Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 20 April 2025.
Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb (c. 1590s) by Annibale Carracci (Source)
• First Reading: Isaiah 65: 17-25 (New heavens and a new earth)
• Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15: 19-26 (Since death came through one man, so in Christ all will be made alive)
• Gospel: John 20: 1-18 (Mary Magdalene finds the tomb empty. John sees and believes)
OK. Job done. He’s off the cross and is buried, in a sealed and guarded tomb. End of story.
Now to get back to the real stuff: we have a week to get things ready. So how many foreclosures have you got ready? 17? I’ve got 25. And they will cry out so pathetically. So gratifying.
Now the real world of deals and betrayals can go on, appease the Romans and stuff the temple, for all their protests. Make money and enjoy it. After all, you can’t take it with you.
And then the shock. Rumours of a tombstone rolled back and nothing inside. People gathering, whispers – secretive but joyful, even exultant. He’s back! He has been seen. People are starting to talk.
If it cannot be crushed then it must be managed. And if not managed, then endured, even given a benign tolerance.
It can still be belittled, patronized, side-lined.
But somehow the rumours became reports, eyewitnesses and more. People were speaking out and blaming their own civic and religious leaders for the whole affair. It was getting out of hand for those who wanted a quiet but profitable life.
Even the Romans were beginning to notice. Normally when they crucified someone they ended up dead. Their soldiers were not incompetent and would not last long if they were. Just keep the peace and pay the taxes – that’s all they wanted.
But the problem was not just the reports of this man having come back from the dead. It now gave a whole new currency to what He had been saying. ‘Love one another’ – now they had a community life. ‘Forgive one another’ – they were doing that as well. They were sharing what they had and they had a joy in a new kind of life. And this is not something you can put in prison.
No, the tectonic plates had shifted and a new set of earthquakes were coming in. New ways of worshipping, new ways of doing business, caring for families. New attitudes to the rulers.
And more than that, a new approach to death, money, loyalty. Not so easily manipulated or coerced. Easy to laugh at them, run them down, humiliate them. After all they do not hit back. Not the real ones, anyway.
Maybe they will do that when they become fat and established with their own institutions. When they have money and property, chains of command and career ladders. That can come later.
Yes, the resurrection of Jesus was and is disturbing.
All the easy platitudes to justify abuse and exploitation, that ‘life is like that,’ ‘life is tough’ and ‘survival of the fittest,’ are undermined. Now His people are talking about everlasting life, the forgiveness of sins, loving God first, then one another, then their neighbours and even their enemies.
But above all, it is about the man who they thought that they had dealt with once and for all. He was back – this time present in the lives of His followers. And even if they could be locked up and killed, side-lined and abused, they could not be destroyed as a community or a movement.
They were here to stay. They might be attacked, compromised or corrupted. But there would always be some who would, annoyingly, point back to Jesus Christ, directly and personally. Not just a figure of the past but one of the present as well.
For those who know the ways of the world, that is the problem. There is always that voice, often quiet but still insistent. A quiet voice, saying ‘This is the way: walk in it.’ A voice that is easily brushed aside but never silenced.
Vulnerable but hardy, even resilient. And it never stops.
And so the resurrection of Jesus Christ is never confined to the pages of the bible. It is there in the literature of almost every land and time period. It never goes away. A truth that many would like to stuff back into the closet. But it won’t go. Not quietly – not at all.
But this is not just the effects of Jesus in society. It is also about His effects in our own lives – bringing us also out of that cavern of death: corrupting values, compromised lives, the accumulated guilts of the years and the resentments that go with them.
All of this is also brought into the light of His resurrection. It is not just that there is nowhere to hide – it is that we want these things to be brought into the place of His forgiveness and healing.
Where the prospect was only of age and declining health and strength, now we also have the prospect of life: life in its fulness here and now before Him and then life everlasting when the heart has stopped and the breath has ceased. They body may cease but the spirit definitely not.
So no, what happened at that tomb in Jerusalem is central to what we are and what we become. It is the landsman’s signpost and the sailor’s fairway buoy marking a safe landfall. It changes everything: how we see it and how we respond to it.
For us the resurrection of Jesus gives us the air that we breathe and the land which we walk upon. It is the colours of the earth and the harmonies of nature and of human art.
Like anything else it can be degraded and debauched, reduced and trivialised. But for us it is life everlasting, joy in its fulness, peace beyond understanding, the portion poured out: overflowing and spilling onto the ground.
O COME, LET US ADORE HIM.
