Memento Vives
Text: Luke 24:1-12, 1 Cor. 15:19-26
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
There’s a fascinating phenomenon from cultures much older than our own. It’s had different forms and gone by different names, but the one that seems to have stuck is the Latin term “memento mori”, which translated means, “Remember you must die.” In one instance, in ancient Rome, a slave was assigned the task of whispering in the ear of victorious generals during their triumph parades, “Remember you are only a man.” Throughout Europe during the Black Plague, tombstones would have a skull with words inscribed around it, “As you are, so once was I; as I am, so you will be”—a reminder to those looking at the grave that those buried used to be alive, and that the observer will also someday be dead like them. We have had a memento mori ourselves only six weeks ago, when I put ashes on your forehead and told you, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
The women going to the tomb early at dawn to anoint the dead body of Jesus were expecting their own remembrance of mortality. That’s what funerary and burial rites like are for, after all: to honor the deceased and to remind the living that they should prepare for the inevitable. They expected to find the stone, cold and enormous, like death itself, blocking their path forward. They expected to find the body of Jesus in the tomb, a reminder of death and all the hopes that are lost in it.
This is why St. Luke tells us that they were perplexed when they found the stone rolled away and Jesus’ body missing from the tomb. They hadn’t even heard the proclamation from the angels yet; they hadn’t seen a resurrected Jesus standing outside. They just had the reminders of death and its unavoidable, all-encompassing doom taken away. The removal of these memento mori, these reminders of death, was enough to confuse them. It was only after those reminders were taken away that the angels in dazzling, celestial robes asked them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
We live in a cynical age. Everyone assumes they know better than everyone else. Truth is relative. If someone is proven wrong, they just have pivot the conversation to show that someone else is even more wrong, or behaving worse, or told a bigger lie, or whatever. It seems that everyone has taken Pontius Pilate’s scornful question, “What is truth?” to heart. They ask: What’s the point? Why do what’s right when it doesn’t seem to benefit you? Why bother helping if you’re just going to be taken advantage of? Why strive to be good when it seems that those doing wrong prosper? Why fight for this or that, why hold on when it’s difficult, why take the high road, why do anything, especially in light of the fact that everyone ends up in the same place? What’s the point of life if everyone and everything eventually ends up dead?
We live in a cynical age, but it’s not a creative one. It’s not the first time that these questions have been raised. In fact, St. Paul faced them 2000 years ago. And he realized that if Christianity only had philosophy to offer, or just a set of rules, or only principles to live by, then it would be useless. “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ,” he says, “we are of all people to be most pitied.” If all we have to offer is some rules to live by, if all we can give people is a warm fuzzy feeling, if all we can provide is some shred of structure or ceremony or distraction, then we are to be pitied, especially when you are called to remember that you will die.
But that is not the point of Christianity. It’s always been about so much more than rules and regulations and protocols and procedures. It’s about more than getting along through this life. The point of our faith is Easter. In fact, the point of everything is Easter. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” the angels asked the women. Indeed, why would we seek life among the rubble heap of merely human ideas and victories. Why would we look for a God who’s living and real among the dead philosophers and kings and cynics? Why would we look for meaning and purpose and life and joy among things that can’t deliver it?
But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. When Scripture calls Jesus the firstfruits, it means that He’s only the first one, the first blossom on the tree, the first resurrected one. And as firstfruits were offered to God as a sacrifice, so was Jesus. He was offered as the sacrifice for all who follow after Him. “For as by a man came death,” St. Paul told us today, “by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”
There is your point to life. There is your purpose. There is your meaning bestowed on everything. There is not your memento mori, your reminder of death; instead, Easter is your memento vives: “Remember you will live.” As the prophet Isaiah foresaw, “They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat…They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord.” Nothing is futile or pointless or meaningless now. Everything has meaning because of Jesus rising from the dead. This is all true because of Easter.
Easter has reversed the universe as we know it. Death does not get the last word. It is not the great equalizer. Death is now the conquered foe and you are the victorious general. But instead of having a slave whisper reminders in your ear of how you’re mortal and will die, you instead have Jesus speaking clearly and powerfully, “Because I live, you will live. I am the way and the truth and the life. He who lives and believes in me will live, even though he die. And he who live and believes in me will never die.”
Remember that you will live, and that you will live forever. That’s what the angels told the women that first Easter at the empty tomb. They don’t provide the women with any kind of proofs, except this: Remember. “Remember how he told you…” They point them to Jesus’ words. It’s that word of promise that delivers the resurrection to them. It’s the word of promise that brings eternal life. It’s the word of promise that you’ve heard read in the Easter Gospel account, in the proclamation that Christ is risen, in the words that you’re receiving Jesus’ resurrected body and blood for the forgiveness of sins and strengthening of your faith even to life everlasting—it’s Jesus’ word of promise that delivers eternal life you. Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
And that’s the point of everything for you. That truth—that you will live, that all who put their trust in Christ will live—that truth colors everything you do. When you sit next to a fellow believer in the pews, you’re sitting next to a fellow immortal. When you kneel at the Communion rail, you’re side by side with someone who’s living forever. When you help someone, when you give charitably, when you pray for someone, when you do the smallest act of service, you are tending to someone eternal. That changes the way we see the world. All that other stuff that the world thinks is so important—money, power, winning it’s silly little games—pales in comparison. You’re shoulder to shoulder with the sons and daughters of God who have been given everlasting life.
And so have you. In those times when you’re feeling lost, hopeless, fearful of the future or grieving for the past; in those times when you wonder what’s the point, why try, why fight, why keep up the effort, why do what’s right when it seems so futile—remember that you will live. The things you do matter because of Easter. The love you show matters because of Jesus’ love shown to you at Easter. The life you live matters because it’s the life Jesus gave you at Easter. And even when you can’t see it, even when all you see is your own sin, or that huge stone blocking the path, or an empty hole in the ground—it’s still there. Your life is still hidden with Christ, and that’s the best place for it to be. You will still live because Jesus lives. Remember how He told you. Remember His words, remember His promise, remember His life, His death, His resurrection. And remember that it is yours. Receive it now. Marvel at what has happened to you in this new and everlasting life you now have. Remember that you will live. In the name of Jesus, the Living One. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
