.
[1] https://www.pcmurwillumbah.org.au/resurrection-is-vindication/
[2] Cf. Yeb. 88b, 115a; Mishnah, Rosh Hashana 1.8. quoted in The New Testament Concept of Witness, Alison Trites, p. 54.
