“They entered
the tomb, where they saw a young man sitting on the right, wearing a white robe
- and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I know you are looking
for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is not here – he has been raised!
Look, here is the place where they put him. Now go and give this message to his
disciples, including Peter: ‘He is going to Galilee ahead of you; there you
will see him, just as he told you.’” So they went out and ran from the tomb,
distressed and terrified. They said nothing to anyone, because they were
afraid.” (Mark 15. 5 - 8)
To us, the
resurrection is a wonderful event. One that we have been celebrating since
Easter Sunday in hymns such as Jesus
lives! and Thine be the glory risen,
conquering Son. But to the women
who first encountered the resurrection it was anything but wonderful. Instead,
it was a shocking, unexpected, fearful experience.
We are often
surprised to read that that was their reaction because we are so familiar with
the resurrection stories and the idea of resurrection itself. And we wonder why
they weren’t instantly grateful to know that their teacher and Lord was alive
again. But those people who were there at the time were on unfamiliar and disturbing
ground and they were unable initially to see the wonder and glory of what had
occurred.
And many people
today who are not Christians would react in ways that are similar to the
reactions of those women. Many would struggle with the whole idea that someone
can rise again from the dead and would view this central Christian belief as a
reason for rejecting, rather than accepting, Christianity.
So, what I would
like to share with you this evening then are two things from this passage that
suggest that Jesus did rise from the dead and two things that suggest why his
rising is important for us today.
First, the
reaction of the women suggests to us that there was nothing in the Judaism of
their day that had prepared them for the idea that one person could rise from
the dead. They were distressed and fearful, in part, because they had no way of
understanding or comprehending what had happened. It was totally outside of any
frame of reference that they had.
Most Palestinian
Jews at the time believed that God would resurrect the bodies of the dead at
the end of the age. When Jesus had spoken to the disciples about his own
resurrection, it is probable that they would have understood him to have been
meaning that he would rise again as part of this general resurrection at the
end of the age. This belief in a general resurrection was not accepted by all
Jews. The Sadducees, in particular, argued that there was no resurrection at
all. But even where this belief in a general resurrection was held, there was never
any thought that one person would rise ahead of everyone else.
The reaction of
these women - bewilderment and fear – is entirely consistent with situations
where we are confronted by things that are totally outside our way of
understanding the world and life itself and which radically challenge beliefs
which we had thought were unchallengeable. The idea that one person could rise
from the dead was so far outside their understanding of life, death and God
that they could not have invented it. And, if they had, then they would not
have responded with astonishment and fear because they would have known where
the idea had come from and would have wanted to have appeared confident in
their claim. You don’t convince anyone by being confused and in hiding.
So, instead the
reaction of these women suggests that something significant had occurred and
that that significant something could only have been the bodily resurrection of
Jesus.
The second
factor in this story which suggests that Jesus did rise from the dead is the
idea that it was women who first discovered his resurrection. The Judaism of
their day, like most cultures at that time, was patriarchal. The testimony of
women, particularly in a court of law, was either inadmissible or regarded as
of lesser value than the testimony of men. If the disciples had wanted to make
up a story about Jesus rising from the dead then they certainly wouldn’t have
said that it was the women in their group that had discovered his resurrection.
It is interesting, in this context, that the first
known pagan written critique of Christianity builds on the Gospels’ report of
women as the first witnesses and proclaimers of Jesus’ resurrection. It is
called The True Word and was written
by the middle Platonist Celsus in A.D. 175. Celsus claims that a ‘hysterical’
female was the witness to Jesus’ resurrection. To Celcus’ patriarchal mind all
women were unreliable witnesses because they were hysterical and as a result,
he then discounts the claims of the Gospels about the resurrection.
Both these factors then can give us confidence
that the resurrection stories are telling us about actual events because if
they weren’t then the Gospel writers would not have written them as they have.
If the stories about the resurrection had been made up, then in order to be
convincing they would have had men as the first people to discover that the
resurrection had occurred and those people discovering the resurrection would
be portrayed as entirely confident and clear about what they had seen and heard
instead of the portrayal that we actually have, one of confusion and fear.
These are not the only factors which give us
confidence that these stories have the ring of truth but they are two that
emerge clearly from this account of the resurrection in Mark’s Gospel. What of
the meaning of the resurrection though? Why is it so important and how can it
affect us today if we believe that it occurred?
Again, two ideas drawn from this account. First,
the message of the young man to the women (verse 7) – “He is going … ahead of
you”. Literally, this means that Jesus had gone to Galilee where he would show
himself to the disciples when they followed him there. But, at another level,
it indicates what Jesus’ resurrection means. We read in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus has been raised from death as the guarantee that we will also be
raised from death. He is described as being the first fruits of those who have
died. In rising from the dead, he has gone ahead of us into the new risen body
and existence that we shall experience in future when Jesus returns to this
earth to fully bring God’s Kingdom into existence here.
When Jesus walked the earth he looked ahead to
that future time when the Kingdom of God will be made perfect, and all
suffering will come to an end. But he also announced that, because of him,
there is a sense in which that Kingdom has already begun. When he healed sick
people and brought good news to the poor it was a sign that the Kingdom had
come. In the same way, when he overcame death by rising from the dead he became
the first fruits of the Kingdom, an example of what we will all become in
future.
Jesus wants us to be signs of God’s Kingdom in the
same way that he was. He commanded us, his followers, to love in the way that
he did. He wanted people to see us practically demonstrating love, so that we
will clearly be recognised as men and women who belong to God. When Christians
take action on behalf of the world’s poorest communities, as we will be doing
shortly by collecting for Christian Aid, we not only put into practice the
values of the Kingdom of God here and now but also become signs of what the
Kingdom will be like when it is made perfect in eternity. That is what it means
to pray, ‘Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.’
So, by the
resurrection, Jesus has gone ahead of us in signing and establishing the Kingdom
of God and calls us to follow where he leads. In this way, as the theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, the “resurrection of Christ does not
mean a new possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility
altogether for the world, for existence, and for history.” That’s the first indication of what
resurrection means in this passage.
The second,
takes us back to the women and their position in a patriarchal society. God
deliberately chooses women to discover Jesus' resurrection because the Kingdom
of God, of which the resurrection is the first fruits, is to be a place of
equality and inclusion. In his ministry, Jesus consistently included in God’s
Kingdom those people in Jewish society that were excluded – he included women
in his followers, he brought lepers and possessed people back into the community
by healing them, he ate and drank with tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes.
Therefore, it is
significant that it is people who were thought of as being second class in the
society of his day who become the first witnesses to his resurrection. In the Kingdom
of God which Jesus’ resurrection inaugurates, no one is second class and this
is why the Apostle Paul writes in his letters, “there is no difference between
Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free men, between men and women; you are
all one in Christ Jesus.”
Just as we are
called to be signs of God’s Kingdom in the way that we love, so we are also
called to be signs of God’s Kingdom by the way in which we include those who
are excluded in our day. In our churches we need to be able to demonstrate that
we are all one in Christ Jesus by there being no difference in the way that we
accept men and women, white and black, rich and poor, straight and gay,
non-disabled and disabled, the settled and the migrant, people of faith and
people of no faith. We are called to be a people of liberation who cross the
divides erected by our society. Who, as Jurgen Moltmann has said, in solidarity
enter “the brotherhood of those who, in their society, are visibly living in
the shadow of the cross: the poor, the handicapped, the people society has
rejected, the prisoners and the persecuted.”
Jesus’
resurrection is the first fruits of a new way of being human – a way of being
human that ultimately knows no death, no grief, no crying, no pain, no
inequality and no exclusion. Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of the
healing and renewal of human beings, human society and the entire world. This
is the meaning of the resurrection. This is where we, and our world, can be
heading, if we get on board with God.
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Switchfoot - Love Alone Is Worth The Fight.
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