Easter Day 2008
He is Risen!
Alleluia,
Christ is risen!
So we have proclaimed, and so, I imagine, we
believe. I wonder what it would have been like to have been there.
I
love this story in John’s Gospel. There is so much detail, so
many little personal touches. Unlike John, really – so much of
his Gospel is a formalised account, and you only get a couple of
glimpses of Jesus as a person, unlike in the synoptics. But here is
one of the intensely personal stories. You can’t help but get
the impression that it is an eyewitness account.
Imagine,
then, what it would have been like for Mary Magdalene. The third day
after her dear Friend, her dear Teacher, had been killed. Yesterday
had been the Sabbath; she couldn’t do anything then except sit
at home and weep, and when the Sabbath ended, it was night, and there
was no way she could go to the tomb after dark – nobody was
going to let her go. But now it is morning; dawn hasn’t quite
broken yet, but it’ll be light soon. It must have been about
five o’clock, I think – dawn in Jerusalem at this time of
year is about half-past five, a little earlier than for us. Mary
hasn’t slept, or she’s woken up early, and creeps out of
the house and makes her way to the tomb where, two days earlier, she
had helped lay her Master’s body. Perhaps she’ll feel
better if she can just see the body one last time. Some of the other
accounts imply that they hadn’t quite finished embalming the
body, and wanted to do that before it got too nasty.
And Mary
walks up to the tomb – and finds the stone is rolled away from
in front of it, and the tomb is empty! There must have been
grave-robbers at work! Oh, it’s too bad of them. Couldn’t
they have left his body in peace? So Mary rushes off in despair to
find Peter and John – although quite what she thought they’d
be able to do isn’t clear. Perhaps she hoped they would have
more authority to ask awkward questions of the powers-that-be than
she had. Anyway, she finds them, and rushes up to them in floods of
tears.
“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we
do not know where they have laid him!” So Peter and John rush
up to have a look, and see what she is talking about. John is the
fastest, but when he reaches the tomb he just stops and peers in.
Perhaps Mary was wrong – he doesn’t want to trample on
his dear Friend’s body Or perhaps he’s a bit overcome by
it all. Anyway, whatever, he just stops and peers in. Peter rushes up
and rushes in, not stopping to look first – how typically
Peter, somehow. And John follows him in, hoping perhaps to try and
stop him making yet another gaffe. And then they both see.
The
graveclothes are still there. It isn’t that the whole package,
graveclothes and all, has been taken away, it’s just that the
body has been taken out of the clothes. And the bit that had been
round the head, the bit that Mary and John had wrapped round
together, that’s still there, too, lying separately. It really
looks as though the shroud hasn’t been disturbed at all. How
very weird. Almost as though – could it be?
Peter and
John look at each other with a wild surmise. Perhaps it’s true?
All those heavy hints that he had dropped? Without a word they rush
off back to tell the others.
And they forget about poor Mary,
who has gone off to have a good cry by herself somewhere.
Typically
male, don’t you think? Mary has come to them for help, and they
suddenly rush off without even telling her what they think might just
possibly have happened.
Mary is too busy crying, just at
first, to realise that they’ve gone, but all of a sudden she
realises that it’s gone quiet, so she peers into the tomb. And
there are these two beings dressed in white. Hang about, that’s
not Peter and John, is it? Who are they, and when did they
arrive?
“What’s the matter?” they ask her.
“Why are you crying?”
She explains, “They’ve
taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they’ve put
him!”
Then she feels someone behind her.
It’s
interesting, isn’t it, how Mary needs to be with the body to
get her grieving done. The thing she really minds is that she won't
know where the memorial, the tomb, is.
That says something to
us, I think, about how we grieve for those we love.
Mary can’t
see beyond the fact that the beloved body has gone missing: she won’t
know where to bring flowers in the future; she won’t be able to
finish off the embalming...
And when a man, whom she assumes
is the gardener, asks her what’s wrong, she says again, “Where
is he? Have you moved him? Where did you put him? Please tell me,
please?”
And then the man suddenly says, in that
well-known, familiar, much-loved voice: “Mary!”
And
Mary takes another look. She blinks. She rubs her eyes. She pinches
herself. No, she’s not dreaming. It really, really is! “Oh,
my dearest Lord!” she cries, and flings herself into his
arms.
We’re not told how long they spent hugging,
talking, explaining and weeping in each other’s arms, but
eventually Jesus gently explains that, although he’s perfectly
alive, and that this is a really real body one can hug, he won’t
be around on earth forever, but will ascend to the Father. He can’t
stop with Mary for now, but she should go back and tell the others
all about it. And so, we are told, she does.
---oo0oo---
Well,
that’s the story. The question is, is it true? Was there really
a physical resurrection? Does it matter? Isn’t it true that
what really
matters
is that Jesus is alive today?
Well, that’s quite a
point, of course. The one thing that really matters is that Jesus is
alive today. But as St Paul said in his Letter to the Corinthians,
the whole point is that if the Resurrection didn’t happen, he’s
a fraud and our faith is futile. In other words, we might as well go
home. For St Paul, if Christ is not raised, our sins are not
forgiven, and we have no hope of everlasting life.
Even that
begs the question slightly, for Paul might just have been talking
about a spiritual resurrection – after all, we know that our
own bodies, when we’ve finished with them, will either be
buried or burnt, but we will expect the bit of us that matters to go
on. Obviously, if we don’t believe even in a spiritual
resurrection, what are we doing here?
The question is, does it
matter whether or not we believe that Jesus’ body was raised?
That he wasn’t a ghost of some sort, but in a genuine body one
could hug, that could eat and drink, that could walk, talk, break
bread, and, one assumes, eliminate.
People say, oh but the
Gospel accounts are contradictory, they are writing what they would
have liked to have happened, etc. I, personally, believe that the
very fact that the Gospel accounts do tend to be different in the
details makes it all the more likely to be true.
If it were
just wishful thinking, their accounts would tally far more, and there
is absolutely no way in the world they would have had it that the
first people to meet the risen Jesus were women! In those days,
women’s testimony simply didn’t count. Women were not
supposed to be able to tell the truth, or something. If you wanted a
witness, he had to be male. So absolutely no way would the stories,
if they were made up, or wishful thinking, have had the first
witnesses be women.
But does it matter? I believe it’s
true; you may or may not. But does it matter? In one sense, yes, it
does matter. The Resurrection is, after all, totally central to our
whole faith. If it didn’t happen, then we might just as well
all go home, as St Paul so rightly says.
But the most
important thing of all, of course, is that Jesus is alive today! The
Resurrection is important, it’s central, yes. But if it is just
an episode in history, no matter how true, no matter how well
documented; if it’s just history like the Second World War or
the Gunpowder Plot, then it doesn’t really affect us at all.
But the fact that Jesus is alive today, the fact that he can, through
the Holy Spirit, come and indwell us, you and me, the fact that we
can know God’s forgiveness and healing and wholeness –
that’s
what
matters! And for that we say “Alleluia!”
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