March 31, 2013 | 4:00 p.m. | Easter Sunday

Look for the Living

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Luke 24:1–12

Most of you are here today because you already know the story of Easter. Those of you with us last week on Palm Sunday remember that we read what happened the week before: Jesus gathered his disciples together for the feast of the Passover. He gave them bread, calling it his body, and wine, calling it the covenant sealed in his blood. The disciples misunderstood the gravity of what was going on. Though Jesus knelt down in humility to wash their feet, they argued about which one of them would be the greatest in his kingdom. One of them betrayed him to the authorities, another lied to complete strangers about knowing him, and the rest fled for fear of being associated with him. He was tried and convicted; he hung on a cross and poured out his life for them. It is a story of misunderstanding and weakness and death. That was Friday; but on Sunday it all changes. He is not dead. He is alive! In the greatest surprise ending ever told, the most profound twist of fate, Christ is among us again; new life has begun. At the tomb, in a place where we expect to find death, instead we find life.

The story sneaks up on followers of Jesus; it surprises them one at a time. The women go to the tomb expecting to anoint the body, according to their religious tradition. The first surprise is that the stone at the door of the tomb has been rolled away. Making their way cautiously, they go inside and find that the body is gone, and while they are still standing there, confused by the whole turn of events, the story gets even stranger: two men appear—some translations come right out and say they are angels—and the women, terrified, turn away and bury their faces. Slowly the angels help the women up and coax them into remembering what Jesus had promised, words they remembered but had never quite believed: that on the third day he would rise again. The women leave the tomb in a hurry, now eagerly on the lookout for Jesus. They tell the eleven disciples that are left. Most call it an “idle tale,” skeptical about the details as many of us are, but Peter, who was living with as much regret as any of them over how he had deserted Jesus, Peter is the one who now believes. He races to the tomb, for hope has been restored to his life. Alongside all of this, we, all of us, are left with the provocative question the angels ask the women at the tomb: why do you look for the living among the dead?

When reading a familiar story, we often look for a new way to get into it. Something I noticed this week is that the people in this story do just what anyone would do to remember a loved one who died: they go to the tomb, like we would go to a graveyard or perhaps to a place where we shared a special moment with one who has died. They want to remember Jesus, so they go to the place where they last saw him, the place where they left his body. I was thinking about that idea this week—the idea of coming back to the same place again and again to remember, to reflect—when I ran across another story I’ve known for years. I’ve not read it in a long time and was surprised at how much depth I found there, but I suppose that’s why it is one of our age’s best stories. It’s the children’s book by Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree. In it we find something like what happens on Easter; the women go to the tomb with a set of expectations of what they need and what they will find, and they come away with something dramatically different than what they expected.

Many of you will remember at least part of the story of The Giving Tree. There is a little boy and a tree where he plays. He climbs its trunk, swings from its branches; he eats the tree’s apples and takes naps in its shade. The boy is happy when they are together, and so is the tree.

As the boy grows, his relationship to the tree changes. He tells the tree he is too old for climbing and playing. He is no longer satisfied with the company of the tree; in a drawing from the book that I had forgotten (one clearly put there for the parents as much as the kids), the tree stands there in the foreground; a heart with initials is carved at the base. Two apple cores lie nearby, and not two but four bare legs stretch out next to the trunk. The boy is growing up.

The boy returns to the tree some time later with a problem. He needs money. The tree gives him its apples, and he goes and he sells them in order to start a life. Again later the boy returns, this time needing a home for his family. The tree offers its limbs for wood. The boy cuts them down to build a house and goes away to raise a family.

Much later, the boy returns, now middle aged. Life has overwhelmed him with its troubles and worries, and he wants nothing more than to get away from it all. The boy has become a man in crisis. The tree helps in the way that it can. The boy cuts down the trunk, makes of it a boat, and sails away to escape.

The boy’s escape plan doesn’t work. Later he returns to the tree once more. He is quite old and very tired, and the tree, now just a stump, has nothing left to give. But the boy needs nothing at this advanced stage of life other than to sit and rest, and that is perhaps the one thing that stumps still have to give. So the stump offers its help and the boy sits down to rest—and the author reflects that both of them were happy.

The story is thick, its wisdom like—well, like the rings of a tree. We learn so much about our human condition from the tree and the boy who keeps coming back to it, looking for what he needs. Maybe the story reminds you of a romance you’ve had or a family relationship in which one person does all the giving and the other all of the taking—most of us have at some time been on each side of that equation. Or maybe the story reminds you of a parent who gives and gives to a growing child—perhaps the parent fears that the child will stop coming back when there is nothing left to give a son or nothing more that a daughter needs—or thinks she needs. Is the story of the tree a positive one, showing grace and selfless giving by the tree and the patience and love that the boy will one day return? Or perhaps it is a negative story, showing undisciplined love that raises an ungrateful child or the habitual selfishness that leads to abusive relationships?

Almost every side of the human condition is found somewhere in this simple story about a boy and a tree, told in a way that invites us to think. So many elements of the story seem similar to the story between Jesus and his followers: they were ambitious, at times they were brave, and at other times cowardly; they had known loss; they had been confused; they had missed the point. The disciples did not know that when Jesus went to the cross, Jesus was doing something new; they did not understand that where he was going they could not yet go; they did not realize the gravity of his commandment that they should love one another as he had loved them. Because they did not understand, these followers of Jesus came to the tomb on Easter morning expecting to find Jesus just as they had left him; they expected to find death. But they were wrong. And the angels corrected them and gave them a new way to think about everything, even life and death.

God wants us to have many of the things the tree seemed to want for the boy. God wants us to keep coming back, to grow and to change, to recognize the things that constitute real happiness and real generosity, and to find those things in all places and stages of life. God wants us to know that there is always a new way to live, to love, to grow together. God longs for us to show the playful acceptance of a child, the angst of young adulthood, the ambition of building a life—and God hopes for us to know that we can come back home when we have become lost in the midst of life’s pressures and that we can return when what we need is simply a place to rest.

But God also wants us to see a different reality than the one right in front of us, and that’s what I really thought about this week when I read The Giving Tree with a mind toward Easter. God’s love is not contained in one place. It’s not stuck in a tomb; it might be found anywhere in the world. And it occurs to me that there may be tragedy in the story of The Giving Tree unless the boy comes to realize that the generosity of the tree has been many places in his life.

When the boy was an adult in crisis, when he stared up at the stars from the hull of the boat he carved from the trunk, did he remember that the tree was saving him from drowning? Did he lay in that boat and remember the days of climbing the heights of the tree and looking out at the world below, and did he remember those times not just out of sadness for simpler days, but with thankfulness for the wisdom that life had brought him?

Did the young man who built the house from the limbs of that tree, who raised his family there, did he remember the love that allowed that house to be built? In the midst of the joyful Christmases that were spent under the roof of the house the boy built, did he remember that the tree made it possible? In the midst of sleepless nights waiting for his kids to come home, did he pace the hardwood floors and lean on the doorposts and wonder, “Do my children know that I love them as much as that tree loved me?”

Did the young man who scooped up those apples to sell, did he ask himself if he was the kind of businessman that the generous tree hoped for him to become? Did he consider ways he could help someone else to get started? Did he learn how to give of his own profits without expecting something in return? Did he appreciate the joy of giving and remember the tree?

Did the boy who lay with his lover in the shade of those tree branches, did he give thanks for the gift of love in all of its manifestations? Did he have moments where he chose the needs of the other person first, when he laid aside his own priorities for the sake of another? Did he love someone else enough to be vulnerable, to let them become who they were created to be and to take pride in their accomplishments? And did he realize that all he knew about what it meant to love he knew because the tree loved him first, because the tree had the generosity to give him life and to allow him to grow?

And the boy who had become an old man, who returned and sat on that stump—did he realize, upon his last visit to that tree, that all around him there was new life? Did he know that each time that he drew love from the branches of that tree by taking one of its apples, even when he unthinkingly spit the seeds to the ground or tossed the core aside, someone else was creating the possibility that one day a new tree would grow, a new boy would play, life would continue? Did the boy and the tree contemplate that miracle together in the last pages of the old story? Did they rejoice about life together? Is life what they thought about as that old man sat and rested, in the place where he returned, expecting not to find life, but death?

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the angels asked the women at the tomb. “He is not here but has risen.” It is a story about how Christ is found not in the places where we would expect to contain him, but that he moves through the world in all kinds of places.

God’s house is a home for every time and place, every person, every emotion in life. Last week I mentioned that this place isn’t worth much if you can’t bring fear or anger or loss here, and I invited you to think of the cross not as a tunnel with light at the other end, but as a cave full of darkness, a place where loss feels complete and recovery impossible, because that is what loss is like for most of us, and so that is where Jesus goes, a tomb. But today I tell you, as the women at the tomb once were told, do not look for the living among the dead, for he has risen. Out there in the world, in places in your life where you have not considered it, Christ’s love is present and waiting to be discovered. There is love to be found on the streets of our city and in the beauty of God’s creation, in the comfort of our homes and our old friendships, in the hope of the new relationships and places that are still before us. God’s love is ready to be found in workplaces and checkout lines, in protest marches or around boardroom tables, in classrooms and laboratories, in art studios, on athletic fields, in food and clothing shared with strangers, and around the dinner tables of our very own homes. Easter is about finding love where you thought it was not present or would no longer be. Easter is about the depth and breadth, the far-reaching impact of God’s presence, out there today in places where you may not expect to find it. God’s love is near, as near to you as it ever has been. God’s love lives inside you, waiting to be discovered. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia. Amen.