“Why do you look for
the living among the dead?” was the question the women were asked. It is a strange
question given that they had come looking to do for the dead Jesus the proper
thing the Passover had denied them. The living was the last thing they expected
to find. But now no longer terrified and reminded of Jesus’ words they rushed
back to those whose hopes and dreams had died with the Jesus they had left all to
follow. Without the benefit of angels in dazzling clothes the women’s tale
seemed a tall at best and according to Luke everyone but Peter was satisfied to
continue believing once dead was always dead. But then the story is so familiar
to those of us who make the church our home that it loses its ability to
surprise and have its way with us as well. That is what it would do given the
chance. There are those moments when with dazzling clarity the veil between the
present and the future becomes transparent and one can hear the song of the
infinite choir and taste the forever feast. In those moments we are transformed
from those who expect the living and the dead to stay in their own rooms and we
become those who see dead people living. Not in some ghostly apparition or
chill in the room but in bread and wine shared in the present even as it
remembers the past and anticipates the future. Joined to Christ in the meal of
thanksgiving the women’s idle tale has its way with us and now expecting the
unexpected we are united with the dead now living. So you and I, inhabiting
bodies not yet worn out, can, if only for a moment, imagine the joys that for those
who have crossed over are forever familiar.
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