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3. Why do you look for the living among the dead?
When we, as Christians, believe in the resurrection, then this is no projection of pious thoughts. Contrary to what Feuerbach surmised, the resurrection hope it is also no flight into the beyond. It is pure and simple reality. When the resurrected One shows himself to the skeptic Peter, this apostle becomes the leader of the first Christian community. When resurrected One shows himself to the persecutor of the Christians Saul becomes Paul and the persecutor the top missionary of the nascent Christian community. The resurrected one also shows himself to the mourning women, especially to Mary Magdalene, who thought that there was nobody left to care for her and to take her seriously, they had new hope for this life and beyond. The resurrected One also gave Dietrich Bonhoeffer the energy to face death courageously. How can this happen? Natural science knows about the limits of this world in terms of space and time. Christians, however, know more because they know not just about the limits of this world in terms of space and time, but also of the limits of this world in terms of its death configuration. Therefore Paul could confidently ask: "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Cor 15:55).
But for Christians too sorrow remains sorrow. The last word, however, is not given to sorrow, but to rejoicing. Rejoicing in the future of the new world of God. Therefore we have sung "A Mighty Fortress." We confessed with it that it is not our own power by which the victory can be won over death and tragedy. It is the power of God which is on our side.
Whether Christian or non-Christian, everybody has a yearning for something beyond death. Many people who do not believe in the resurrection hope, understandably cling to the idea of reincarnation. They sense that there must be something beyond this short and finite life. Even the neo-Marxist Ernst Bloch claimed at the end of his three-volume Principle Hope: "So something emerges in this world which shines to all people into their childhood and which no one has yet reached: homeland." William Coning has gone home. He is now with God and sees in what he has believed. But we need not just wait for coming home to be with God. Already here we can already realize something of this, a better world and a more just society, even if the anti-Godly destructive forces still lash out onto our endeavors. We have the certainty that the victory belongs to God and to the new world which God will provide and which has shown itself in Christ's resurrection. Therefore the heavenly messengers in dazzling clothes asked the disciples at Easter: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" Again they asked the disciples at Pentecost why they gazed toward heaven instead of returning to earth and to their earthly business. Our place is here, so that in word and deed we can give witness of another world and of another quality of life.
Therefore we ask God to comfort Anna and her relatives in their sorrow and anguish with the certainty that the death configuration of this world has no future even if it still shows its ugly face. We believe and trust in a new world of which the seer of the Book of Revelation told us that God "will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more." This comfort and this assurance we are not just claiming for ourselves, but also want to convey to Anna and her relatives. Amen.
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