The God of the Living
In St. Luke's account of the Resurrection, the women who come to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus do not find the body they were looking for. Instead, they meet two young men in dazzling clothes who ask them: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" This question suggests that it is illogical to go to a tomb in search of a live person. The women, however, were not being illogical. They were looking for a corpse, and the tomb where the body was laid was the place to look for it. The deeper suggestion of this question, of course, is that the women were looking for the wrong thing. They were looking for a corpse to anoint when they should have been looking for a live person to celebrate. This question of these two young men in dazzling clothes is foreshadowed by Jesus' assertion that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is God not of the dead but of the living. Anybody who seeks the dead rather than the living is fundamentally mistaken.
Even so, we should not overlook the fact that the women's action was not only logical but natural. The violent death of a loved one had occurred. Grief and anger over the unjust suffering and death of Jesus coupled by a desire to give dignity to an undignified death are natural. Although they thought, with good reason, that Jesus was dead, the women came to the tomb looking for him. Just as natural was the action of Jesus' disciples: They ran and hid. Although the women were mistaken in looking in a tomb for Jesus, they were less mistaken than the disciples who were not looking for Jesus anywhere. By facing the reality of Jesus' death and coming to do the one constructive thing they could do in the face of that death, the women were challenged to let go of their grief and anger and embrace the life of the one who was not in the tomb after all. It is indeed outside the tomb where Jesus is found among the living.
We, too, are challenged by the question posed to the women: Do we look for the living among the dead? As long as we are stuck at Jesus' death, we are trapped in the grief and anger this death causes us to feel and we feel as if we, too, were dead. If we move on to the life of Jesus, then our grief and anger are engulfed in Jesus' abundant life and we feel very much alive. knowing, deep in our hearts, that God is God not of the dead, but of the living.
 --Abbot Andrew
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