Resurrection of Jesus
Notes
Transcript
Sunday
Sunday
It was Sunday. It wasn’t called that yet, but anyway, their hearts were broken. I don’t want to make this sermon about the differences between men and women, because that’s a fools’ errand and I’m not sure we need more polarisation right now. Men are great. But throughout Luke, the writer has kept on reminding us - the women were there. Maybe it’s because in so much of history, it’s forgotten. But the women were there. The women were there.
At the start of His life, the women were there - Elizabeth was the first to call him Lord. Mary treasured in her heart the strange way He was born. Anna recognised Him as the One who would set His people free.
As He began to preach and teach and heal, the women were there… paying… helping. In the unnamed group and crowds, more often than not, women were there. And now, light has just begun creeping out from the Eastern sky, and the women are there.
A couple of days before, on the Friday afternoon, they had watched at a distance as he bled and died. The Friday evening, they had followed to see where He was laid in the tomb. When darkness fell on Friday night, the Sabbath began. These were Jewish women. They stopped. Obeying a command that was put in place before the world even started to go wrong. But as soon as they were able, they got up and went to look after His body.
In England, we tend to hide bodies away. At my first husband’s funeral, we decided to have an open-casket. We had to put it high enough that no-one would have to see the body unless they chose to.
We’re the weird ones, here in the West where we hide bodies away. In almost every other place, caring for the body of the dead is part of love and respect. It’s also a part of closure. When I saw Stuart’s body, I knew he wasn’t there.
This wasn’t going to be a normal burial. Jesus had been whipped by Roman soldiers. He had been beaten. He had been crucified. But they loved Him, so the women were there.
And He wasn’t.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
This is trauma upon trauma. They watched Him die, and we’ll talk a bit later on about the hope that died with Him. And now His body is gone. Who has stolen it? Why can’t they give Him even a fraction of dignity in death.
Luke is ending how it started. Suddenly, angels appear.
Except of course, it doesn’t say that. It’s all a bit more mysterious.
While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.
In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?
These angels looked like humans, except their clothes were insanely bright. That’s how we know they were angels. That and the women’s reaction. Time and time again when an angel appears to a person in the Bible, they react with fear.
I wonder if you have a mental image of fairies. In 1917, two young cousins in Yorkshire created photos of fairies that fooled the world, and when we consider the war that was going on at the time, maybe it’s not so surprising that people wanted to believe. Some people think of angels as these kind of ethereal, delicate beings.
But in the Bible, when people encounter angels, they freak out.
The angels ask them what must have sounded like such a strange question:
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?’
And then comes the reminder. We find this again and again in the different accounts of the resurrection. This sense that they should have known, but didn’t.
‘Remember how He told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:
‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ”
Then they remembered his words.
The thing is, they didn’t want to believe the first bit, so they forgot the second bit. Whenever Jesus told his followers that He would suffer and be killed, their reaction was ‘nah’.
Here’s one example:
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
Jesus tells them what will happen. At this point, people are following Jesus more . Some are saying He’s a prophet. Peter has just said that He’s the Messiah, the promised one from God who will be their King and deliver them from their enemies. Jesus has literally just told Peter that he is blessed, and that he has had revelation from God. The mood is like in Andy Burnham’s house in the week leading up to him becoming Prime Minister.
But then Jesus tells them the process, and Peter is concerned that Jesus needs some PR help. When he tries to intervene, Jesus calls him Satan. I think Jesus is an East Ender!
We’ll come back to what Jesus says next to Peter, because it’s important, but for now let’s come back to the passage we’re focusing on. Just like so many, these women had forgot the resurrection bit, because they’d tuned out the death bit. I wonder if we can be a bit like that.
I’m wary of us taking single verses out of context and building a fairy castle on them. Jesus is ‘all, or nothing’. You can’t have ‘take heart, Jesus has overcome the world’ without the bit before: ‘in this life you will have many troubles’. And the really sad thing is that if we gloss over that troubles bit because we don’t like to think we’ll have troubles, we lose out on the deep encouragement that comes when God meets us in those troubles. More than that, I’ve seen people shocked, discouraged, broken even by the fact that troubles come. ‘But, I’m a Christian… I am a friend of God… how could He let this happen to me?’ I’ve felt that. For what it’s worth, that verse in full is:
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
I’m not trying to take away your comfort, or your hope. I’m asking that we base it on actual promises. Half a promise is no promise.
Because they didn’t listen when He said He would die, they forgot He said He would rise.
But He did.
That’s one of the core beliefs of Christianity. I don’t mean that there’s an exam at heaven’s gate, and that if you answer correctly you get in. Some of our young people have been getting their GCSE and A-level results these past few weeks. If you didn’t remember the right stuff, you didn’t get the grade.
Ultimately, God’s exam is a bit different. One question: Do you trust my son?
But if Jesus wasn’t raised, Christianity is nothing. We are to be pitied. What a delusion. I could be out having brunch right now. You could be sleeping in. The people in this church who have escaped persecution could have stayed at home, in their country, with their family. My friend from a Muslim country could have kept his businesses, his houses, instead of living ‘by faith’ as a refugee in another country. The Christians in North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, I could go on… all of them could stop risking death and disgrace. Here’s how one early follower of Jesus put it:
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
The hope of Christianity comes from what we believe really happened in history. We believe that God became human, in Jesus. We believe that He lived a perfect life, that He died an unjust death on the cross at the hands of an Empire and of His own people, and that He rose again. If any of those things didn’t happen, we are to be pitied. If He was just an ordinary man, we ar to be pitied. If He didn’t really died, we are to be pitied. If he didn’t rise again, we are to be pitied.
Why do I believe it? Is it because I was taught it as a kid? Well so were my brothers, and they don’t. I’ve been through some stuff that has tested my faith.
I believe that the resurrection is true because of a combination of the historical facts, and my experience. The ‘minimal facts’ are the facts which are agreed on by pretty much all reasonable people, whether they are people of faith or not. The minimal facts about Easter, however skeptical you are, are that the first Christians believed that they had seen Him, and touched Him after His death, and that they went on to die believing that. Now how do we interpret that fact? People will spread a lie, but it’s rare that they’ll die for something they know to be untrue. So I interpret that fact about history as strong evidence that the resurrection happened. It also fits with my experience.
Tim to stand up.
You ask me how I know Tim is real. I’m not going to get out his birth certificate, or the x-ray from when he broke his leg. I’ll tell you I know him. Maybe he’s not real. I haven’t pinched him today to check! Maybe you’re all smiling at me right now because you’re really polite, and actually his chair is empty. Maybe I’m deluded about his existence. I know people who have experienced delusions. It’s not a joke, and it’s not obvious to them when they are. But my experience of God has been as tangible to me as my experience of this man that I’m married to.
There’s always the background possibility that everything is a delusion, that AI already runs the world and we’re living in pods plugged in to the matrix. But if we are, I have no way of knowing. Maybe the moon landing never happened. Maybe the earth is flat. I can’t prove it, not really. So I bring together my experience and the minimal facts of history, and I am persuaded thatJesus rose from the dead. If you’re not sure, that’s totally cool. You are welcome here. I guess I would just ask have you investigated the minimal facts, and have you approached God? Because if it’s not true, Christianity is nothing. Worthless. Pitiful, even. A 2,000 year-old cult built around a dead charlatan.
So the women found the empty tomb, and the men didn’t believe them. The men are having a pretty bad time of it too. There were thirteen close friends, one was killed, and one had betrayed him, and he took his own life. They were wondering if they were next on the execution list. The women told them about the empty tomb and the words of the angels, and:
But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
One last thing I want to say on evidence. In the first century AD, in the Mediterranean, if you want to make up a story that’s convincing, you’re not going to choose women as your witnesses. The testimony of women was not universally accepted. Yet all the four gospel accounts of the resurrection have women as the first witnesses. Not only that, but in Matthew and Mark the women are told to go and tell the rest of them. If you want to make up something that will be believed, this isn’t the way you would do it. Women, and a Northerner as your first witnesses.
So Peter runs to the tomb. He finds it empty, and he leaves, wondering.
So later that day, a couple of Jesus’s crew were walking together to a nearby village. 7 miles is like the distance from here to Big Ben if you go the long way round Wapping. About 12k in new money. Maybe they’re on a nice, straight, Roman Road.
Not that one. More rural.
Several commentators think that this was probably a couple, a man and a woman, but it doesn’t directly say that.
They’re walking, and processing what has happened. A stranger comes up behind them, and then walks with them.
He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still, their faces downcast.
They talk about the things that have happened in Jerusalem, and here’s their summary:
“What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.
The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;
but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.
Here we see their false belief, and their true hope. They had a false belief that Jesus was a prophet. A mighty, holy man, but just a man. They had a true hope, that he would redeem Israel, but because that true hope was intertwined with a false belief, it was crushed. If He was just a man, just a great prophet, then like the other great prophets, he would die and stay dead. Except Elijah, who was taken by God alive. No prophet had died and been raised back to life. His death meant that he couldn’t save anyone. It’s interesting that they have heard the third-hand report that he has risen, but they don’t seem to have any hope that it could be true.
So they’re grieving. Confused. They’ve lost the future they were hoping in. And some stranger comes along, with no idea what they’re going through. They tell him their tragedy, their mystery, and he calls them idiots!
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!
Again, Jesus is an Eastender. This is how my family speak to each other.
The angels challenged the women to remember what Jesus Himself had taught them. Now Jesus is challenging these two Jewish people to remember their own Scriptures.
Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
‘Moses and the Prophets’ is how people referred to ‘the Bible’.
I wonder what you imagine as you picture this scene. 3 people, walking along a dusty road, one of them waving a Bible around, Except, only a half-size Bible, because the New Testament wasn’t written yet.
Hebrew Bible
Greek Bible
Except, books weren’t widely in use then. If you wanted to read the Bible, you needed to get the right scroll. If you wanted to carry around the whole thing, it would be about the size of a large suitcase. And it would weigh something like 55kg. So Jesus is quoting from memory, and they’re remembering.
I wonder where he started.
Did he start with the garden of Eden, when humanity turned its back on God, and where God promised that one day a son of a woman would crush the head of the devil?
Did He start with the promise to the family of Judah, brother 3 of 12, that one day a star, a ruler would come from their family that would rule forever?
Did He start with Moses prophesying that one day a prophet like him would come to lead the people again?
Did He go on to talk about the scarlet thread? The Spirit-filled King? The psalms that speak of God calming the wind and waves with a command?
The prophet Isaiah who spoke of a servant King who would suffer and die so that His people could be free? And that the gentiles would also come to worship Israel’s God?
Did he talk about the branch that would grow up from the stump of a dead royal family? All of it, I guess, and more.
I need to slow down for a minute, because what we’re about to talk about has caused serious harm, and it’s a live issue. We need to be really careful when we talk about Judaism in the church. Jesus did not come to ‘start a new religion’. Jesus saw Himself as fulfilling the religion, fulfilling the promises made to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Joseph, Moses, David, the prophets.
The first Christians were all Jews. When we hear these two disciples say that the Jewish rulers handed Jesus over to death, they are talking about their own. TheJews, for them, aren’t ‘over there’. They’re ‘us’.
So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.
Thousands of Jews became followers of Jesus. In fact, a lot of the New Testament challenges we read about are from those Jewish believers in Jesus wrestling with how to include Gentiles (non-Jews) in the movement. We know that many of the Pharisees followed him. Nicodemus came by night, but later, others openly joined the Jesus movement.
Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”
Sometimes you might hear a kind of a caricature: Judaism was a religion of law, and Christianity is a religion of grace. Or hear people use ‘Pharisee’ as a term of abuse or criticism. The early church was a Jewish church. Grace is woven through the pages of the Old Testament. Genesis 2 - humans sin, and God covers their shame. Jesus didn’t invent grace. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a radical new beginning in Jesus, but it was a new beginning that was predictable from, and built on, the foundation God laid, throughout Moses and the Prophets. The Pharisees believed in Israel’s God, and in His promises, and many of them saw Jesus as the fulfilment of those promises. They guarded the Scriptures that we now read, and they refused to assimilate to the Empire.
It all points to Him.
We have to be honest. After the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in AD 70, and then even more so after a revolt was crushed early in the second century, Christianity and what has become the Judaism of our time diverged. The Christians with Jewish heritage were no longer welcome in the synagogues, and in some places hostility broke out. One of the greatest shames of the church is that at times over the centuries people have persecuted and killed Jews in the name of Jesus, a Jew. Anti-Semitism is increasing again in our time, so it’s important that we get this clear. There is no place for it in the church.
I also want to be honest that the picture I have painted of Christianity as the child of Judaism, and the way of Jesus as the natural, obvious continuation of the Jewish faith, is not the view shared by most Jewish people. For many Jews, Christianity is at best a Jewish heresy, and at worst a Gentile fabrication and appropriation of their true religion.
It’s a bit like how Christians don’t consider Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses to be Christian, but they would call themselves Christian.
Again, let’s remember that the early church was Jewish. I wonder how much more interested Jewish people would be in the Jewish Jesus if the church had treated them with honour in the centuries after the parting of the ways? So we have to speak about these things carefully. Not because we’re ashamed of our Jewish Jesus, but because there is so much ugly history.
So they have this two hour Bible study with Jesus Himself, and it’s a Bible study that you can track with as you read the Jewish Scriptures, or what we call the Old Testament. But the story is quite weird, because they don’t recognise Him. Again, this is something that we find across all four gospel accounts. The risen Jesus is sort of unrecognisable, but then there’s a sudden moment, and they ‘see’ Him. In this case, it’s at the table.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Were they reminded of that intense last meal?
The night before Jesus was betrayed..
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
Was that what did it? Or was there something spiritual going on? Honestly, I don’t know. I love the Bible. I love studying it. I love teaching it. But I don’t get all of it. I don’t think we’re supposed to. It would be a pretty small god if I could wrap my brain around all of it. I don’t ‘get’ the resurrection, and the way Jesus is definitely alive, and physical, but also seems less bound by the laws of nature, and disappears and reappears. It’s weird. But I guess we’d expect resurrection to be weird.
So, I want to go back to what Jesus said to Peter. When the angels spoke to the women at the empty tomb, they chided them: don’t you remember how He told you this would happen? I talked about how their unwillingness to believe He would die meant they were unable to trust He would rise again. We read about Peter’s reaction to Jesus’s teaching on that. He rebuked Him, and Jesus said ‘get behind me, Satan!”
I want to finish by going back to what Jesus said to Peter in Matthew 16.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
This is about how we respond to Jesus. Like I said, maybe you don’t believe in any of this. You’re still really welcome here.
But if you do believe it, here’s what Jesus says. Follow me. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Follow Him into death, and back out into life.
Why would anyone do this if the resurrection is not true? Pitiful. Literally.
Why would you give up your life, your comfort, for nothing? But the promise of Jesus is that if we follow Him, we share in His resurrection life. It’s not angels playing harps on clouds. It’s a remade heaven and earth, and us living in it with God forever.
If you’re a Christian, I hope this morning has reminded you of the basis of the promises that you’ve built your life on. You’ve trusted that this ancient book, written by people whose way of life is almost unimaginable to us, contains eternal truth, and that the centre of that truth is Jesus. You haven’t built your life on the promise of money, or success, or sex, or power. You haven’t built your life on a promise that if you stick with Jesus all your troubles will go away. But you’ve trusted that the One who predicated His death and your troubles also predicted His resurrection and your victory. The good news is that you don’t have to manifest that victorious life for yourself. There are no special words you have to find. The special words were spoken by Jesus, at the very moment that it seemed like death had won, when He said ‘it is finished’.
PRAYER FOR HOPE DISAPPOINTED, LIFE COMMITTED
