ST MATTHEW-IN-THE-CITY
ANGLICAN CHURCH AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND
Why Do We Look for the Living Among the Dead?
March 27, 2016
Helen Jacobi
Easter Day Isaiah 65:17-25 Luke 24:1-12
Video available on YouTube, Facebook
Archbishop Winston Halapua, the bishop of Polynesia sent some photos after cyclone Winston (not named after him!) devastated Fiji. They show a family under the floor of a house, where they huddled for 4 hours where the cyclone passed. The foundations look pretty sturdy – thick tree trunks and solid floorboards to shelter under. But then we are told when this family emerged after the storm, the house above was completely gone. The house where 2 years earlier Bishop Winston had celebrated Easter with the village of Maniava – another photo of a smiling group of children, many dressed in white for Easter. They celebrated Easter in this house, which for a remote Fijian village was very well built and substantial. [1]
This village is remote, you won’t find it on google maps. It was built some 20 years ago by its people who are descendants of Solomon Islanders, who have no right to own land in Fiji. [2] And so they built a village in a remote area where no one minded, planted their crops, built their houses. In order for their children to go to school they have built a dormitory at the nearest school which is 2 hours walk away. Each Monday morning the children leave with the parents rostered for that week and return on Friday. That school and dormitory were also destroyed in the cyclone.
Bishop Winston says that space where the people huddled under the floorboards is like the tomb where Jesus was laid. When they came out to find everything gone, they began the task of caring for each other and working out where to start the rebuild. Help came eventually, Archbishop Winston visited to see what they needed – which was everything – and the help continues. That is the Easter part of the story: new life from nothing, hope when there should be none, a story to be told.
When Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James go to the tomb, early on the Sunday they are distressed to find the tomb empty and then terrified by some men in dazzling clothes – are they visions? angels? whoever they are, they ask “why do you look for the living among the dead?” Why even look here? Why look in a tomb for someone who is alive?
They are confused of course but they go and tell the eleven (the 12 disciples minus Judas) and the men dismiss this as an idle tale of women. Women who are upset so easily they are acting hysterically. Visions of angels indeed!
Peter, though, just to make sure goes to the tomb and then Luke says “he went home”.
What does he go home to do? Have breakfast, lunch? He has no idea what to do with this news.
Maybe that is a more typical male reaction – we will wait till we know what is going on here before we start to spread idle rumours. The women do not wait, they tell what they know, even if they don’t understand it, they proclaim it, they live it.
On Good Friday I spoke about the silence of Jesus. The silence of Jesus before Pilate – how we imagine him because of all the paintings – Pilate asking questions, the accusers accusing, the crowd shouting. But after he leaves Pilate’s house he begins to talk. He talks to the women who are weeping, to the criminals crucified with him, he prays. Jesus breaks the silence and speaks the truth of his and others’ suffering and speaks hope into their pain.
On Easter morning it is the turn of the women to break their silence and speak the truth about what they have seen and experienced. In Luke’s version they do not see Jesus – he appears first to the followers walking the road to Emmaus. But they share what they know, and it turns out not to be an idle tale.
If we waited to be sure about our faith, if we waited to have physical proof that would satisfy Richard Dawkins, we would not be here today.
There would be no Easter and no church. We don’t get to see Jesus, we have the tale of the women and others to inform our faith.
At times in our lives we might be perplexed as the women were, at other times we might be terrified, and then at others disbelieving with Peter, or convinced like Thomas was eventually. There is lots of room in the resurrection stories for a variety of feelings and reactions. We don’t all have to think or believe the same thing.
I did an interview with Radio Live earlier in the week on the meaning of Easter and the reporter was most frustrated that he couldn’t pin me down to his scenario of what he thought Christianity was supposed to be about. (Although I probably had an easier time than the parishioner whose hairdresser this week asked him if Easter had anything to do with religion!)
The questions of the angels are still relevant to us, whatever we think: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Why do you look for life where there is none? Why do you expect happiness to come from the amount of money you earn? Why do you expect the worst of people and not the best?
Why does twitter go crazy when there is bad news and not for good news. Why do you hang on to old tired ideas or ideals rather than seeking a new vision in your workplaces or your families?
The people of the village of Maniava had no choice when they emerged from their tomb. There was nothing to hang onto from their past, they had to start again. Bishop Winston is very grateful for all the gifts that have been sent to help the church there (and we can still donate) but in his message he also says
there is an issue here that lies beneath what has happened.
It’s not an issue that we can afford to go into, right now.
But it’s there, nonetheless, and I firmly believe it’s the reason why this cyclone was so destructive.
And that’s the issue of climate change.
What I’m saying to Australia and New Zealand is that it’s good that you help us so generously.
You know it.
But we also desperately need to address climate change.
We need to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
Will you help us in that way, too? [3]
The question – why do you look for the living among the dead – also applies to us as a whole community and world. Why do we seek to find life in our carbon and oil use? Why do we not see that our consumption is destroying our brothers and sisters just up the road in Fiji, and other Pacific Islands. Every time Bishop Winston speaks at a church gathering, a Synod, a public gathering of any kind; he talks about climate change.
The people of Maniava claim life in all its wholeness, they are not afraid to begin again, to build from the ground up. But how many times will this happen? This Easter they like us will hear the words from Isaiah “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit; they shall not labour in vain” (Is 65:21,23). I am sure they will hear these words as words of wonderful hope. They depend on us though and the peoples of the world to make them a reality.
On Easter Day we are called to step out of the tombs of our lives, the things that hold us back from new life as individuals and as a world community. Claim life, claim joy, claim hope. It is not an idle tale, it is a tale which brings us life.
[1] http://anglicantaonga.org.nz/News/Common-Life/Floorboards
[3] http://www.anglicantaonga.org.nz/News/Common-Life/Floorboards