Luke 24:5
“Why Do You Look for the Living Among the Dead?”
Cross-Examination Sermon Series
Easter Sunday
April 11, 2004
 
In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to 
them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (NIV)
 
	Imagine a son who had to leave his home country and then lost all contact with 
his parents for many, many years. When he was finally able to go back to his home 
country, he went looking for his parents. He wanted to honor them by going to their grave 
and placing a large bouquet of flowers on their graves. When he got there, he scoured the 
obituary section of all the country’s newspapers over the past twenty years, but he found 
nothing about them. He became saddened at his inability to connect with his parents even 
in this smallest of ways. But his love for them would not be denied, so he looked in the 
cemeteries around the area in which he grew up. But he still couldn’t find them. His 
discouragement grew until he abandoned all hope, finally leaving the country, devastated 
that he had been unable to find his parents.
	If only he had checked a phone book—because his parents’ names were right 
there. And his parents? They were alive and well. You see, he had been searching for the 
living among the dead. What could be sadder, what could be more pathetic than someone 
sorrowfully searching among the dead for someone who is in fact still living?
	That is exactly what the women were doing on Easter Sunday. Now it’s true that, 
on the one hand, you can’t really blame the women for coming to the tomb looking for 
Jesus. That was where they had last seen him, and since he was dead at the time, they had 
pretty good reason to believe that he wasn’t going to have changed his location on them 
in the 36 hours since then. Dead people don’t move around a lot. That’s the nature of 
death—that it’s final, that it’s the end.
	And because it was the end, the women were sad—sad that they had seen the last 
of Jesus, sad that his life had come to such a tragic end—and so they were seeking some 
form of comfort by looking among the dead. They planned to put some spices on Jesus’ 
body, maybe reminisce about the good times—but in a melancholy way—for those good 
times were in the past, and there were no more good times to be had.
	Those women sure ought to be glad that that angel was there. If the angel had not 
been there to roll away the stone and if the angel had not stuck around to explain to the 
women what had happened, the women might have spent—wasted, actually—their entire 
Easter Sunday looking for the living among the dead. And that would have been a shame.
	But really, the women should have known better, shouldn’t they? Gentle though it 
may have been, there was still a rebuke in the angel’s words, wasn’t there? The women 
hadn’t listened to—or at least had not believed—Jesus’ words. The angel reminds them 
of those words, saying, “He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while 
he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of 
sinful men, be crucified [yup, they remembered that—had even seen it with their own 
eyes] and on the third day be raised again” (Luke 24:6,7). [Oh, yeah! Jesus had said 
something about that before. And now, like everything else he had ever said, it had come 
true.] 
	The obvious question of the angel, then, was “Why are you still living as though 
Jesus were dead? Why are you walking so sadly, so forlornly, why are you worrying 
about who is going to roll the stone away. And what in the world are you doing carrying 
all those spices?”
	Would the angel ask you the same question today—“Why do you look for the 
living among the dead?” Oh, I know that all of us would say that we believe that Jesus is 
not dead, but living. But would the angel question us even more intensely then, asking us 
why—if we believe that Jesus is living—why are we living as though Jesus is still dead? 
	How might we be living as if Jesus is still dead? We are living as if Jesus is still 
dead when we look at “stones” in our lives and wonder how we are ever going to roll 
them away. We are living as if Jesus is still dead when we fail to take those stones to him 
in prayer and ask Jesus to handle them for us. We are living as if Jesus is still dead if we 
live in fear of other stones that we see coming in the future. And if we’re living like that, 
we’re not really living at all, are we?
	If we’re living like that, we’re living like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, 
who are described as having faces that are “downcast” (Luke 24:17). Their faces were 
downcast—even though the risen Lord was walking right next to them! But since they 
didn’t know that, their faces—and their hearts—showed that they were living as though 
Jesus were still dead.
	Brothers and sisters, do not walk around with downcast faces and sad hearts while 
the risen Lord is walking right next to you! He is, you know. He’s walking right next to 
you, for he himself has said, “Surely I am with you always…” (Matthew 28:20). Since 
he’s alive, since he’s with us, then we may have the joyful face and heart that comes from 
knowing and believing these words from Isaiah: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not 
be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you 
with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).  
	But the biggest way—and the worst way—in which we might be walking around 
as though he who lives and reigns is dead is when we walk around not merely as though 
the weight of the world is on our shoulders, but when we walk around as though the even 
greater weight of our sins is on our shoulders.
	Don’t get me wrong—I’m not trying to minimize those sins and their weight. The 
sins were many, and the weight was enormous. But the fact is that “was” and “were” are 
the right words to use in that sentence—not “are” and “is.” For the fact is that Jesus took 
those many sins and the enormous weight of their guilt on himself when he suffered. And 
it appeared for all the world on Good Friday as though the weight of those sins had 
crushed him when he suffered one of the natural results of sin—physical death. It 
appeared for all the world that he had not been able to carry the weight of sin. It appeared 
as though he had dropped it instead. It appeared as though it would then land right back 
on us.
	But then Easter Sunday came, and Jesus was alive. Then Easter Sunday came, and 
Jesus had conquered death. And therefore Jesus had conquered sin and its guilt. So if we 
are still walking around carrying the burden of sin and guilt, carrying a fear of death and 
eternal punishment, then we are walking around as though he who is living is still 
“among the dead” and as though we will one day join him in death—and to walk around 
in that way—regardless of how much we revered Jesus and his moral teachings, would 
make us sad, pathetic fools. 
	Paul said much the same thing in 1 Corinthians, saying, “If only for this life we 
have hope in Christ we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15:19) and 
then he wipes it away with one triumphant sentence, “But Christ has indeed been raised 
from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). 
	And that means that if you have loved ones who died trusting in Jesus as their 
risen and living Savior from sin, then you need not be overwhelmed with grief that they 
are among the dead—because they really aren’t. They’re among the living because their 
souls are already in heaven—and you will see them again when you die and your soul is 
immediately taken to heaven.
	And yet amidst all this talk about looking among the dead when we should have 
been looking among the living, we still ought to be looking among the dead. 
	Mark tell us that the angel said to the women, “Go, tell his disciples…” (Mark 
16:7). Yes, the disciples were sitting back in the city of Jerusalem truly dead—spiritually 
dead—and they needed someone to bring them the only news that could bring them back 
to life.
	So go and look for the living dead—those who are living physically, but dead 
spiritually. They won’t be hard to find. They work with you. They live around you. Some 
of them even live with you. They are walking around spiritually dead, without a clue that 
Jesus is living and what that means for them. Tell them that Christ is risen, he is risen 
indeed! Tell them how much that means. Tell them that while the 12-second resurrection 
scene at the end of “The Passion of the Christ” may have appeared to be merely a brief, 
anticlimactic, meaningless postscript to the sad events of Good Friday, the actual 
resurrection was anything but. Tell them that Easter Sunday isn’t just a happy end to what 
had been until that time Jesus’ sad story, but let them know that it’s also a happy 
beginning to the eternity of your story. Let them know that because Christ may be found 
among the living, so also may we—and they—now and forever! Amen.