On the Third Day

Easter Morning Sermon

John 20:1-8 'I have seen the Lord'.

The Resurrection of the Body (Maia Press, 1995) by author Maggie Hamand (whom I was privileged to meet recently) features a vicar with a crisis of faith. Revd. Richard Page shepherds a church in a London suburb; he has a loving wife and two small sons, but for him the resurrection of Jesus form the dead is more a spiritual thing than anything that could strictly said to be physical. He's a good man, with strong convictions, but he cannot reconcile the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. Until, that is, he has a dramatic experience in church on Good Friday.

During the sombre Good Friday service, while the congregation are in quiet prayer and contemplation of the saviour on the cross, a man stumbles in, bleeding from a vicious knife wound, and collapses inside the church. The paramedics are called, the congregation is distraught and the vicar unable to complete the service. The man is taken away to hospital where he later dies. The subsequent disappearance of the body is made even more mysterious by his later reported appearances in the local park, fish restaurant and ‘upper room’ of a flat in the town. The vicar sets out to try and find out what is really going on, and in doing so, nearly falls foul of the police, his congregation and even his wife. Is he going mad, or is the man still alive somehow? What would it mean if it were true? In addition one of the congregation is also convinced she has seen the man alive and wants Richard to corroborate this, whilst others doubt.

It makes the vicar reassess his crisis of faith.

In the end we’re left wondering if he has re-found his faith in a living Jesus.

The truth remains for us that we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Our Creeds declare, ‘on the third day he rose again’)

Why this confidence?

BECAUSE OF WITNESSES.

Who dunnits are a favourite genre with me.

In any reconstruction of events, the testimony of a witness is of paramount importance.

We will consider 1) witnesses then and 2) witnesses now

1)Paul’s account in 1 Corinthians 15 reads rather different from the gospel account - he seems to miss out that it was the women who first saw Jesus on that Easter morning. 

In the gospel accounts, women feature heavily as witnesses: ‘the women in the gospel narratives are the first people to find the tomb of Jesus empty. Moreover 'they are the only witnesses to the empty tomb who had seen Jesus buried and therefore could vouch for the fact that the empty tomb really was the tomb in which Jesus’ body had been laid two days before’ (Richard Bauckham)*.

Let’s reconstruct the events from our eyewitness accounts.

In our gospel today, Mary is the first to witness the empty tomb.

She runs to Peter and John and says: ‘they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have put him’.

Resurrection is so far from her mind, she naturally takes something known (theft of a body) and assumes this is the case here (the intriguing ‘we’ do not know where they have put him is suggestive of others with here – we know from other accounts that there were at least three women in the garden that morning – but John focuses on Mary Magdalene).

The next witnesses to the empty tomb are Peter and John.

I love the personal details: John outruns Peter but doesn’t go in; Peter goes into the empty tomb after arriving there and sees the linen cloth for the body wrapped up in a different place from the head wrapping.

It seems Jesus just passed through it (compare this to the raising of Lazarus, where Lazarus came out still wrapped in the linens...)

We’re not told what Peter made of this, but we are told that John looked in and believed: ‘he saw and believed’.

Seeing is not always believing, but in John’s case it is, though all he has seen is the absence of a body...

So we are building up a picture of the witnesses to the resurrection:

·      The empty tomb.

·      The empty tomb now seen by three disciples: Mary, Peter and John

·      The grave cloths wrapped up neatly inside.

Now we go to a different segment of the resurrection story.

Bauckham* points out that in each of the gospel accounts, we have the same narrative pattern: the discovery of the empty tomb – the appearance of Jesus to his disciples and their commissioning – and in the middle and transition: in this case, it is the personal experience of Mary Magdalene.

Added to her witnessing the empty tomb, she now sees the angels and meets the risen Lord.

The evidence of her eyes is battling with her preconceived ideas of what is actually possible – dead persons do not generally come back to life, so she thinks Jesus is the gardener.

In some way he must have looked different – though also the same – she does recognise him with her ears, when he says her name: MARY.

There is something intimate in the recognition.

We have seen that our belief in the risen Jesus is based on eyewitness accounts of the resurrection: that

·      Mary was a witness to where Jesus was buried; to the empty tomb, to the angels and finally to Jesus himself.

·      Peter and John witnessed the empty tomb, the linen cloths and eventually, on the evening of the first day of the week, Jesus himself in the upper room.

·      Paul attests to the very basic fact of Jesus’ resurrection, to Peter, the 12, James and to himself.

This leads us to our 2^nd point:

2)Where/who are the witnesses to the resurrection today?

You will have realised that Paul never actually met the physical person of Jesus – he was born too late.

However he testifies to the risen Jesus because he met him on the road to Damascus.

This is our clue: today, the witnesses to Jesus are us, those who have met him and know him to have changed our lives.

A witness is the word ‘marturia’ – martyr.

A martyr is simply one who testifies to Jesus.

I’d like us to think particularly about this idea of witness as we start a new year with the PCC.

In each generation, the Church has continued because of the witness of the followers of Jesus.

Where that witness stops, the Church stops.

How can we be witnesses, if we have never seen the Lord?

Mary said ‘I have seen the Lord’

Can we say the same?

What does a witness need to do?

·     Witnesses gather for worship.

·     Witnesses when love one another

·     Witnesses care about the community.

·     Witnesses point to Jesus 

We started with Revd. Richard Page, struggling to believe in the historical resurrection, wondering if it weren’t all a myth – a nice myth, but a myth nonetheless. You'll have to buy the book and read the final 2 pages to see what happened in the end...it changes everything...

*'The Women at the Tomb: The Credibility of their Story'. The Laing Lecture at London Bible College.

God's New Initiative

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark...

When I was a teacher, one of the things I liked to praise children for was taking the initiative. Perhaps someone had noticed the pencil pots were empty and found some new ones from the cupboard. Or someone else in the class noticed a fellow pupil was upset and went and did something about it themselves, instead of coming to me about it. Then they would be praised for showing initiative. They might even get their name in the Friday Achievement Book for ‘Showing Initiative’.

Quite apart from the fact that it’s a great quality to possess in life, it meant the teacher hadn’t had to notice that thing themselves – someone else was watching out too.

I remember a previous vicar sitting in a chair in our lounge a few years back and rather wearily sharing with us that in the church, there’s never any shortage of ideas, only volunteers to see them through. So many people would come up to him and say ‘I think we should be doing this/that/the other in our church’; and he would sigh and think to himself, what they really mean is ‘could you please do this/that/the other…?’ Just occasionally someone would come to him and say ‘I’m thinking of setting up this/that/the other’ and he would feel truly delighted and blessed!

So initiative can be a wonderful thing.

But the word ‘initiative’ has also suffered somewhat under a barrage of people thinking up things to try and bring freshness to otherwise stale things, and then calling them ‘New Initiatives’…

As a School Governor, I have to admit my heart always sinks when I hear the phrase ‘new initiative’ because it’s bound to be something the Government has thought up, very likely a group of people who’ve possibly never taught in a school classroom, or not for many years, at least, and who’ve sat down one day and come up with yet another new idea to add to the already overcrowded pile of ideas, which teachers, already tired and stressed with 100 other ‘New Initiatives’, will be obliged to implement.

So initiative can be a lovely thing – the independence to get on and do something unprompted, or it can be a rather tired thing – an attempt at revitalizing something which needs much more of a radical overhaul (or which actually needs leaving well alone).

What about God’s initiative?

This morning we’re celebrating the most dynamic initiative ever undertaken on behalf f the human race – the salvation initiative. I hope you take time at home to read the account of the resurrection afresh each Easter – there are four versions to choose from, which keeps it interesting, and this year we’re in John’s gospel.

Each year I read the account of the resurrection, something different jumps out at me, and I usually try and stay with that something, savour it and unpack it slowly.

Some years it’s the sorrow of Jesus that has impressed itself upon me; one year it was the unpredictability of the resurrection – how it was quite unbelievably so different to anything anyone had previously experienced; another year it was all the running that took place on that first Easter Morning. This year what’s jumped out at me is that phrase: ‘while it was still dark’.

When I was a child, I used to be terribly excited by the fact that sometimes our parents would decide to get us up very early in order to go on holiday while it was still dark.

I think it only happened a couple of times in order to get on the motorway before everyone else, if we were driving to Cornwall, for instance, or, when I was even younger, catching a ferry to Brittany. Now I’m older I dislike getting up early to go anywhere, but back then it was the height of excitement. The getting dressed in hushed tones, tripping over the cat as it wondered why on earth there were people up and about at that hour of the morning, piling into the car rather sleepily, covered up with a duvet, and driving off while the rest of the street was fast asleep.

Mary Magdalene thought she’d steal a march on the day on that first Easter morning, and arrived in the garden where the tomb was, while it was still dark.

It was still dark because the sun had not yet risen (that is, the S.U.N.)

She was there because she couldn’t wait any longer. The day before had, of course, been Sabbath, and no devout Jew would go to a tomb and anoint a body on the Sabbath, as that would constitute work; and the Lord God had said ‘keep the Sabbath holy’.

So she had rested at home. If you could call it rest; a mixture of fear and utter listlessness; thoughts darkened by the terrible loss of the Saviour on the day before, the day they nailed him to a cross till he breathed his last.

As Mary came to the garden that morning, it was still dark. In her thoughts, too, it was still dark. In her heart it was still dark. In her grief it was still dark. In her sense of betrayal and disappointment, it was still dark.

In our state as a human race that had lost its way, it was still dark when God decided to take the initiative.

God’s ‘New Initiative’ was not a patch up job. It was not a tired attempt at injecting new energy into an already overloaded system.

It was a plan of salvation which came into being in the Garden of Eden and almost certainly eons before that even. It was a plan which nobody could accurately predict, even though the prophets certainly hinted at it, louder and louder as the Scriptures unfolded, till the Saviour himself would say: ‘destroy this Temple, and three days later I will raise it up.’

God’s initiative was a way through sin and death, no less, and the physical resurrection of Christ the Saviour from the dead, set a divine seal upon it.

God’s initiative was slowly realized by the early Jewish believers in Jesus, like Paul, who would write in Acts: ‘We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead’. 

And incidentally, I’m going to nail my colours to the mast here - if we were in any doubt as to the actual physicality of the resurrection, here it is: the witnesses to the resurrection ate and drank with the risen Christ. You cannot eat and drink with a spiritual concept.

The whole plan of salvation, then, is God’s initiative. His salvation plan for humanity includes us, living in this place and in this time. Our present reality is shot through with the ramifications of the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and with the power of His Spirit which He continually sends upon us, and particularly when we gather for worship.

It’s insidious, though, and I’m sure I’m as guilty as the next person, how we can live as though it were rather a good idea of OURS to be a church goer; to be a good person, to start this idea, to volunteer, or to believe a certain set of things…

Actually, what we’re all swept up in is God’s initiative.

In worship, God takes the initiative; in mission, God takes the initiative; in love, God takes the initiative; in guidance, God takes the initiative; in providing for us, God takes the initiative.

It is why the psalmist says ‘you hem me in on every side’! There’s nowhere we can go where the initiative of God hasn’t gone before. ‘While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

While it was still dark…It’s absolutely crucial for our life together in Christ that we enlarge our vision to extend the reach of the gospel message to include those who are still in the dark.

While it was still dark…unless we model a radical, inclusive and open church, people will assume (because culture will do it for them) that you have to be mended and sorted before you go to church.

The complete opposite is true. While it was still dark, Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. It is those who mourn, those who are poor in spirit, those who hunger, the meek – those who are still in the dark – those are the ones for whom Christ was crucified and raised from the dead.

Church is for the broken and for those who need healing; those who feel powerless; those who have no voice; those who are still childlike. The Cross and the resurrection are for us all.

While it was still dark…you may be in Church on this Easter morning and it is still dark. Perhaps you don’t understand enough, or believe enough, or have enough love. Perhaps you are afraid, or you worry for someone you love; or you have lost someone, or don’t know if Jesus is for you.

But you’re here, and it’s time to meet with the risen Lord.

Remember, ‘while it was still dark’ – that was precisely the time when He had already risen.

Amen.

26. Mary Magdalene - involved with Jesus

Myths first: probably not a red head; not a prostitute; almost certainly not married to Christ, or a mother of 'the blood line of the Holy Grail' (oh please...)

So, facts: she accompanied Jesus on his travels and provided for him out of her own means; Jesus cast seven demons out of her; she stayed at the foot of the cross while the men fled, and was the first witness to the resurrection. 

This latter was a big hint that now, in the new age soon to be inaugurated by the gift of the Holy Spirit, women and men would be equal partners in spreading the Good News. To Mary Magdalene even belongs the epithet 'apostle the the apostles' as Jesus gets straight on with urging her to witness to the new resurrection life: 'Do not hold onto me (...) but go instead to my brothers and tell them 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God' (John 20: 17). 

(NB. and he didn't add 'But make sure you don't give systematic bible teaching to gatherings of men or at any point in history preside at the altar, as you are only a woman after all and I am a complementarian not an egalitarian...')

Being delivered of evil spirits, spending your own money on someone who was violently killed; seeing them alive again as they send you out out personally with a special mission - all these add up to a paradigm of discipleship which is about transformative and passionate involvement with Jesus. 

He seems to like it.