According to the Women

Luke 24:1-12

March 31, 2013/ Easter

Preached at Prescott American Baptist Church

According to the women something happened that was extremely unusual, out of the ordinary according to the laws and principles of this world. 

We say some unusual things in our Christian faith and we do some odd things. I remember when my daughter was younger she had two good friends who lived next door, two little girls. Their family didn’t go to church. We did go to church and the girls asked if they could go with us. The little one, Ashley, was five years old and she sat in my lap during worship. It was first Sunday, communion Sunday. When I stood to go for the bread and wine I asked her, “Would you like to go up with me?’ She curled her nose up and shook her head, “No! I ain’t drinking no blood!”

I was surprised that she was paying such close attention to what was being said in church. And I have never forgotten her reaction because she made it plain: As Christians we believe some unusual things and we do some odd things. It’s important to recognize how strange our beliefs are. Because we need to come to terms with the strangeness of our faith in order to realize the miracles and mysteries of our faith. 

Early in the morning the women went to the tomb. They were prepared to anoint the body of Jesus with spices and herbs. They expected him to be dead. When they found the stone rolled away, they still expected Jesus to be dead. They were perplexed and then they were terrified by the appearance of two men in dazzling clothes. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

The women were looking for a dead body, intending to pay their respects and be together as they continued to mourn the loss of someone very special in their lives. We know how to deal with death even if we don’t want to deal with death. It comes with a familiar routine.

They were terrified. It can be a challenge for us to accept that the real world contains miracles and mysteries like resurrection. 

I met Elaine Flowers one cloudy cold day in the middle of December, 1983, because I was depressed. I wasn’t happy with myself and I doubted that I was a person of any value. I heard about Elaine by way of our minister at the time. He had heard about Elaine at a ministers’ meeting in town. I agreed to go see her. Being a help to somebody else can sometimes lift the spirits. I went to meet Elaine out of duty (the minister suggested that I go) but with some longing too. I was hopeful that something good could and would happen for me. 

Elaine Flowers was thirty-two years old and she had cancer, a tumor in her pelvic region that had expanded into her thigh. Elaine refused to see a doctor or to be treated in any way other than to pray for healing. She had three children. Tonya was ten, Clay was eight and Brandy was five. Their father was gone by the time I met them. He couldn’t handle the cancer and he couldn’t make sense of Elaine’s faith in God’s capacity to heal her without any earthly assistance. 

They lived in a shack surrounded by a muddy yard. Most of the paint was missing from their house and so were the front steps. Somebody had stacked concrete blocks in front so you could get up to the door. On my first visit I found Elaine on the couch. She was watching Jimmy Swaggart on the television. I would learn to sit with her and listen to Jimmy Swaggart preach. Elaine trusted him and felt inspired by him. 

Elaine had her own church, Apostolic Pentecostal Temple of Faith. They were no longer coming to see her. The people in Elaine’s church said that she was blocking God’s healing power by some secret sin she was hiding from them and trying to hide from God. So they told her they could not be part of her life until she fully confessed. 

My Sunday school class purchased a tree for the family and we decorated it with the kids. We put gifts under it for Christmas morning and brought food for dinner. I entered into a routine with Tonya, Clay and Brandy. I took them to the YMCA on Wednesday afternoons and we swam in the pool. I took them to the park and to see their pick of movies on weekends. I brought pizza to the house, sat on the couch with Elaine and listened to her talk.

She trusted God to do the right thing with her life. She believed that God could be trusted with her life. She expected God to heal her. She searched her heart and soul regularly for any sin that might need to be confessed and she could not find any secrets in her soul. She didn’t think of herself as all that righteous so it wasn’t as if she thought she was perfected. She just couldn’t think of anything she was hiding from God—or me. 

The tumor grew and Elaine weakened. Her mother came from East Tennessee and stayed with her. She joined Elaine in praying for healing. And she took the three children back to East Tennessee with her when Elaine died. She’s buried in Henderson, Tennessee.

It is such an unusual kind of faith that we find ourselves offended by Elaine’s behavior. We want to accuse her of abandoning her children, being reckless with the gift of life itself, blame her for her death by pointing out that adequate treatment might have cured her cancer and made her well again. But what about unusual faith? 

I was there and I can tell you that Elaine expected God to be in control at all times. She believed that God could do all things. And as she was dying she looked forward to being with God. She trusted that God, who had given life to her and to her children, would provide for Tonya, Clay and Brandy.

To tell Elaine’s story is to tell a story of extreme faith. Being with Elaine for two years set me free from my own emotional downward spiral. My faith was not like Elaine’s faith but being with her opened my eyes to see God in deeper ways. Talking with Elaine allowed me to see myself in new ways. And when we stood by the grave I had questions, for sure. But I knew for sure she was not really dead. Her life had taught me that much. Being part of Elaine’s life had helped me to see the difference between the living and the dead. Even as she was dying, Elaine’s faith was vital, compelling and full of hope.

The women came to the tomb to anoint a dead body because they expected to find what they had always found. A person who is dead stays dead. They were terrified—at least for a while—they were terrified. “He is not here, he is risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee…?” 

And they did remember. Not just his words but what it was like to be with him, to talk with him, to eat with him, to see him as he made choices and entered into relationships and tasks. The women remembered. He had made them wonder if something unexpected might happen. He had caused them to feel like their own lives had value. Their own lives might be part of something real and eternal. They remembered.

Leonardo Da Vinci said:

Once you have flown,

You will walk the earth

With your eyes turned skyward;

For there you have been,

 There you long to return.

Once we have walked with Jesus, listened to him, shared our own story with him, shared bread and wine with him and watched him work miracles in the streets of our city—we can no longer walk on the earth without great expectations for love in our lives. We trust the miracles and mysteries of our faith because we trust Jesus. We find ourselves looking upward with hope in our hearts.

I think about Elaine Flowers and I recognize that you might hear her story today and put her in a category as crazy or suicidal. I would think the same thing—except that I knew her, sat beside her, ate in her home and spent days with her children. She expected miracles every single day. Nothing would be too great for God. She trusted Jesus in life and in death.

Every once in a while we meet somebody who walks with us into a deeper faith. Every once in a while we recognize that there is no need to feel alone, anxious or afraid. This unusual faith that we share embraces us in the mysteries-- even in life.

According to the women he is risen. We know this to be true because each day that we live we know Jesus and his redeeming love in our lives.

Amen