I was roughly awoken by Mary Magdalene before first light on the day after the Sabbath. The first day of the week – what you call Sunday.
I had slept lightly, disturbed, afraid… our teacher had been murdered, killed, executed – however you would put it. We had followed him, learnt from him – dreamt with him for three years… Soon I am sure we would be found guilty of supporting him; we disciples were in grave danger.
Jesus had warned us that he would die… I never wanted him to say that sort of thing – when I challenged him, told him: "…these things must not happen to you", he reprimanded me sternly. He accused me of thinking like Satan – not with the mind of God.
* * *
The night after Jesus' crucifixion, the day that followed were dreamlike. My sleeping was disturbed by flashes of what could have been, the question: What should we do next?
* * *
When Mary woke me I was confused… dazed. She was more upset by the events than all of us – she had loved Jesus with a love deeper than I knew how to love.
When we had deserted Jesus, when I had denied him – the woman disciples who supported him through his ministry remained…
They witnessed Jesus crucifixion, they saw Jesus pierced, removed from the cross and buried. They reported all of these events to us, and that is why they are written in scripture even to today.
* * *
When Mary woke me she was out of breath… panicking – I thought she had probably been dreaming. But the conviction in her eyes told me something else – what she was saying, she really believed: "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."
I was confused – angry… I was determined to find whoever had stolen Jesus body and cut off more than just their ear.
John and I ran to the tomb to see what had happened… John waited outside the tomb, but I rushed in.
I remember quite clearly what I saw – Jesus burial shroud lay there – still folded as if he had disappeared. His head covering was still rolled… as if Jesus had just vanished out of it.
* * *
Some of your modern scientists laugh at us ancient people… as if we were so gullible and stupid that we thought dead people regularly got up and walked around.
What had happened – was not what we were expecting; Jesus had risen from the dead; but somehow his body had disappeared from where it had been… I wasn't sure what to make of the evidence. It went completely against anything we had ever experienced.
Even when Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead – Lazarus still needed to be unbound from his grave clothes. It was as if Jesus had disappeared through them.
John, the other disciple who was with me came into the tomb after me and believed what had happened almost immediately. He understood that as Jesus had prophesied and the scriptures foretold he had risen.
* * *
Maybe it'll give you hope that someone slow to believe, like me could be an apostle and a disciple of Jesus… one for whom Jesus cared, and loved.
* * *
Having seen the empty tomb we went home, but Mary remained there… later she told us what had happened.
At the tomb that day she remained, upset, still weeping. She saw two angels one at the foot and the other at the head of where Jesus lay, when she asked them where Jesus was she then turned around and standing there before her was Jesus. She thought he was the gardener, but when he called her by her name, "Mary," she realized that it was him.
Jesus told us to tell her about what he said.
* * *
That evening Jesus appeared to us in the house where we were staying – the doors were locked because we were afraid, but Jesus appeared greeting us with the peace he showed us the wounds in his hands and side and told us "As the father sent me, so I send you…"
Jesus commissioned us that night, that first church that met in fear behind closed doors… to go out and carry on doing what he had done, proclaiming repentance, a change of mind and heart, and the forgiveness of sins for all peoples, all nations everywhere.
* * *
As we recalled what Jesus had said and what had happened we began to realize what God was doing in Jesus. We had had the privilege of seeing God in human form… We began to realize what Jesus' resurrection meant.
* * *
Firstly, the resurrection was God's Amen to Jesus… it affirmed who Jesus had said he was.
On the day of Pentecost I preached saying that the resurrection was clear proof that God made Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36). St Paul wrote that Jesus was declared Son of God by a might act in that he rose from the dead (Rom 1:4).
If Jesus hadn't risen from the dead we would have thought of him as merely a great teacher – a good man. The resurrection let us know that Jesus played a central role in God's plan.
Jesus life was 'the life of God personally lived out among ordinary mortals.'[1] Jesus radically revitalized our understanding of who God was.
* * *
Second, the resurrection gave us renewed life… through the death and resurrection of Jesus we were actually transformed as people… the world in which we lived was changed, our hearts were changed.
First, we knew that we were forgiven because of the sacrifice Jesus had made… the sacrifice he made nullified all of the temple sacrifices we needed to make to be reconciled to God… Jesus had made a new covenant with us.
Not only that but because God had taken the worst humanity could do in killing his son and defeated it, we knew that with Christ we too could defeat whatever evil was within us… because he had been victorious and he was with us.
Paul spoke about our being crucified and raised from death with Christ – in Galatians 2:20 he wrote: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." After the resurrection, by the power of the Holy Spirit we were able to live more and more like Christ – doing what he called us to do when he said "As the Father sent me, so I am sending you."
If Jesus hadn't risen the crucifixion would have just been an interesting prophetic event in which a great prophet showed us how much God loved us – enough to die.
Because Jesus rose again, and lived within us we knew that that love was not just an idea, but a life changing reality.
* * *
Finally – the resurrection gave us a new future hope.
Jesus spoke about us having 'eternal life.' We knew that this kind of life was the partly the fullness of life that we experienced in living with Jesus, that we experienced in living in close relationship with God… but it also meant that there was more to life than just this physical one.
We knew that our life in relationship with God would not end… Jesus rising again assured us that there was life beyond the grave, a life in which suffering, death and oppression are gone for ever – defeated by Jesus, and replaced by the new ways of God's Kingdom.
* * *
By raising Jesus from the dead God showed us that Jesus was truly God's son, the Messiah through whom God made himself known to us.
By raising Jesus from the dead God overcame the powers of hell and death and destruction, taking the worst we could do and defeating it. We could live, in Christ, having died and been raised up with him a victorious life – one where we defeated sin.
By raising Jesus from the dead God gave us the hope that there was more to life than just this – there was life beyond the grave, fullness of life – in relationship with God.
* * *
Jesus, in his resurrection changed the hearts and minds of us fearful disciples gathered together behind locked doors.
We soon became people empowered to unleash the power of God's Kingdom on earth… as frail and fallible as we were.
I invite you to read about some of the things that happened in the Acts of the Apostles as with Jesus we began to turn the world upside down… and bring God's Kingdom to earth, and I challenge you to live as people who believe in the resurrection of Christ, and work to bring the Kingdom in this place.
Amen.
[1] Drane, JW. 2000. Introducing the New Testament. Oxford: Lion Publishing. Much information from here on is drawn from this book, pg 109 on
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