The Idle Tale
Sermon
An Idle Tale Becomes Good News
Messages On Lent And Easter Themes
On the tiptoe of expectation is hardly the way to describe the mood of the disciples on the first Easter morning. They were not expectant; they were despondent. They were not hopeful; they were pessimistic. And so the news that Jesus had risen from the dead took them completely by surprise. They thought it was an "idle tale," or as other translations put it, "nonsense."
The proclamation of the Resurrection was to meet with that kind of response from many in the years ahead, but why from Jesus' own disciples? These were the men who had known him most intimately. They had had the best opportunity to become acquainted with his thought and message. He had even talked to them about what was going to happen. Then they didn't believe it when they were told that it had happened. It seems strange indeed!
But it has to be kept in mind that the Gospels were written after the Resurrection, not before it. This means that they were written in the light of that momentous event and that the writers saw and heard Jesus, not just as he had been seen and heard during his actual ministry, but also as he was revealed by his Resurrection.
Isn't it true that we often see persons in a different perspective after they are no longer among us? Their words and deeds take on new meaning in the light of their changed status. How much more this would have been true in regard to Jesus. The disciples knew it was no ordinary person with whom they were associating. But when they were convinced of his Resurrection, they began to see all he had said and done in the light of that event. When we read some of the things they remembered his having said to them, we wonder how dull they could have been not to be expecting him to arise. But they were just ordinary people like us, slow to see and to comprehend spiritual truth. So Jesus' Resurrection caught them by surprise, and at first they could not believe it. It seemed to them an idle tale.
Mocking Empty Hearts
As such it seemed also a mockery of their empty hearts.
Helen Keller was writing once about the tendency to see in the world around one only a mirror reflecting one's own feelings and ideas. She said that some people "look within themselves -- and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either."1
But the emptiness in the hearts of those disciples was based on reality. It was caused by actual happenings outside themselves. Something had happened in their world, and it had made a difference in their hearts. Where there had been meaning and joy, there was now emptiness and despondency.
Some of this nation's darkest days were those following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As his widow brooded over what had happened, she mentioned the sadness he had known and said: "But now he will never know more -- not age, nor stagnation, nor despair, nor crippling illness, nor loss of any more people he loved. His high noon kept all the freshness of the morning -- and he died then, never knowing disillusionment."2
Such was not the case with these disciples of Jesus. They had known a high noon that had kept all the freshness of the morning. Then suddenly the sun had gone down for them, leaving them in darkness, bewildered, disillusioned, empty-hearted.
To treat such a feeling lightly or to promise relief for it falsely is cruel mockery of it. They had had enough pain already. What had happened to Jesus and their own conduct through it all had about done them in. Surely no one would be heartless enough to deceive them about something like this. To tell them that the Christ they had loved so dearly was alive again, if untrue, was a mockery of their empty hearts.
Mending Broken Dreams
Yet that was the beginning of the mending of their broken dreams.
What great dreams had possessed the hearts and minds of Jesus' disciples! In company with Jesus they had envisioned great things. At times some of them had become a little too personally ambitious in their dreaming, as when James and John set their eyes on the positions of greatest honor in the expected kingdom (Matthew 20:20-28). But no doubt they had dreamed of peace and justice and righteousness, too. There was no limit to what they might achieve under the leadership of their new Master.
Yet dreams are sometimes fragile things that can be broken, and that is what happened to the disciples' dreams at Golgotha. They were shattered to pieces, and they were left with the debris. What do you do with a broken dream?
Edgar A. Guest may declare that "one broken dream is not the end of dreaming," and that the stars are still gleaming "beyond the storm and tempest," and may advise that one should still build castles, though the castles fall.3 But how do you manage to see beyond the storm and tempest to where the "stars are gleaming"? How do you keep building castles when the King is dead?
Edwin Markham, in his poem "The Dream," notes that it is easy to dream in youth, but emphasizes the importance of continuing to dream as life moves on. It is a greater thing, he says, "to fight life through / And say at the end, 'The dream is true!' "4
Really, youth and age were not involved in the inability of the disciples to keep their dreams alive. An event of earth-shattering significance had brought them to the point where they had to say, "The dream is not true!"
Then all unexpectedly the mending process began. It was not anyone's exhortation on the importance of dreaming that started it though. They did not just decide to "get their chins up" and think positively about life. They did not decide to live in the present, forgetful of the past. Rather, they heard some good news. If what they heard was true, there was no longer any reason to doubt that their dreams could be fulfilled.
Christ had been both the inspirer and the basis of their dreaming, and if he were alive again, they could pick up their dreams and believe in them again and say with real conviction, "The dream is true!"
That idle tale started the mending of their broken dreams.
Renewing Weakened Purposes
This means that their weakened purposes began to be renewed also.
Novelist Graham Greene tells of his feelings, as a young man, at his first confession preceding his baptism. He found the confession, which was supposed to cover the whole of his previous life, to be a humiliating ordeal. He says he had not yet become hardened to the formulas of confession or skeptical about himself. "In the first confession," he says, "a convert really believes in his own promises."5
Not far in the past these disciples had made some promises. No doubt they really believed in those promises, and they gave purpose to their lives. They had a reason for living. They had work to do, tasks to accomplish. But the events of that dark Friday altered all that. They had made promises of allegiance, but the One to whom they had made the promises was not around any more. He had called them to be with him and to work with him, but he had now been removed from the scene and the mission on which they had embarked now seemed futile.
What was there for them to do now? Maybe they had been foolish to leave their homes, families, and jobs to become followers of this itinerant preacher/teacher who had now been executed as a criminal. Wise or foolish, there was now little point to the vows they had made. The purposes that had once given direction to their lives were dying away.
Then came the news that Joseph's tomb had not been adequate for the task assigned it. At first this seemed an idle tale, but after its truth was validated by their own encounter with the living Christ, those purposes began to be renewed and to grow strong again. They still had a living Lord. He still had work for them to do, and they had "miles to go" and "promises to keep."6
Lighting Darkened Tombs
In time this idle tale lightened up a darkened future, too. At the moment, the disciples may not have been greatly concerned about what was going to happen to Christ or to them beyond the experience of death. They had shared with others the belief in a resurrection at the end of the age. Such a belief depended upon trust in God. But after what had happened to Jesus, their faith must have been shaken terribly, and the tomb of death became darker than ever.
Can we be satisfied with a darkened tomb that has no exit? Can we be satisfied with that, especially for those we love? What does it do to our conception of life itself to believe that it simply ends and that that is all there is to it?
When Sigmund Freud's beautiful daughter, Sophia, died of influenza, he was so numbed by the sudden tragedy that he could only say unbelievingly, "She was blown away as if she had never been."7 Her influence may have lived on in his life and in the lives of others, but what about that terrible darkness at the end of her life?
Leo Tolstoy lost three children and two aunts by death during the four years he was writing his novel, Anna Karenina. The novel is permeated with the question of meaning in the face of death. One of his biographers says: "Tolstoy had reached the farthest point to which his intelligence and imagination could take him as an observer of life, and there he found only one meaningful question: When one recognizes the inevitability of death, how can he go on living?"8
The news the disciples at first called an idle tale can help, because it points to a dazzling light in an empty tomb. All is not darkness in the mysterious region of death. There is a light in the darkness, and it speaks of life and joy!
After more than twenty centuries, some still call the news of Christ's resurrection an idle tale. But many others, in every century since the news was first announced, have been convinced, because of their own encounter with the living Christ, that it is truth and not nonsense. It is not a mockery of empty hearts to talk about a risen Christ.
This news is an invitation to let a dream take hold of us. We can live in companionship with One who talked about a kingdom where God's will would be done on earth as it is done in heaven. We need to be possessed by that dream.
This Christ who now speaks on the resurrection side of that garden tomb calls us to loyalty to him, to service in his name. Even when our commitment becomes weak and slack, he keeps calling us to faithfulness and purposeful devotion to him.
And because death could not hold him, there is light in the darkness at the end of the road. So we can have hope of life, abundant and eternal, both now and beyond the event of death.
He is risen! That is no idle tale. It is truth, glorious, wonderful truth!
____________
1. Helen Keller, The Open Door (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957), p. 47.
2. William Manchester, The Death of a President (New York, Evanston, London: Harper & Row Publishers, 1967), p. 748.
3. Edgar A. Guest, "Dreams," in Collected Verse (Chicago: The Reilly & Lee Co., 1934), p. 670.
4. Edwin Markham, "The Dream."
5. Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. 169.
6. Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," in The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem (New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969), pp. 224-225.
7. Francine Klagsbrun, Sigmund Freud (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1967), pp. 85-86.
8. Morris Philipson, The Count Who Wished He Were a Peasant (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), pp. 85-86.
The proclamation of the Resurrection was to meet with that kind of response from many in the years ahead, but why from Jesus' own disciples? These were the men who had known him most intimately. They had had the best opportunity to become acquainted with his thought and message. He had even talked to them about what was going to happen. Then they didn't believe it when they were told that it had happened. It seems strange indeed!
But it has to be kept in mind that the Gospels were written after the Resurrection, not before it. This means that they were written in the light of that momentous event and that the writers saw and heard Jesus, not just as he had been seen and heard during his actual ministry, but also as he was revealed by his Resurrection.
Isn't it true that we often see persons in a different perspective after they are no longer among us? Their words and deeds take on new meaning in the light of their changed status. How much more this would have been true in regard to Jesus. The disciples knew it was no ordinary person with whom they were associating. But when they were convinced of his Resurrection, they began to see all he had said and done in the light of that event. When we read some of the things they remembered his having said to them, we wonder how dull they could have been not to be expecting him to arise. But they were just ordinary people like us, slow to see and to comprehend spiritual truth. So Jesus' Resurrection caught them by surprise, and at first they could not believe it. It seemed to them an idle tale.
Mocking Empty Hearts
As such it seemed also a mockery of their empty hearts.
Helen Keller was writing once about the tendency to see in the world around one only a mirror reflecting one's own feelings and ideas. She said that some people "look within themselves -- and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either."1
But the emptiness in the hearts of those disciples was based on reality. It was caused by actual happenings outside themselves. Something had happened in their world, and it had made a difference in their hearts. Where there had been meaning and joy, there was now emptiness and despondency.
Some of this nation's darkest days were those following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As his widow brooded over what had happened, she mentioned the sadness he had known and said: "But now he will never know more -- not age, nor stagnation, nor despair, nor crippling illness, nor loss of any more people he loved. His high noon kept all the freshness of the morning -- and he died then, never knowing disillusionment."2
Such was not the case with these disciples of Jesus. They had known a high noon that had kept all the freshness of the morning. Then suddenly the sun had gone down for them, leaving them in darkness, bewildered, disillusioned, empty-hearted.
To treat such a feeling lightly or to promise relief for it falsely is cruel mockery of it. They had had enough pain already. What had happened to Jesus and their own conduct through it all had about done them in. Surely no one would be heartless enough to deceive them about something like this. To tell them that the Christ they had loved so dearly was alive again, if untrue, was a mockery of their empty hearts.
Mending Broken Dreams
Yet that was the beginning of the mending of their broken dreams.
What great dreams had possessed the hearts and minds of Jesus' disciples! In company with Jesus they had envisioned great things. At times some of them had become a little too personally ambitious in their dreaming, as when James and John set their eyes on the positions of greatest honor in the expected kingdom (Matthew 20:20-28). But no doubt they had dreamed of peace and justice and righteousness, too. There was no limit to what they might achieve under the leadership of their new Master.
Yet dreams are sometimes fragile things that can be broken, and that is what happened to the disciples' dreams at Golgotha. They were shattered to pieces, and they were left with the debris. What do you do with a broken dream?
Edgar A. Guest may declare that "one broken dream is not the end of dreaming," and that the stars are still gleaming "beyond the storm and tempest," and may advise that one should still build castles, though the castles fall.3 But how do you manage to see beyond the storm and tempest to where the "stars are gleaming"? How do you keep building castles when the King is dead?
Edwin Markham, in his poem "The Dream," notes that it is easy to dream in youth, but emphasizes the importance of continuing to dream as life moves on. It is a greater thing, he says, "to fight life through / And say at the end, 'The dream is true!' "4
Really, youth and age were not involved in the inability of the disciples to keep their dreams alive. An event of earth-shattering significance had brought them to the point where they had to say, "The dream is not true!"
Then all unexpectedly the mending process began. It was not anyone's exhortation on the importance of dreaming that started it though. They did not just decide to "get their chins up" and think positively about life. They did not decide to live in the present, forgetful of the past. Rather, they heard some good news. If what they heard was true, there was no longer any reason to doubt that their dreams could be fulfilled.
Christ had been both the inspirer and the basis of their dreaming, and if he were alive again, they could pick up their dreams and believe in them again and say with real conviction, "The dream is true!"
That idle tale started the mending of their broken dreams.
Renewing Weakened Purposes
This means that their weakened purposes began to be renewed also.
Novelist Graham Greene tells of his feelings, as a young man, at his first confession preceding his baptism. He found the confession, which was supposed to cover the whole of his previous life, to be a humiliating ordeal. He says he had not yet become hardened to the formulas of confession or skeptical about himself. "In the first confession," he says, "a convert really believes in his own promises."5
Not far in the past these disciples had made some promises. No doubt they really believed in those promises, and they gave purpose to their lives. They had a reason for living. They had work to do, tasks to accomplish. But the events of that dark Friday altered all that. They had made promises of allegiance, but the One to whom they had made the promises was not around any more. He had called them to be with him and to work with him, but he had now been removed from the scene and the mission on which they had embarked now seemed futile.
What was there for them to do now? Maybe they had been foolish to leave their homes, families, and jobs to become followers of this itinerant preacher/teacher who had now been executed as a criminal. Wise or foolish, there was now little point to the vows they had made. The purposes that had once given direction to their lives were dying away.
Then came the news that Joseph's tomb had not been adequate for the task assigned it. At first this seemed an idle tale, but after its truth was validated by their own encounter with the living Christ, those purposes began to be renewed and to grow strong again. They still had a living Lord. He still had work for them to do, and they had "miles to go" and "promises to keep."6
Lighting Darkened Tombs
In time this idle tale lightened up a darkened future, too. At the moment, the disciples may not have been greatly concerned about what was going to happen to Christ or to them beyond the experience of death. They had shared with others the belief in a resurrection at the end of the age. Such a belief depended upon trust in God. But after what had happened to Jesus, their faith must have been shaken terribly, and the tomb of death became darker than ever.
Can we be satisfied with a darkened tomb that has no exit? Can we be satisfied with that, especially for those we love? What does it do to our conception of life itself to believe that it simply ends and that that is all there is to it?
When Sigmund Freud's beautiful daughter, Sophia, died of influenza, he was so numbed by the sudden tragedy that he could only say unbelievingly, "She was blown away as if she had never been."7 Her influence may have lived on in his life and in the lives of others, but what about that terrible darkness at the end of her life?
Leo Tolstoy lost three children and two aunts by death during the four years he was writing his novel, Anna Karenina. The novel is permeated with the question of meaning in the face of death. One of his biographers says: "Tolstoy had reached the farthest point to which his intelligence and imagination could take him as an observer of life, and there he found only one meaningful question: When one recognizes the inevitability of death, how can he go on living?"8
The news the disciples at first called an idle tale can help, because it points to a dazzling light in an empty tomb. All is not darkness in the mysterious region of death. There is a light in the darkness, and it speaks of life and joy!
After more than twenty centuries, some still call the news of Christ's resurrection an idle tale. But many others, in every century since the news was first announced, have been convinced, because of their own encounter with the living Christ, that it is truth and not nonsense. It is not a mockery of empty hearts to talk about a risen Christ.
This news is an invitation to let a dream take hold of us. We can live in companionship with One who talked about a kingdom where God's will would be done on earth as it is done in heaven. We need to be possessed by that dream.
This Christ who now speaks on the resurrection side of that garden tomb calls us to loyalty to him, to service in his name. Even when our commitment becomes weak and slack, he keeps calling us to faithfulness and purposeful devotion to him.
And because death could not hold him, there is light in the darkness at the end of the road. So we can have hope of life, abundant and eternal, both now and beyond the event of death.
He is risen! That is no idle tale. It is truth, glorious, wonderful truth!
____________
1. Helen Keller, The Open Door (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957), p. 47.
2. William Manchester, The Death of a President (New York, Evanston, London: Harper & Row Publishers, 1967), p. 748.
3. Edgar A. Guest, "Dreams," in Collected Verse (Chicago: The Reilly & Lee Co., 1934), p. 670.
4. Edwin Markham, "The Dream."
5. Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. 169.
6. Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," in The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem (New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969), pp. 224-225.
7. Francine Klagsbrun, Sigmund Freud (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1967), pp. 85-86.
8. Morris Philipson, The Count Who Wished He Were a Peasant (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), pp. 85-86.
