Trinity Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. Morgan S. Allen
April 20, 2025
Resurrection, Luke 24:1-12
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Dedicated twenty years ago this January, an eight-foot statue of John Cummings oversees Space 1 in Lot 2067, Section 8. A long, bowl haircut obscures the eyes of “Johnny Ramone,” as he was better known during the forty-five years of his life, his back arched to allow a peek at the low-slung fretboard of the Mosrite guitar he plays night and day for all those who visit him.
A more modest stone marks Space 6 in Section 6, Lot 26, where Carl Switzer, aged thirty-one years, was buried in January of 1959. Better known as the cow-licked, squeaky-voiced Alfalfa from the Our Gang, Little Rascals series, several mature trees – perhaps planted that winter more than sixty-five years ago when his mother was still alive – now shade his resting place.
And in Crypt 1087 of the “Hall of Solomon” mausoleum on that same campus, rests one Benjamin Siegel, better known as “Bugsy.” Local legend suggests that leaving a penny on Siegel’s crypt before heading to the gangster’s former stomping grounds of Las Vegas can bring good luck to the prospective gambler. As a result, copper piles high on the stone here, Bugsy having kept a hand in his neighbors’ wallets, despite his death.
This is Hollywood Forever, a sixty-one acre cemetery at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard. Reconceived in 1998 when the cemetery faced closure by the state, Hollywood Forever welcomes retiree-punk-rocker pilgrims and skinny-jeaned-hipster locals for movie nights, poetry readings, and concerts. Following a performance of [the great] Flaming Lips, one clever blogger suggested, “If you were at either of [their Hollywood Forever] shows this week and didn’t enjoy yourself, you were probably dead.”1
Meanwhile, Mary Magdalene; Joanna; Mary, the mother of James; and the other women who had come with the disciples from Galilee, meet before dawn.2 Carrying spices each had prepared, they join one another for a procession to Jesus’ tomb.3 Their devotions for the dead comfort them during this moment of grief – a measure of order in a chaos so out of their control, the slightest catch of footing amid abiding powerlessness.
Arriving at the cave, they find the stone rolled away from its entrance.4 Their cautious entry quickly turns frantic when they cannot find the body of Jesus.5 All that chaos returns with even greater force, they ask themselves, Did the imperial authorities change their mind? Was it not enough for them to arrest and execute an innocent man as a public spectacle of their vulgar power? Heaping grief upon grief, did one of Herod’s sycophants steal the body? Was it bandits? Was it varmints? Will today bring more and greater indignities?
Two men in dazzling clothes suddenly appear beside them.6 The word translated here as “dazzling” means more literally “lightning” and appears only once more in the New Testament: earlier, in Chapter 17 of Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus responds to the Pharisees asking him about the reign of God: “In fact, the kingdom of God is [already] among you,” Jesus explains. And, turning to his disciples, he then continues, “For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.”7
And now these strangers who flash like lightning say to the faithful women: Why do you look for the living among the dead?8
Speaking of Hollywood Forever and its event-hosting side hustles, best-selling author and Mortician Caitlin Doughty suggests, “This is how cemeteries used to be. In the Middle Ages, in the Victorian Period … cemeteries were places where commerce took place, [where] lovers walked through the graves to meet at night. [The world engaged with the cemetery as a community space].”9
Doughty curates the “Order of the Good Death,” a collective of non-theist [he politely names] artists encouraging their online denizens to “embrace their mortality.”10 In their Mission Statement, the Order covenants to accept “that death itself is natural, but the death anxiety and terror of modern culture are not.” They plan programming for the curious and offer practical support to the grieving, all with an aim to normalize our inevitable demise.
As macabre a notion as taking one’s sweetheart to the cemetery for an afternoon picnic might seem at first, remember that for the many centuries the Christian narrative centered Western pop-culture, pilgrims travelled great distances to see – to touch, to hold – the bones of saints housed in ancient churches and sepulchers. More local to us in Boston and in these days, what walks prove lovelier than a spring morning at Mount Auburn, breezing by the gravesites of Longfellow, Dorothea Dix, or even the Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks. We engage the idea of “a good death” and we visit the dead as means to affirm life.
Why do you look for the living among the dead?11
Our English translation renders the Greek word nekros as “the dead.”12 This term appears more than a hundred times in the Christian Testament, always as a noun. Promising a pinch of Easter meaning in some grammar esoterica, stay with me: nekros does not serve as an adjective, as in “He is dead,” or as a verb, as in “He is dying.” Rather, nekros points to a collective identified by their common condition. Luke has already used nekros to describe a condition of the living, rather than simply the state of the deceased: Luke sets up a metaphor in the Chapter 9 turn of phrase: “Let the nekros bury the nekros … “Let the dead bury the dead.”13
While the bedazzled14 strangers do not intend to injure the women, still vulnerable in their grief, they do intend to challenge. They continue: “[Jesus] is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you … that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”15 These heralds aim their call as an instruction – a directive –and not as a question: Remember, they tell the women: if you come to your faith in Jesus as the Christ expecting only death, then you will find only death – you will make yourself one of the nekros: dead, among the dead.
As each news cycle sowed new incredulities, last week I took an early train into the city. A measure of order in a chaos out of my control, in the fading dark I met at the station those familiar strangers with whom I gather on weekday mornings. Carrying our backpacks and the lunch pails we had prepared, we nodded to one another, as we do, a gesture – a code –
acknowledging both an appreciation for our shared routine and our unspoken covenant to afford a respectful distance.
As we made our swift way, the sun rose slowly above Boston’s topography of stone and shingle, splashing purple-oranges and golden reds on apartment buildings and industrial warehouses, parks and companion commuters standing on their platforms. Despite it all, the scene’s beauty moved me, nearly to the point of messy, maudlin tears. With only the slightest catch of footing amid the abiding powerlessness of these days, I felt reassurance in the reminder that this week would give us Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Remember … I remembered that every week gives us Good Friday, and every week offers us Easter Sunday.
Fearing the bullying whim of the empire … suffering the public spectacles of cruelty and vulgar power … enduring the celebrations of ignorance and the contempt for common sense and common decency … Trinity Church, if we leave here this morning looking for Good Friday, I promise you, we will find it! And likely worse than we thought it was. Aligning ourselves with celebrity commiserators, evangelizing that Gospel-tinted lie that real Christians must now meet indignation with indignation, anger with anger, even violence with violence, we will bless the liars and thieves to keep their hands in our wallets. We will discover ourselves looking for the living among the dead, losing not only the civic cause – and we will, lose – but far more consequentially, losing our very souls.
Instead, wondering the impossible beauty of the cosmos … finding joy, sharing praise … celebrating the good where we can and as we can … Trinity Church, if we leave here this morning looking for Easter Sunday, I promise you we will find it! And find it even more glorious than we imagined it could be. What the death-dealers so carelessly turn to dust, we will make green with life – set a check blanket in the madness, make bleachers of tombs! And while some will hear this as “an idle tale” – the lark of loons, a concession of the comfortable – realize we follow the Holy One who took up a cross, rather than armaments, who made a garden of a graveyard. Therefore, we choose grace as our resistance; mercy, as our defiance; and God’s goodness, our lamp. For only kindness can win the world for kindness! Only generosity can win the world for generosity! And only love – love like lightning! – can win the world for Love.
So even at the grave, we will make our song:
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!