Unlikely and Improbable

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God. You are our rock, our strength, our life, and our redeemer. Amen.

The Gospel of Luke begins and ends with angels.

A few months ago, we heard about how an angel came first to a childless elderly priest and then to an unmarried young woman, and announced to them both the birth of their respective sons. Nine months after the first announcement, John was born to Elizabeth and Zechariah.

And then, on Christmas, the angels came to the shepherds in the fields to announce the birth of Jesus, the Messiah.

         That’s how the story – the Gospel – begins.

Today, at the end of the story, two angels came to a group of women to announce the resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah.

These women had watched Jesus die on Friday, and seen the place where he was buried. They rested on the Sabbath, as was required by law.

But first thing Sunday morning, Mary, Joanna, and a group of other women had come to Jesus’ tomb to pay their respects.

Instead of finding a tomb at which to grieve, these women were greeted by messengers from God to tell them that Jesus wasn’t there! He was no longer dead, but alive!

The women went straight to tell Jesus’ other disciples the good news that Jesus was risen! He had conquered death!

But these words seemed to them an idle tale.

God sends messengers to the world – angels, bearing good news – and they show up in the most unlikely of places, to the most improbable people.

         An elderly priest and a poor teenage girl.

Who would believe either of them, when they told people that they were going to have a son? The priest’s wife was too old, and Mary herself was too young.

But these unlikely people believed the messengers of God, and because they believed, they became    the carriers of God’s Word    to the people.

So it was with the shepherds.

Shepherds were peasants, at the bottom rung of the social ladder. And more than that, they were dirty and probably smelled bad – after all, they lived in the fields with the sheep most of the time. Who would want to get close enough for conversation with people like that?

And yet, the angels came    to the shepherds    to announce the birth of Jesus.

And the shepherds became the first evangelists, the first people to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and then to go tell others about him.

In Luke’s Gospel, angels have a record of showing up to people who may not be taken seriously by society. So today’s story follows right in line.

The women come to the tomb in grief, expecting to complete some of the rituals of burial that had been missed two days before.

But they were surprised.

Jesus’ body wasn’t there, but two angels were.

And the message from God that the angels brought to the women was – why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here! He is risen!

That must have been a confusing and unbelievable message to Mary and Joanna and the others. When we have lost a loved one and are in the throes of grief, often we want nothing more than for the person we loved to return. But deep down, we know it can’t happen.

Except – for these women, and for Jesus, on the very first Easter, it did happen. He came back from the dead. How were the women supposed to make sense of that?

The angels took a few minutes to explain their message to the women. Eventually the women realized the depth of the good news they had just received.  Jesus is risen! Just like he said! Death has been conquered!

Once they understood God’s messengers, the women just had to share the good news. They became the next evangelists, sharing the story of Jesus’ life with others.

But in the patriarchal society of ancient Israel, the male disciples of Jesus just couldn’t believe what the women had to say.

Even Peter, who saw the empty tomb for himself – Peter was amazed, but he didn’t understand. He didn’t tell other people about what he had seen.

The male disciples couldn’t believe in the Resurrection until they heard it from someone they believed to be credible, and the female disciples just didn’t fit the bill.

Too bad for the men. They had to live with their grief and confusion for a lot longer until they understood the good news of the Resurrection, simply because they didn’t listen to the messengers God sent to them.

This happens whenever we let stereotypes dictate our perception of the people we meet. Stereotypes based on gender, race, language, or any other measure, will prevent us from understanding the work that God is doing in the world.

God rarely sends messengers to people in positions of power. Instead, angels bring the good news to people who are outcast, oppressed, marginalized, and dehumanized by the society around them.

And then those people become the evangelists – they become God’s human messengers who can share the good news with the rest of us.

But because God’s messengers come to the people we least expect, our stereotypes can make it hard for us to believe that God’s messengers have come at all, or that the good news that is carried by these marginalized people could possibly be true.

This is what happened with Jesus’ male disciples.

The male disciples still hadn’t learned how God works.

God sends messengers to the most unlikely of places, to the most improbable people.

Angels came to the shepherds, and to a group of women.

         But to the men, it was just an idle tale.

It was the greatest news the world has ever known – Jesus is risen! And they couldn’t hear it.

God continues to send messengers into our world.

And those messengers continue to show up in unlikely places, to improbable people.

Today, we have the opportunity to respond to God’s messengers like the women did, or like the men. And the more open we are to hearing God’s word from unexpected places, the sooner our grief and sorrow can be healed by the words of the angels.

If we want to hear the message of God for our lives today, we need to listen to our Muslim sisters and brothers. As Pope Francis reminded us this past week, we are all children of the same God.

If we want to hear the message of God for our lives today, we need to listen to our transgender neighbors. God can speak to us through them.

We need to listen to our immigrant neighbors, regardless of their legal status, because they just might be carrying a message from the angels.

At some point, the idle tale of the women became the foundation of our faith, a faith that has endured for the past two thousand years.

Eventually, the male disciples came to believe the good news that the women had known right from the start, and they also started sharing the good news with others.

And even when the evangelist was a man, the listeners still probably received the news of the Resurrection as an idle tale sometimes.

The life of Jesus is something so new, so unprecedented, so unbelievable, that it can be hard to find the right words to describe it.

But, thank goodness, the evangelists wrote it down for us. They gave us language and stories to understand, and they kept telling the good news over and over again until that idle tale could become the Word of God.

God’s good news is waiting for us, ready to bless us and give us new life. And if there’s one thing we can learn from Luke’s Gospel, it’s that the good news of God will come through messengers sent to unlikely, improbable, marginalized people and places.

And so, let us rejoice with the outcasts, that today, God’s good news has come, even to us!

And let us continue to find ways to hear God’s messengers, and to tell others the good news.

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

Please pray with me.

God, help us to hear your words as good news, and not as an idle tale.

As you have shown us through the example of the women disciples, help us to be faithful in following you, and fearless in proclaiming your message of hope and love to the world.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

March 27, 2016
Easter C
Luke 24:1-12