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Sermon - Easter Day - 23rd March 2008
St Aidan's West Epping
Readings:
Acts 10:34-43, Colossians 3:14 Matthew 28:1-10
Welcome to Easter Day. Its always a pleasure to come to this day after enduring the horrors of Good Friday.
If you have seen Mel Gibson’s film“The Passion of the Christ” he accurately depicts the agonies of Jesus’ crucifixion. But today we come out the other side of the story on this day when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. When we come to this one week in Jesus’ life all four gospels seem to change gear. Up until this week they give us a collection of events that happened in Jesus life. But as we get closer and closer to Jesus’ death and resurrection we go through a time shift.
Instead of reading a summary of three years, we come down to a day by day account. On the day of crucifixion the description becomes hour by hour. At the third hour, at the sixth hour and so on. Then as we approach Jesus’ death the description is moment by moment. As well, the amount of detail increases dramatically. It’s a matter of this happened, then this, then this. Once Jesus had died the detailed description continues into our passage this morning from Matthew 28. But there are two features that tie this chapter into the events around Jesus’ death.
First, in the previous chapter we are told about the women who stood by to observe Jesus’ crucifixion. And here they are again after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene and Mary, at dawn of the first day of the week going to Jesus’ tomb. The second detail is another earthquake. At the time of Jesus death the earth shook and now on this resurrection morning another earthquake took place. No doubt both earthquakes are mentioned to underline the significance of what had just happened. With the death and resurrection of the world’s creator its not surprising there would be reverberations throughout his creation. But notice what Matthew does.
He doesn’t comment on the earthquakes, he merely reports their occurrence. This is just one example of some odd things in the resurrection stories we have in each of the gospels. We usually think about what we read in each of the resurrection accounts but we don’t reflect on what isn’t there. So lets think about what we don’t see in this resurrection narrative.
The first thing that’s missing is any reference to the Old Testament. That is quite unusual particularly in Matthew’s gospel. From chapter one Matthew is at pains to explain how this Jesus was the one the Jews had been hoping for. His gospel is heavy with frequent quotes from the Old Testament to explain that Jesus was the fulfilment of Jewish hopes for a Messiah. It would be easy to sum up Matthew’s gospel by saying “You were hoping for a Messiah, well this is it, this Jesus, and I’ll show you why.”So in Matthew’s gospel it is peppered with phrases like “Jesus did this in order to fulfil what was promised in the Scriptures.”
This is the flavour of Matthew’s gospel. And yet when we come to the climax of the story everything changes. Like the punch line to a joke, like the solution to a mathematical problem, Matthew’s gospel heads towards this great event of Jesus resurrection. And yet when he gets there his usual method of story-telling is abandoned.
No Old Testament references, just the bare facts, no mention of Old Testament fulfilment. The second thing that’s missing is any reference to a personal hope for each of us. When Paul writes about the resurrection, particularly in 1 Corinthians 15, his emphasis is on the hope that as Christ was raised, so we too will be raised.
In other places Matthew draws out the implications of what it means because Jesus did certain things, but he doesn’t do it here. Rather, we are given just the facts without any reference to a future hope for you or me. No teasing out of the significance of the resurrection. Third, the description of Jesus is very odd mainly because there isn’t one.
Compare that to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. There his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. But now, after his resurrection, now in his moment of triumph he gets no description at all. Or compare that to the angel who rolled away the stone. There Matthew tells us that his appearance was like lightening, and his clothes were white as snow. But Jesus gets nothing. Or compare it to John’s gospel where the only description of Jesus is that Mary Magdalene confuses him with the gardener. Its amazing.
Here is Jesus in his resurrection glory and what does he look like – “like the bloke from Flower Power.” But there is one further, and embarrassing omission. At the moment of Jesus’ resurrection there were no credible witnesses to the event. In our own enlightened times we have no problem with women as witnesses, or women giving evidence in a court of law. Their testimony has equal weight to that of men.
But the sad fact is that in ancient times women were not trusted. Their evidence was not accepted in law courts. It was believed they could not be relied upon. Yet in all four gospels it was the women who arrived at the tomb first and found it empty.
They were the first witnesses to the resurrection. They saw the risen Jesus and they went back and reported to the other disciples what they had seen. Yet when we get to Paul, as he is writing about the resurrection, he leaves out the embarrassing detail of the women. Some may say that is typical of Paul. But he is having enough trouble arguing for the truth of the resurrection without revealing to a misogynistic world that the story rests upon the testimony of dodgy witnesses.
These are unique features of the story of the resurrection, the lack of Old Testament references, no discussion of Christian hope, the lack of description of Jesus and the shaky testimony of these women. But all these increase the likelihood that what we are reading are eye-witness accounts.
What’s more, they read like raw eye-witness accounts, ones that haven’t been worked over and smoothed out. Each of the gospels tells the resurrection story with different details so there has been no attempt to get the story straight. So what we are presented with are the bare facts, the very bare facts of what happened on that first Easter Sunday, plus one more embarrassing detail.
The women were at the tomb for the wrong reason. We might think of a tomb as being like a mausoleum, a last resting place for the dead. But it wasn’t like that in ancient times. The tomb was just a temporary storage facility. That’s why Joseph was willing to lend it out to Jesus. The body was left there until it decayed. Then the bones were collected and placed in a storage box after a year or so. The women had come to the tomb to spice the body in preparation for the decaying process.
That’s why they were there. But they were caught out. They were overtaken by events. As they travelled to the tomb an earthquake occurred. When they arrived an angel had rolled back the stone. The guards were so terrified they shook like dead men.
The angel spoke the simplest of messages, “Jesus, who was crucified, is not here, he had risen, just as he said. Go, see for yourselves, and tell the disciples.” As they went, they met Jesus himself. He had the same message, “Don’t be afraid. Tell the others.” The simplicity of the text, the naked honesty of the story has the effect of placing you and me directly at the door of that tomb. Its such a simple picture, as we stare into the tomb, we see nothing there because of the one basic truth, he is not there, he has risen.
So Matthew leaves you and me standing there with our own thoughts. We must ponder for ourselves. We must do the work of meditating on these event ourselves. What does it mean for you and me, that the story ends with an empty tomb. What does it mean for you and me that in this graveyard there is no evidence of death and decay – because Jesus is not here – he is risen.