The Gray Monk

May I speak,
And may you hear,
In the name of our Lord and saviour
Jesus Christ.
Amen

“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus body.”

This sentence tells us perhaps more than any other in the story of the crucifixion, just how rushed and chaotic was Jesus burial. Crucifixion was not a pleasant way to die and the victims were often denied proper burial. Jesus body was, in fact, saved by the intervention of Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus both of them members of the Sanhedrin. Their intervention also tells us something of the position of Jesus family and their social standing in the Jewish society of the first century. Certainly no ordinary citizen would have had access to Pilate in the way we are told Joseph had.

Why were the women there at all? Well, if you have come across the Jewish burial process you will know that the women of the family, but usually not the wife or mother, are the one’s who wash the body, wrap it and prepare it for burial. It is the men who must dig the grave, receive the body and bury it with all the family and friends joining in the prayers and the task of carrying the body to it’s final resting place. Obviously, in this case the body had not been properly prepared and possibly even the proper prayers had not been said, so the women had set out to do the preparations so that the proper observances could be made later. We can only imagine their horror on discovering that the body has gone.

The second point to infer from the passage is a perhaps obvious one – that it was the women who first discover that the body is gone. Sadly, Mark’s Gospel, in the most reliable copies of the original that we have, ends at verse 8 so we have to turn to the other gospels, Matthew, Luke and John, to see how the story continues. In these we learn that the Sanhedrin, suspecting that something like this might happen – that the body would be stolen and concealed – had posted a guard. Mark makes no mention of that, but he does tell us that the women were confronted by a young man they did not recognise, dressed in white, who tells them that Jesus has gone to Galilee.

The physical reality of the missing body would have raised all sorts of suspicions, particularly in the minds of the Sanhedrin. It must have been even worse for those close to Jesus as they would have had to confront the accusation that they were responsible for its disappearance without being able to prove that they were not. In Luke we learn, however, that Christ has risen, his body is not concealed, nor is it stolen, he is risen, yet, in some way so changed that many of his own don’t recognise him.

Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener, Cleopas and his companion encounter him walking to Emmaus and don’t recognise him and so it goes on. So what had changed?

Well, by the sound of it and the evidence of the Gospels quite a lot. And not necessarily so much in his appearance, after all, would we recognise someone we met walking along the street if we knew we had seen that person die in front of us and been party to their burial? I think perhaps not.

Yet, the fact of the resurrection is central to our faith. We have just confessed it in the creed when we said together,
“I believe …. The resurrection of the Body and the life of the world to come.”

Do we really believe this? What “proof” have we that it happened? If his own did not recognise him how can we be sure it wasn’t all a clever trick, someone made up to look like him? After all, they do it in the movies and on television all the time, why not then? What, after all is said and done, does it really offer us?

Examine again the evidence of the gospels and you do find that there is a compelling argument to say that Christ did indeed walk out of the tomb, showed himself in physical form to his disciples and loved ones on several occasions – and then departed from their sight in what can only be described as a miraculous fashion. The evidence, if tested in a court of law would have to be accepted on balance of probability and the statements of eye witnesses, as acceptable and reliable. Therefore, we should conclude that Mark’s account read out this evening is a true statement of the event.

It did seem to me, as I pondered on this sermon that we should also see the calling to ministry in this, for that is what the women were doing when they went to the tomb. Their ministry was, on this occasion, to the dead, yet the dead body they sought was gone and they are given a new ministry, this time to be the first to take the word of the resurrection to the world. A point that we should perhaps give some more thought to as we welcome Sarah into our ministry team here in Tewkesbury and Twyning.

So, given the evidence that the resurrection happened, that it is central to the Christian faith, what does it, in fact, mean to us who profess that faith and in so doing declare that we believe in the resurrection?

I cannot put it better than Archbishop Michael Ramsay when he told a bumptious interviewer that the Faith of the Church gave the world Hope. Without the resurrection there is simply no hope for any of us. Without the resurrection there is no future, no life to come. This, in fact, is it! And well you may then ask, to what purpose do we bother to worship? To what purpose do we set ourselves moral rules?

The resurrection challenges us in many different ways. Like Thomas the Twin we were not there, we did not see. Unlike Thomas the Twin we have not had the opportunity to place our hands on his wounds, how therefore should we believe, as we must, in this central plank of our faith?

And there is the word that holds the key. Faith. We have no choice but to take the resurrection on faith. We have declared that faith this evening, in fact some of us declared it several times today – sometimes several times each day. We take the resurrection on faith because we know that it happened, we are told so by all the Gospellers and, if we really look around, by others as well. We are a resurrection people, our faith is founded on the fact of the resurrection and in that lies our hope of life beyond this one.

When I look about me at the secular world I see a world that has lost that wonderful thing called faith and with it, it has lost its sense of direction. In faith we look forward with hope, without faith we look back with regret and forward with fear.

Luke’s account of the resurrection tells us that: -
“When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.”
Even then there were the sceptics, even then there were the doubters, yet it was the faith of the few who did believe that has brought down to us, across the ages and with many twists and turns along the path, that same joy that the women felt when they discovered the truth of the resurrection.
Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

He is risen indeed Alleluia.