WALKING AWAY FROM THE GRAVE.
3rd Sunday of Easter: Luke 24
Pastor Bjornstad, Good Shepherd Vacancy
As a pastor, I have done my share of waiting. Some of the most memorable times of waiting has been at the gravesite following a burial. Long after the final Amen has been said, I have often waited a VERY long time for the last of the loved ones to walk the long and terrible journey back to their cars. If you have not been in those shoes, you cannot fathom it.
The last flower to lay... the last goodbye... But how CAN you walk away? You never walked away in 57 years. How can you now? So you stay... you linger... the grief too much to bear... And then finally someone takes your arm and gently leads you away. The knees are weak. The world goes dark. Somehow an unseen hand takes your other arm. And you are steadied. You make your way back to the car. Somehow. It seems like forever. But you finally make it. And somehow the car knows the way... the way to the luncheon... And you sit. And memories come flooding back. The talk is excited and the love is real. Even as the mind is numb and you are tired beyond belief... You try to think of the happy times... but it is hard... It is hard to think ahead. Hard to think what tomorrow is going to bring... Your grief is real. It is so hard to imagine life without your lover...
It is a very long walk away from the grave of a loved one - even if you aren't actually there. This past week I have been spiritually walking away from the grave of a very dear congregational member of my previous church. Marilyn died of COVID 19, the first person I have known to have so died. I wish I could tell you more about Marilyn... but time is short... I shared my sympathies with Marilyn's daughter, I viewed her obituary and wrote a small tribute on the digital guest book. Small steps perhaps now on the walk away from her grave.
It can be a very long walk away from the grave of a loved one - perhaps you are still walking away weeks, months, years now. The walk can become a very long journey. Great vistas of comfort and terrible valleys of despair. The path has broadened and narrowed, disappeared, turned many ways. You wonder when the journey will end. On the one hand you can't wait for it to end, and yet, on the other hand, you dread its end even more.
But wherever you are on the journey from the grave of a loved one, we have (you have), as a Christian, a most surprising, almost jovial, and blessed account of scripture. It is an account in Luke chapter 24 of a journey of two grieving men as they made their way from the most tragic of graves - the grave of their Lord Jesus. It is your story. It is everyone's story. It is a most beautiful and personal story. Make it your own this morning.
There was nothing more in Jerusalem for them now that their Lord was dead. The confusion of the morning when the women had discovered that the body of their Lord was gone, had made them ever more terrified. Something was now even more wrong than the night before. Not a good time to hang around town anymore. Time to get home and bury your head in your wife's arms and cry. Time to do what you can to get on with life now that you had wasted three years of it following this Jesus.
As you and your close friend are making your way down the road toward home, as you are treasuring up all the memories and alternately crying out in utter frustration and anger at the events leading up to his death... along comes a stranger. a stranger that wonders why you are distressed and grieving.
I'll tell you why I am distressed and grieving! You say. My beloved, the most important person in the world, my groom for 57 years, has been taken from me! It was neither timely nor convenient. My whole life has been ripped out of me. How dare you ask!
Oh dear, foolish ones and slow of heart, (somehow the name was hardly noticed at the time, but fondly remembered for ages on), don't you remember and take heart in the scriptures?
Of course the account of scriptures is told in 3rd person objective narration. It is being told from hindsight with 20/20 vision. You and I who are on our journeys sometimes cannot see our Jesus along side us, teaching us, caring for us, and loving us. But when He does come alongside us, we will look back at and treasure it. We will share in those burning hearts of the disciples. Our grief and confusion might be such at the time that we have trouble making sense of it. But the burning coals that seemed almost cold are breathed on by the Holy Spirit. The heart begins to glow red again, pulsing to the beat of the Gospel song.
Dear Christians friends on the journey from your loved one's grave, do not despair altogether in its grief! Your Savior is right alongside you! Even though you may not recognize Him, He comes behind many masks, including this poor pastor mask. Listen to this pastor as he says: Look to scripture brothers and sisters! See how Christ was delivered unto death by the hands of sinful men! See how He fulfilled the promises of God from ancient times to establish a new covenant with His people and count your sins as forgiven. Be comforted oh children of God! Invite the Lord into your home! Don't let him go on down the road further into the night. Invite Him to sit at the dinner table. Have fellowship with Him.
And as we do - there will come the day when He is breaking bread with us and our eyes will be opened and we will recognize the wounds in His hands and the hole in His side. We will see how our Lord has been with us all the while long, picking us up when we could not stand, steadying us on our journey from the grave, giving us strength and every grace. We will see how our Lord is a study in patience with us, full of loving kindness, and yes, even of gentle humor. He will look in our eyes - and our hearts will melt, being transformed in the moment and beating faster and faster to the joyful rhythms of the heavenly realms.
Oh, your hearts are at peace now. The air smells like the spring of heaven. The lillies are in full blossom, their golden pollen floating through the air and gently alighting upon your head, crowning it with glory.
And in that splendid day, you are being blessed beyond words with the true revelation of Easter. Easter is that greatest romance of the soul. It is the love story that never ends. It is the victory of God over the black and adulterous heart, even over it presider, the devil. It is love that overcomes the grave. It is the everlasting love that replaces our sorrowful walk away from the grave with another walking away: The walking away of Christ from His grave. Easter is the promise of your loved ones walking away from their graves! Easter is the blessed fortaste of you walking away from YOUR grave.
Oh yes! There are two walking aways! There is the fearful walking away from the graves of our loved ones, full of grief and sorrow. It is the walking away of this life. But then there is the walking away of the sons and daughters of the Lord from their graves. This is the walking away of the life to come.
HE IS RISEN!
HE IS RISEN INDEED!
ALLELUIA!
As Christ is risen, so you also will be risen! The Bible proclaims that Christ is only the first fruits of the dead! There are more fruits of the grave to walk again! As Christ has walked away from His grave, there will dawn the day where instead of the sun rising upon this stricken world, the SON will rise upon us in person once again. He will shine upon our graves. He will call out your names and you also will walk away from your grave! You will walk right into the arms of heaven, right into your everlasting home, right into your Lord's eternal glory.
Take heart, dear friends in Christ. May the truth of the glorious resurrection of our Lord burn in our hearts this day and every day. May the Holy Spirit, who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light through baptism, blow upon your heart, making it flame into an ever greater fire, feeding on the blessed Word of God and the Holy Sacraments.
He is Risen!
He is Risen indeed!
Alleluia!
Amen!
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