Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 8 April 2023.
Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb (c. 1590s) by Annibale Carracci (Source)
• First Reading: Jeremiah 31: 1-6 (I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness)
• Epistle: Colossians 3: 1-4 (Since you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is)
• Gospel: Matthew 28: 1-10 (‘Do not be afraid – you are looking for Jesus – he is not here, He has risen. Go and tell the disciples’)
Reading the accounts of the Last Supper, we are told that it was a pretty sombre affair. Jesus was heavy hearted, the disciples confused and still did not understand what was going on or was to come and in the midst of it all, Judas went out – ‘AND IT WAS NIGHT.’
Night in his soul and night in his actions of betrayal.
Now we have another night scene, this time the women going to the tomb – evidently to anoint the body of Jesus. Crazed with grief and disappointment, disorientated by the course of events and not really knowing even how they would get into the tomb, they went anyway.
Perhaps in the goodness of their hearts the temple guard could be persuaded to break the seals on the tomb and roll the door aside. ‘We are only here to look, you understand, and to add to the spices in the burial cloths.’
For these women the night was as deep and as unforgiving as that which had received Judas’ last steps. But it was also different.
The Romans might have finished their business and the Chief Priests theirs, but God still had an agenda. There was more to come and the women had no idea of what to expect – no more than the desperate sailors in the Galilean squall when Jesus was minding His own business and inspecting His eyelids in the stern of the boat.
The disciples might have wanted Him to start bailing the boat or to man an oar, but definitely not to take control of the storm and to still it with a word.
And now God was going to step outside their imagination and expectations. Just as Jesus had overruled the violence of the storm on the lake, so God was going to overrule death itself.
It would be stripped of its terror, and those who traded on it would be stripped of their commodity and their currency.
Now Jesus would stand forth again, this time beyond death and beyond the reach or threats of the Chief Priests or the Pharisees or the Romans. He would be beyond the reach of every worldly dictator and murderer, every warlord and drug lord, every abuser of life and debaucher of values and currency.
And so He met the women, whose expectations had now been shattered by the open but empty tomb, and were still wondering what to make of the greeting of the angel.
Not here – then where? Risen – how, where, why and what does it all mean anyway?
And then they ran into Him. Tolkien’s resurrection of Gandalf the Grey as Gandalf the White is a pointer – so far as literature and film allow. Jesus was as much Himself as He ever was but now more so. And this was still a glory of the things of this world. There would be far more to come.
Meanwhile the women were sent – with a message. They were to go to Jesus’ brothers – not His siblings of the house of Mary and Joseph, but those disciples who had run away, who had denied Him, those who were barricaded behind locked doors, afraid of their own shadows. Yes, those brothers.
And now there was a message. Jesus had risen from the tomb, and was again acting and speaking. He would be teaching and doing, rallying the disciples giving them new hearts and new minds.
Jesus still had urgent business with the disciples – and they would soon enough have urgent business with the temple and with Rome itself.
And so Jesus was indeed risen and a new chapter in the story of humanity was going to begin.
This is where Paul has some interesting things to say about the priorities of the disciples.
They were to reset their lives in the light of Jesus’ resurrection.
First, they were to reset their hearts.
The deepest impulses of life – their innermost hopes and yearnings, the most personal relationships and priorities.
All of this would be renewed – and renewed from within. Whatever the circumstances, the doctrines of the ruling elites, the states of war and peace, whether on the borders or in the streets, all would be seen through a different kind of lens.
The terrors of death and of condemnation would be stripped away. It is not that we would not know death or conviction, but condemnation in all its forms would be fatally undermined, never to recover their original power.
But next, they were to reset their minds. Their understanding of the world, their rational faculties, the wisdom of the age would have to be reassessed, set into a different kind of context.
When the world says every man or woman for themselves, the gospel says that we are now made into Jesus’ brothers and sisters, His personal family.
When the world thrives on conflict and competition, the economy of God is one that gives, limited only by our willingness to receive.
When the world is at its most destructive in arranging its affairs, the Kingdom of God is at its most creative in giving, rejoicing and centring itself of Jesus Christ – crucified and risen for evermore.
