Why Do You Seek the Living among the Dead? (Luke 24:5)

 Why Do You Seek the Living among the Dead?

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Many times on Easter Sunday I go early to the cemetery, looking past the grave stones and out over the river, reflecting on death and life. It’s a good place to think about death; maybe a bit strange to think about life.

This critical question from the Bible is asked by the angel in the empty tomb on the first Resurrection Day morning: Why do you seek the living among the dead? The women who had come to anoint the dead body of Jesus had not had the opportunity to do so before the beginning of Sabbath (dusk of Friday evening, when Jesus was taken down from the cross and buried). And they could not do their task on Saturday, being the Jewish Sabbath. And so here they were Sunday morning, seeking the dead among, well, the dead. 

Except there were no dead ones here. There were angels, very much alive. The soldiers guarding the tomb who had fainted like dead men had come to themselves and run off. The body of  Jesus that had been crucified and had indeed been dead was now missing. There were no dead persons present! The women are instructed to go and tell the disciples that Jesus is alive, and Mary actually meets Jesus face to face - alive, not dead!

This is a tremendous story of great reversals, but it has application to us today as well. Do we seek the living among the dead? Do we seek to have life, expecting that life to come from dead sources? Could not the angel ask us, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?"

Let’s illustrate it this way. You don’t go to the devil in order to receive righteousness. You don’t climb down into the mud pit in order to get clean. You don’t bring yourself into the company of miserable characters in order to build character. And you don’t follow the lead of those who are spiritually dead to learn how one should live in this world spiritually alive.

It is from Jesus that we receive righteousness, and that from no other source. It is from His shed blood that we receive cleansing. It is by following Him, and imitating Him, and obeying Him that we become like Him, and thus have godly character. It is from Jesus and from God’s Word and from the fellowship of believers that we learn and encourage one another to walk the path of those “who have passed from death to life."