The Idle Tale: Reexamining the Significance of Easter in Our Lives

Foreign.

Thank you for engaging with the homily by Pastor Chill Will from

Chapel Hill.

I hope this message encourages you, challenges you and moves you

to go deeper in your faith and enrich how you love God and love

your neighbor in your day to day life.

Just a reminder.

Like the Scriptures and Gospels themselves, this homily was

written for a particular community in a particular context,

time in history and yet, like our sacred texts, I hope that these

words hold timeless truths about God's unconditional love and

grace.

We hope these words speak to you in a meaningful way.

The Holy Gospel According to Luke on the first day of the week,

at early dawn, the women came to the tomb taking their spices that

they had prepared.

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 heads to the ground.

The men said to them, why do you look for the living among the

dead?

He is not here risen.

Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the

Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified and on

the third day rise again.

Then they remembered his words and returning to the tomb, they told

all this to the 11 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.

But these words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe

them.

But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in,

he saw the linen clothes by themselves.

Then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

The Gospel of the Lord may be seated in the name of the Father

and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

But these words seemed to them an idol tale.

That's the pull quote that is haunting me this Easter.

This morning, Easter 2025, our Easter story comes to us from the

Gospel of Luke.

Each of our four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John share

the main plot of Easter.

Jesus was crucified and executed by the state and the religious

establishment.

He was placed in a stone cave tomb with a big rock to seal it up.

On the first day of the week, after the Sabbath, a group of women

went to the tomb to finish burial traditions.

When they got there, the big stone was rolled away and Jesus wasn't

there.

They experienced divine messengers sharing that Jesus had

been raised from the dead, and all four gospels agree that it was

the women who went to the tomb first and witnessed the resurrection

first and they were the first to go and share what they witnessed

and experienced with the other disciples.

And the world was never the same.

However, in the telling of the Easter story, each gospel uses their

own poetic license to make theological points about Jesus, his

followers and the consequences of this resurrection.

In Matthew, only he shares that there was an earthquake and

that it was an angel that rolled the stone away.

And that angel's appearance was like lightning.

Matthew wants us to know this is an earth shattering event.

The very fabric of reality is shaken to its core.

Mark, like the rest of his gospel, is a slimmed down version

of the Easter story.

Just the basics.

But he only shares.

He's the only one that shares that.

The women ask out loud, who will roll away this stone for us?

Perhaps because they are so amazed and afraid that the tomb was

empty.

He said nothing to anyone, almost like Mark is challenging us

to ask, if they didn't say anything, then how is anyone here

this morning?

John the story we heard last night of the Easter vigil is the

most different from the other three gospels.

John shares a lot from a certain point of view.

John shares that it wasn't just the first day of the week in

early morning, but it was still dark.

John also shares that there was this competitive weird foot race

between Peter and another disciple to see who could get to

the tomb first.

After Mary Magdalene shares that the stone was removed from the

entrance of the tomb.

And it's only in John that Mary mistakes the risen Jesus as

a gardener.

Beginning of creation story starts with an image of a garden.

Perhaps this emergence of a new creation starts with a risen

gardener.

And now to Luke that we heard read just a few moments ago.

It's only in Luke that when the women share the news that Jesus

had been raised from the dead that the apostles articulate out

loud for us, they did not believe them because these words

seem to them an idle tale.

I can relate.

It's weird.

Dead people don't just get up and walk away now.

I do love Easter.

I love the traditions around Easter.

I love this time of year with flowers blooming new green on the

trees and the ocean warming up for summer.

The temptation is that this radical and idle tale of Easter can

become too familiar, too routine.

This day happens and then we move on to the next thing.

The world turns.

And as it turns, as I see those close to me wrestling with

life and faith and the events in my social media feed stirring

up shock and awe, I wonder what difference this idle tale makes.

I confess that it is in this time in history, in our present context,

in this political season that I've been challenged to re examine

a lot of things, including Jesus, his life, his death and his

resurrection.

And I confess that this re examining has helped this Jesus story,

the Easter story, become more radical, more strange, more mysterious,

challenging again the life of Jesus, how he loved and what he taught.

His passion and cross, the beautiful and terrible coming together

again.

His resurrection, an idle tale of a new reality, idle tale and a

new reality hanging out together in the same room.

This Easter and this reexamining, I am seeing anew the

Christ.

Not in the execution of power, but in vulnerability.

Not in religious security, but in an abiding presence that is with

the powerless.

And with the least of these.

I see in the cross of Christ an exposing of oppressive systems.

I see a revelation of God's solidarity with those in the midst,

in our midst, who still bear crosses.

And it illumines a path forward for those committed to following

the way of Christ.

I see a way forward in loving up close.

And in that loving up close, I see a difference that Easter is making

in those close to me and in our community of faith.

Over the course of the season of Lent, our theme was from ashes

to lament to new life.

We confessed together our mortality and our finitude.

It was cathartic to be honest with our laments, be honest with

our heartbreaks, and to be honest with our grief, knowing that

that is a very biblical practice.

And now we've reached the new life part.

Easter is here.

I can smell it with the lilies.

And I see anew what a difference this story and witness

can make in our community of faith, week after week, Sunday after

Sunday, as we are reminded again and again and again at the

font and at this table, that death does not and will not have

the final word in our lives in our world.

In re examining the Easter story this go around in this season,

I notice another word that is used a few times this morning in

Luke's gospel.

Remember.

Remember how he told you.

Then they remembered his words.

Notice that the dazzling men didn't command them to do anything

but to remember.

There's no command to do spiritual jumping jacks or to climb

some ladder of enlightenment, or to say some sinner's prayer, or

even confess the Nicene Creed.

In Luke's story, they didn't even go.

Tell them to go and tell this good news to the other disciples,

but remember his words and how he shared with them that he was going

to be turned over, be crucified and on the third day.

Rise again.

Ah.

Wow.

They had an epiphany.

Then they remembered.

And it's then that they told and shared.

And the world was never the same.

And even if it sounded like an idle tale, Peter was still moved

enough to get up and go see it for himself.

Isn't that what we do in this community of faith at this table

every Sunday?

Do this in remembrance of me.

At the moment, our world is designed to shrink our attention

span, to scroll from one thing to the next, to move from one breaking

news story to the next, to forget and to move on to the next

thing.

And yet, on this Easter Sunday, we are challenged to remember

Jesus, to remember and celebrate his resurrection, and to

remind each other that love wins.

And that's why we do community and the journey of faith together.

To remind each other that you are loved, that love wins, that death

will not have the final word.

To go deeper and to be challenged by this extravagant and

prodigal love and grace of God.

So as Jesus followers, let us remember together.

Jesus, who flipped tables of injustice and also sat at tables

with those society saw as less than let us remember together.

Jesus is teaching that the first will be last and that the first,

the last will be first.

Let us remember together Jesus subversive parables with weird and

surprising plot twists.

Let us remember together Jesus in the garden, not wanting to be

alone and asking his disciples, including you and me,

to stay awake with me.

Let us remember the posture Jesus took to wash feet and his open

arms on the cross, praying God, forgive them, for they know

not what they do.

And let us remind each other that this stone has been rolled away

and that this Easter story is a living story that lives in us and

within our community of faith.

The good news isn't necessarily that at Easter they lived

happily ever after.

Rather that love wins.

This isn't a rescue or an escape from the world, but a calling.

Go deeper into it and there are still love stories to tell.

Even if we don't fully understand it all, there are still

love stories to tell.

Even if we fully don't believe it all.

There are still love stories to tell.

Even if it sounds like an idle tale, there's still love stories

to tell.

The stone is rolled away.

New life is emerging around us.

And so you have permission and poetic license.

Like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Mary Magdalene, Martin Luther

and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King

Jr.

And Opal Snyder.

And the person sitting next to you share love stories remember Jesus

to remind one another that love wins regardless of where you

are in your journey of faith.

God is still going to use us to share this love story in extravagant

and diverse ways.

That God calls us to the resurrection isn't just what happened

to Jesus also about what is happening to all of creation, including

you and me?

So yeah, this idle hail isn't going to go away.

Let me Let me remind you that neither will God's extravagance and

prodigal love for you and your neighbor.

Go away.

Amen.

Foreign thank you for listening.

If there is anything that stood out.

For you, or if you have a question or you just want to have

a conversation, you are always free to reach out and contact us.

And remember you are not alone and that you are loved with a love

stronger than death.