Have you ever watched a mystery movie with a bunch of people? You know, a movie that gives you clues over time, but doesn’t reveal the solution until the very end? And the characters all experience bits and pieces, but don’t see what is really happening?

That’s a little bit what it feels like reading the book of Luke. As Chapter 24 opens, there is confusion and chaos and unexplained phenomena and death and grief and tears. Remember that Luke has been telling us for 23 chapters how no one really understands what is going on. Why should chapter 24 be any different? Once again, no one really understands what is going on. And now, for 12 verses here, there is no appearance of a Resurrected Jesus, and no real clarity about what is happening. Again, this is a brilliant move for Luke, who probably wrote this Gospel several years, if not decades, after the events of that Sunday morning. Because his first hearers likely had a similar experience: not eyewitnesses to the Resurrection itself, not even eyewitnesses to Jesus and his ministry, these people were living in their own moment of confusion and chaos and death. They were trying to chart a way forward without knowing exactly what was going on.

And let me suggest that while Luke wasn’t just writing to the Baptists of Kansas in 2021, his Gospel is especially appropriate for us today. Just like those first readers, we don’t understand what is going on either. We weren’t eyewitnesses to Jesus or his Resurrection. We still struggle with what his teachings and life means for us. And if that weren’t enough, we are living in a time that for many of us is the most confusing, most chaotic, most grief- and death-filled time of our lives. We are just as clueless as the women who showed up that morning, expecting one thing and getting something completely different. And just like the women, we come with hearts of grief and pain and tears of sadness, watching the death toll from COVID-19 still rise in our country and around the world. And just like the women, there are moments when we just wish we could go back to the way it used to be. Like them, we try and chart a way forward, without knowing exactly what is going on.

So, the women show up and receive the word of these two men, the text is unclear but likely suggests that they are angels. Again, still confused and afraid, they return to the apostles to tell what they have seen…and the apostles tell them they are nuts. “It was to them as an idle tale.”

Biblical scholar Kathryn Schifferdecker says that in today’s parlance they told the women, “Fake News.” And her assessment is so apropos! They did not trust that the women were reliable news sources. Both Romans and religious scholars of the day suggest that the witness of a woman was not to be trusted. So in their chaos and confusion and grief, their first reaction was to reject their words. They must not be correct. Peter will go check it out for himself.

And do we not still do the same thing? In the midst of our chaos and confusion and grief, how often are we are skeptical and cynical and untrusting? “Fake News!” We heard this phrase of shared distrust before the pandemic, but it seems like the less we understand about what is happening around us, the less trusting we become. We insulate and isolate and fortify ourselves in our silos and engage in this shared distrust. I am convinced that is why we have seen this crazy rise in conspiracy theories. Election conspiracies and vaccine conspiracies and Q Anon, and it is all a crystallization of distrust. I am struck by the fact that there is now a booming market for conspiracy theories…an institution built on the distrust of institutions. l There is an institutionalized market for conspiracy and distrust. Evidence and testimony and the personal experiences of others are all dismissed, with a wave of our hands like “idle tales.”

But, again, Luke tells this story of the truth peeking through the confusion. Just like it would for his