There is a story from the life of the great 19th century English poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which has haunted me since I first heard it years ago. Elizabeth was the first born child of a strong willed and domineering father who was determined that his children should have their intellectual capacities developed to their maximum capacity. To this end, he home-schooled his children, and under his tutelage his daughter learned at an early age Latin and Greek. As a small child she read Shakespeare and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Early on Elizabeth demonstrated a remarkable gift for words, and at the age of twelve her father succeeded in getting an extended poem she had written published, a remarkable accomplishment for a young girl. She did all this while suffering from a serious upper respiratory disease that often kept Elizabeth bedridden.

At the age of fifteen Elizabeth took a fall while riding a pony which fractured her spinal column, causing a pain that would afflict her the rest of her life, leading her to become something of a recluse in her Father’s house. She remained into her father’s house well into adulthood, devoting her energies to the writing of her poetry which was characterized by a passionate love of life and a deep spiritual quest for God. Like a tree reaching up towards the light of the sun, so through her poetry her soul reached out to God’s light and love. Her fame as a poet grew.

At the age of thirty three Elizabeth’s beloved brother died, drowning in a boating accident. Elizabeth was devastated, and in her grief her health deteriorated, and it appeared she would spend the rest of her days as an invalid. Even so, she continued to use what little energy she had creating beauty through the words she crafted in a darkened room in her father’s house.

At the age of thirty-eight, something wonderful and unexpected began to happen in Elizabeth’s life. A young poet, Robert Browning (six years younger than Elizabeth), became enamored with Elizabeth’s poetry and began a correspondence with her through letters. In short order they fell in love, and one of the great romances of all time was born. In time they were engaged.

Elizabeth’s father, however, was adamantly opposed to their engagement. He did not want any of his children to marry. Having invested so much of himself in his children’s development, he didn’t want to be left behind.

And so it came to pass that at the age of forty Elizabeth secretly eloped with her beloved Robert. It is here that we come to the part of the story that has always haunted me. When Elizabeth’s father received word of his daughter’s marriage, he refused from that point on to speak with his daughter.

Nonetheless, each week, this great woman of words would take pen to paper, using the gift her father had cultivated within her, and would write a letter to her father. Each week she told him of her undying love for him and of the life she was living.

And there was much to tell. Remarkably, under the blessing of Robert’s love, Elizabeth’s health improved, and she was able to do all kinds of things she thought she would never be able to do. Most amazingly, Elizabeth became pregnant, and at the age of 41 she gave birth to a health baby son, her father’s grandson.

Week after week Elizabeth wrote to her father describing the blessings of her life, and yet no word ever came in return. One day, ten years after her wedding, a large package arrived in the mail. To Elizabeth’s astonishment the return address indicated that the package was from her father. How her heart must have pounded as she opened the package, wondering, perhaps, what manner of gift her father had sent to her after all these years.

Upon opening the package, however, to Elizabeth’s horrible dismay, she discovered every single one of her letters to her father, unopened, unread. In all the years of her faithful writing, he had never opened a single letter. And in returning these letters to Elizabeth, it was as if he were saying to her, "As far as I am concerned, you do not exist."

How great the heartbreak of Elizabeth to have her loved so dramatically spurned by her frozen hearted father.

But though her father rejected her, Elizabeth somehow found the courage to embrace the gift of life. Though her father refused to return her precious love, there were others who were quite willing to love her: her beloved Robert, their son, and the thousands upon thousands of persons who felt their spirits stirred by her marvelous, passionate poetry. Upon these Elizabeth poured out her love throughout the remainder of her life. Her loves broadened as she became an advocate for oppressed persons in her age, despite the fact her stands sometimes diminished her popularity.

I tell this story to bring our attention to the remarkably divergent paths taken by Elizabeth and her father in their lives. On the one hand, her father’s choice to harden his heart; on the other, Elizabeth’s courageous choice to keep her heart open and to pour out her love. There is something in the life of Elizabeth that embodies what it means to live a resurrection life.

The Gospel of Luke tells us that for approximately two years Jesus of Nazareth wandered about the northern country of Palestine, gathering around him a strange group of followers. One of the strange things regarding this band of disciples was that they consisted of both men AND women, a remarkable, indeed, shocking thing in those days when such a sharp line was drawn between men and women.

In the presence of Jesus the disciples witnessed the sick healed, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the hungry fed. In his presence they witnessed this passionate, outreaching love -- the very love of God -- poured out upon the world, like a good shepherd searching for a lost lamb, throwing a wild and raucous party when the lost was found. With Jesus all things must have seemed possible because the power of God was so clearly at work in his ministry.

But you know what happened next. Jesus led his disciples to Jerusalem, and there every thing seemed to break down -- all hell broke loose. Jesus was arrested and whipped and nailed to a cross. Luke tells us that present at the cross, witnessing his last gasping breaths, were both male and female disciples, sharing together in a communal breaking of the heart.

Now from this point, Luke tells us, the paths of the men and women seem to diverge. When the Sabbath was over the women took spices to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ broken body, determined to keep their hearts open, despite the pain. And there something totally unexpected happened. They discovered that the great stone had been rolled away, that Jesus’ body was missing, and two luminous angels were standing there with question for them: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" I was struck by this question. Two paths open before us: the path of the living, and the path of the dead. It is quite possible to live this life as the walking dead. Which path will we choose?

"He is not here; he is risen!" The angels began to remind the women of the things Jesus had said and done, and somehow it all suddenly made sense -- that it was necessary for all of this to happen, that there was a deep level of meaning to all of what has happened which they had missed while they were living through it. Perhaps something similar has happened to you. You go through a stretch of life with things happening that just seem meaningless, and you are tempted to despair. You reach a certain point, however, where you can look back and see that the hand of God was leading you, even though you were oblivious to it at the time. You were one of the walking dead.

But God raises the dead.

We come now to the part of the story that really caught my attention this week. The women race back to where the male disciples are curled up in despair. Breathless, with great joy they gasp out the extraordinary thing they have just witnessed. And Luke tells us, in so many words, they yawned. (Which is a comfort to all of us Easter preachers; the very first Easter sermon received yawns, but somehow the message got through!)
The men considered the witness of the women to be just so much "idle talk", "nonsense"; "you know how women can be!”"
WHAT’S WITH THE MEN? Are they simply sexist, chauvinistic pigs? Probably so, because they lived in a culture writ through with this kind of sexism. (People who think the Easter account is nothing more than a conspiracy have a challenge here: if Jesus’ followers were conspiring to make something appear to happen that in fact never happened, they would never have assigned the part of first witnesses to women, which all four of the Gospels do. This is a detail that gives the resurrection accounts the ring of authenticity.)

I think something more is going on here besides male chauvinism: The men are intentionally closing down their hearts in order to protect themselves. Once our hearts have been broken -- and all of us here this morning have endured this pain to some degree -- it can seem safer to despair of life -- to chose a kind of death over the risks involved in life. It is dangerous to love, if your love may not be returned. It is dangerous to hope, if your hopes may get smashed to smithereens.

Despair seems safer.

What does Easter mean? Without the resurrection, life is a bad joke. To be created with all these passionate longings for life and love that are innate to us human beings, only to have them all snuffed out in the end, is just a bad, cruel joke. Better, it may seem, never to have lived at all.

But the resurrection of Jesus asserts that life is not a bad joke. Yes, there is life beyond the grave, but even more; there is life before the grave.

Easter asserts that despair, as tempting as it may be, is out of tune with the deepest level of reality... that at the heart of reality there is an eternal fountain of love that calls us to grow, to create, to live. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had it right. Her father had it wrong.
Which path will we choose?

In a German cemetery there is a gravesite made of huge slabs of granite, riveted together with strong steel clasps. On the tombstone these words are carved: "This burial place must never be opened. It belongs to a women who believed in no resurrection for anybody, and she orders that her grave be made secure." But something strange happened. A little tiny seed, perhaps not much bigger than a mustard seed, chanced to lie is the narrow space between the granite slabs. Finding just the slightest bit of earth there, the seed began to sprout, to grow. Roots stretched out, and a shoot began to push out towards the light, and in time a growing tree wrenched the steel clasps about and pushed the stones apart to make room for life.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

In the kindness and resurrection life of Jesus,

Pastor Jeff