With God all things are possible
Easter Day, 27th March, 2005
The Rev'd Dr Craig D'Alton
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
It must have been an extraordinary thing; to be sitting around in mourning for a lost leader, and then to be told "No. He lives."
No wonder the disciples failed to believe the woman.
He was dead. Those who had watched on from a distance had seen it. Some had even carried his body away. The soldiers had speared his side. He was definitely dead. No mistake. This must surely be an idle tale. A bunch of women gossiping and making each other hysterical. It must be nonsense.
At least two men, though, are not so sure in their rejection, not so skeptical. Peter had been told that he would deny Jesus three times, and it had happened. He was probably still crying. If Jesus was right about that, then perhaps he was also right about rising on the third day. Maybe the woman was not so foolish.
And so he and the other disciple run. They run to the tomb, they see that it is empty. He and the other disciples don't know what to make of it. They melt away.
But the woman stays and waits. And to her – not to foolish disbelieving men – he comes. She runs back to the men with her message. They listen. Perhaps they scoff as in Luke's account of the same story. "Men in dazzling clothes at the tomb? Sure, we believe you (not). OK, we remember his words, but can you honestly expect us to believe that it has happened. The man was a prophet, but not even prophets rise from the dead."
It must have been an extraordinary thing – an unbelievable thing for those ever-doubting disciples. But then he is with them too. Scepticism becomes amazement. And their amazement turns to joy; a joy to be communicated first to their friends, then to their townsfolk, then to the whole of Judea, and finally to the whole world, even of the Gentiles.
The seeming idle tale of the first apostle – of Mary Magdalene – is in fact the start of something very new and very great. The Church is born as the message this woman brings is slowly taken up even by those uncomprehending, silly men whom Jesus has had follow him around for three years.
We are here reading this story, celebrating this day, because this woman and, eventually, even the men, were willing to look past what they knew to be the limits of the possible and to believe what had seemed only to be an idle tale.
. . .
Belief in the resurrection is one of those things that sets Christians apart from other religions with a mystic element. For Judaism what we preach this day is heresy. For Islam the same. For Buddhism, Hinduism, and many, many more religious systems it just doesn't compute. Even vague New Age beliefs in a world spirit, or in special knowledge with the power to save, which sometimes get absorbed into an apparently Christian framework, leave no space for the resurrection, because what is being raised is not some sort of divine angelic figure, but God himself, fully human. Jesus of Nazareth – flesh and blood – is raised from the dead as the first fruits of those who have died. The message is clear: with God nothing is impossible. This is good news not only for the pious and the righteous, not only for those who have special knowledge or special powers, but for all who are, like Jesus, of flesh and blood. This is not reincarnation, nor return as a ghostly spirit, but resurrection of the body; the redemption of humanity.
And this knowledge is not secret but universal: it is to be proclaimed from the rooftops, and preached throughout the world. Non-one is to be cut off from the gift. The first witness is to be a woman – impossible in the Ancient Near-east, but not impossible for God. And the message which she announces is to begin a great movement: no mere sect for people who are all the same, even though in our day some Christians would try to make it so. The extraordinary news is that ALL of us are called – all of us – to imitate Mary Magdalene and the other apostles and to witness to the Good News; just as all of us are called to follow Jesus in his own life and work, and to love one another unconditionally, without prejudice of race, gender, sexuality, age, culture or even creed. God has discarded all the old rules of law and sin. With God nothing is impossible: salvation is for all.
It must, indeed, have been an extraordinary thing for Mary to have been that first witness at the tomb, or for Peter, or for any of those to whom Jesus appeared before he ascended to the right hand of the Father: impossible to comprehend what God was doing. And just as incomprehensible is that Jesus Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, but not just for himself. As St Paul puts it so well, he is the first fruits of those who have died. His raising presages our own fate – that we will all be raised with him, to sit at the Father's side. Here indeed is an extraordinary thing; a message with the power to break through the deepest despair. Here indeed is good news. Christ is risen – and all of us are called to be witnesses of that truth and to join him in new life.
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