Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 31 March 2024.
Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb (c. 1590s) by Annibale Carracci (Source)
• First Reading: Isaiah 25: 6-9 (The Lord’s great feast will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples)
• Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11 (The gospel message – Christ died for our sins)
• Gospel: John 20: 1-18 (Mary Magdalene finds the tomb empty…)
Our scientists and engineers have probed the very edges of space – with telescopes that may even look into those parts of space that existed before time began.
They have probed the innermost parts of the atom and looked into the smallest particles that physics believes are possible. They have examined the human physique to find the sources of almost every disease known to medicine.
Perhaps the only areas not fully explored are the far side of the moon, the bottoms of the oceans – and the realm of death.
That is still the province of the arts and of religious belief.
And in this, there have been many extravagant explanations of what happens. The ancient Egyptians had a full liturgy of death and their dead pharaohs and high officials had sumptuous arrangements for burial and how to navigate the nether-world.
For us in the west the approach is more matter of fact. To many, when you die then that is it. There is nothing more. No life, no morality, and certainly no hope or expectation.
But supposing this is wrong – and that death is only a gateway to something else and something more? Then how do we avoid the hazards of rejection and secure the blessings of acceptance?
We can devise elaborate moral systems which become rigid and legalistic, self-satisfied and complacent. But then this view implies that beyond death there is One who is answerable to even higher authorities.
The Christian faith tells, first that God is made of none and answerable to none. He alone is almighty, and has created the heavens, the earth and all of life. He has set the principles of life, including not only how lifeforms live but also how they interact – socially and morally.
Since God is made of none and answerable to none, then there is no bargaining either. We accept life and live it according to His principles and there are no alternatives.
But then only God can meet the standards of God. Only God can rescue us from the effects of failing Him. Indeed, only God has done so, and in Jesus has lived among us, a life wholly human but morally and spiritually perfect. A life that could and did face death, having placed Himself in the place of utter and total judgment on behalf of those who could not.
Now the face of death has the person of Jesus in front of it. In His resurrection, Jesus has stripped death of its fear. He has not told us wholly what lies beyond, except to say that there is a realm of total peace and joy in the presence of God.
A realm that can never be earned but which can always be received. It is a realm whose life starts here and now in this world as we put out trust in Him. And there is none other who has gone before us and yet invites us to follow Him in this life.
The gospels are like four journalists describing the same event. The stories are essentially the same and yet they are presented individually and personally, each with a special kind of stress and accent.
And so John tells his story – how Mary Magdalene, a reformed sinner, was the first to greet the risen Lord. Women were not regarded highly then and yet it was to a woman that Jesus first appeared.
The disciples were at first skeptical, but they investigated anyway. Peter saw nothing except a hole in the rock while John saw and believed personally and intimately that Jesus was back. Risen from the dead, with death itself stripped of its power to terrify or intimidate.
More than that, the powers of rulers who traded in the fear of death were also stripped away. Not only could they no longer terrorize their subjects – but they would also be answerable.
Now the story had changed. The whole dynamic of life had changed as well. We may all look to God for mercy – and receive it in this life as we join ourselves to Jesus Christ and His agenda for life.
Now we are given a door of hope which many powers would close forever. They would certainly resist the story of the man sent from God to tell humanity of the purposes, the mercy and the righteousness of God.
They would not be keen on being told that they also will answer to God for their governance and direction of the affairs of the world.
They may not be that enthusiastic in knowing that their subjects would find their identity and loyalty first in the things of God and before the demands of the state and its political directors.
But Jesus Christ is alive. He has been vindicated from the ignominy and humiliation, never mind the torture of the cross, by One who is greater than all these.
He who had become utter and total sin in the sight of God was now holy, righteous, beloved and mighty in His presence, and He goes before us so that we also may live before Him and in Him.
That is why we gather together, why we worship and find that in the presence of God we also have an identity and a purpose that can never be matched by the wealth, the opulence or even the scientific knowledge of the world. For CHRIST IS RISEN.
