An Easter Sunday Sermon -

What do we make of this story that we hear every year on Easter Sunday? The story of the resurrection.

Some folk take this story as yet more evidence that Christians are cranks, required to believe six impossible things before breakfast-time. They dismiss it out of hand. Someone back from the dead? Appearing and disappearing at will? Pull the other one.

Others give the story a little more credence, but try to sift out the supernatural elements and find rational explanations for what happened on that first Sunday morning. Jesus had only swooned, the disciples took his body, it was all some kind of mass hallucination – that kind of thing.

And though they differ, the starting point of both those perspectives is more or less the same. They both start from the assumption that it can’t have happened.

But why? Why can’t it have happened? The answer you’d get back is  Because none of us have ever seen anything like this! Because the world doesn’t work that way!

Well, find a tribe of natives deep in the Amazon rainforest, point to the moon one night and tell them that men have walked on it, and see if they believe you!

Or travel back in time, even a couple of hundred years, and tell people about iPads and chartered aeroplane flights and television and electricity and they’ll think you’ve lost the plot.

Just because something is beyond our present understanding, it doesn’t mean it can’t possibly be true.

I’m not embarrassed by the resurrection stories, even as a scientist. Because if it’s true, and I believe it is, what’s happening in the resurrection is something so new and so alien and so unique that we can’t measure it by what we presently know.

Those of you who’ve seen the movie 2001 will remember the scene when the astronauts discover this massive, perfectly rectangular black monolith on the moon. It’s an utterly alien presence – totally beyond what they know. It’s an unambiguous sign of another intelligence, another power, at work in the universe.

For me - that’s what we’re seeing in the resurrection. The breaking into our world of another world. Small wonder we can’t get our heads around it.

But where’s the evidence for it?

Well we’ve been down this avenue many times before – too often to go over the same ground again. But the telling thing for me has always been the change in the disciples. What took them from being cowards, hiding away in a locked room, to preaching fearlessly that Jesus had been raised and risking prison and death for saying so?

Eleven of the twelve were martyred for preaching the resurrection of Christ. If it were all a hoax they’d cooked up, you’ve got to admire their commitment to it!

But aside from that, the resurrection stories themselves give us some strong literary hints that they’re authentic and not fabricated.

If you were making this stuff up, you wouldn’t have women coming to the tomb first and being the first witnesses. You’d make sure it was men, because in the ancient world a man’s testimony was thought to be more reliable than a woman’s.

But all four gospel writers tell us that women came to the tomb first.

Last at the cross and first at the tomb. Full marks to the girls!

And there’s more evidence that the story’s authentic in today’s reading, and it’s the fact that for reasons that aren’t clear, Jesus seems hard to recognise.

Now if you were making this story up, why would you introduce that element of confusion?
Surely what you’d want is for everybody in the story to recognise him straight away?!

“Jesus – it’s you! You are unambiguously raised from the dead!”

But here, John records that Mary was confused over who Jesus was, at least at first. And the very fact that John’s included that ambiguity in his account is strong proof that it’s authentic. Why put it in otherwise?

And it’s that little detail I want us to think about for a moment. The fact that in the story of Mary at the garden tomb, she didn’t recognise Jesus at first.

That sounds daft to us. How could she not recognise him? Well you don’t have to resort to theories of Jesus shape-shifting to explain it. Maybe she was struggling to see anything properly because she was beside herself with grief. Or maybe Jesus was trying to be incognito to avoid re-capture. Thousands of hoodies up and down the country know how easy it is to hide your identity by the simple act of covering your head.

That Mary might not recognise Jesus isn’t as daft as it sounds, and I have anecdotal evidence to back that up!

I take weddings every now and again. It’s a professional hazard. And this phenomenon nearly always happens at the weddings I take. I’ll be standing in front of the congregation for a full half-hour or forty minutes. And I know I’m not the centre of attention, but they’ll be looking in my general direction for all of that time. And there’s always be a spell when the bride and groom sit down, and the congregation will see and hear only me for a good ten minutes.

But I guarantee you that later on in the day when I’m chatting to the other guests, and I’m in my civvies, on at least two occasions someone will say to me “so – how do you know the bride and groom?” and they’ll be mortified when they realise I was the guy who just married them and they haven’t recognised me.

That either says I have an eminently forgettable face. No comment. Or it says that when we see people out of context, and dressed differently, it’s not always easy to recognise them.

Perhaps it’s not so strange that here, and in other places, people are initially slow to recognise the resurrected Christ. They certainly weren’t expecting to see him.

So what we can take away from that for ourselves today?

Well, here are a few thoughts to leave you with.

Firstly – Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised that Jesus was hard to recognise. Here is God born into the world, and only a few ever recognised him for who he was. Last week we read the set texts for Palm Sunday and remembered Jesus looking out over Jerusalem and lamenting. Why? Because they did not recognise the time of God’s coming to them. He was right in front of them, and they didn’t recognise him.

In Mark’s gospel there’s this strange motif of what’s called the Messianic Secret – Jesus seems keen to keep a lid on his identity. He heals, but then he tells the people who’ve been cured not to say anything about it to anyone.
And when he teaches, so often he chooses to tell parables. Stories that draw you in, but leave you with as many questions as answers.

And all of this adds up, to me.

I wonder if Jesus was playing hard-to-get. If he was deliberately being a little obscure so that only those who really wanted to know him would make the effort. Who would go the distance with him? Who would stick in? They were the kind of people he wanted to gather around himself.

And gather them he did.

And it’s no accident, secondly, that they are the people he appeared to once he’d risen from the dead.

He didn’t turn up in Herod’s palace, or Pilate’s courtyard, or in the middle of the Sanhedrin and say ‘told you so’. In some senses that would have been the natural and logical thing to do. To prove it. But that was never his way. He didn’t have to prove anything, except to those who loved him – and it was to them that he appeared.

The folk who followed, who lingered with him in his life, were the same ones to whom the risen Christ made himself known.

And maybe that’s a word for us today.

And one final observation – it was when he said or did something that was personal for them that they realised who he really was.

It was only when he said ‘Mary’ in the way he always had, that she recognised him in the garden.

It was only when the Emmaus disciples saw him break and bless the bread that they realised who he was.

It was when the disciples in the upper room saw the nailprints in his hands, and the spear wound in his side that they believed.

The truth of all of this hits home when we receive it in a personal way. When we know that the risen Jesus is speaking directly to us.

Because he still does. Not in words or presence, perhaps, but in a call that comes straight to our spirit and demands a response.

To the disciples, and to Thomas in particular, the resurrected Christ says ““Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

That’s a word for me and you this morning. That was my experience as a young man. I’d been in the church since childhood, but it was only when I started to seek Christ for myself that it all became real. As I lingered over some verses in John’s gospel, I knew in the depths of my being that he was asking for my life and my commitment. This was personal. He was calling my name in the garden.

We live in an age of instant everything. Instant relationships, instant coffee, instant information, instant communication. But there’s something about the way God deals with us that won’t be rushed, that can’t be understood by those who aren’t prepared to look for him and linger.

So what are you waiting for this morning? A thunderbolt from heaven? Writing on the wall? Some final logical proof that this story is real?

My fear is that you can wait from now ‘til kingdom come and it’ll never come. It doesn’t work that way.

Here’s how it works – you have to take the initiative. “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened unto you”

Take a risk. If you’ve never done so, ask Christ to come into your life. Ask him to accept you as you are, but to change you into what you can be, in him.

If you’re willing and able to pray that kind of prayer, you’ll find – as countless others down the centuries have found – that he’s not nearly as ‘hard to get’ as people might like to believe.

Christian Aid reflection - Doubting (?) Thomas

Doubting Thomas.

That’s a harsh way to be remembered, isn’t it?

I’ve always felt a bit sorry for Thomas. It’s kind of unfair to have one moment define your whole life story, but that’s what’s happened with him.

Doubting Thomas.

Nobody remembers him as Faithful Thomas; Courageous Thomas.

You’ll probably know the story of how Jesus’ friend Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, died. What you may not know was that for Jesus to return to Bethany to be with the mourners was risky. He was persona non-grata in that part of the world, his enemies had already tried to stone him, and when they first heard this news the disciples tried to talk him out of going back there.

But when it became clear that his mind was made up, Thomas said to the rest of them: “Let us go also, that we may die with him”.

But we don’t remember that part of the story. We remember this part. And we forget that until the rest of the disciples saw Jesus with their own eyes, they were doubting too. Thomas was no different from all the others, in that respect.

Late on that first Easter Sunday evening, Jesus appeared among his followers as they cowered in a locked room. These were the men who had fled and deserted him at the crucial moment, but there are no recriminations. Instead, he blesses them with his peace, his presence and his Spirit. John tells us that on seeing him, they were filled with joy. But Thomas isn’t there to receive the blessing. He didn’t get to see for himself.

We don’t know where he’d got to. Maybe he was on an errand. Maybe he’d kept his distance from the rest of the disciples after Calvary.

Whatever the reason for his absence, when he finally gets to hear this incredible news, his reaction is, I dare say, exactly what yours or mine would be. Incredulity.

People don’t come back to life after crucifixion, and I hear more than a little anger in his voice when he growls “unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my finger on those scars and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

You can live in your fantasy world, he seems to be saying. If I’m going to believe this I need the evidence of my own senses. Your words aren’t enough for me.

And who can blame him? Words are cheap, aren’t they?

It’s only when the Christ appears among them once more, and Thomas sees him with his own eyes, that he finally believes. Interestingly he doesn’t seem to need to go as far as putting his fingers into the wounds, as he said he would.

And with one eye on the future, Jesus gives a word of encouragement to the likes of you and me, though it also sounds like an admonishment for Thomas: “You believe because you have seen – blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed”. I’ve always appreciated those words.

Now, in the context of today’s Christian Aid service, what does this story have to say to you and to me? We’ll I’ve held it in my mind this week, and as I’ve turned it over and over, different facets have caught the light.

The first time round, I found myself thinking about the fact that words are cheap.

It’s not so long ago that in the light of the Empty Tomb we were proclaiming hallelujahs and declaring that Jesus is risen. Holding out the truth that in Christ’s death and resurrection something of cosmic proportions has taken place. These are the words that the church is called to proclaim. And they are true.

But I wonder how many ears in the world receive those words with scepticism or disbelief because they seem to have precious little evidence backing them up.

If in the resurrected Christ, and the church that gathers around him, the hearts and minds of men and women are turned back to God and to their fellow human beings, why are over a billion people in our world still living on less than a dollar a day, when the vast majority of the world’s resources are concentrated in the nominally Christian west?

Can the poor be blamed if in response to our claim that Jesus is risen, they turn round and say ‘So what? Until we see the evidence of his goodness for ourselves, manifest through you as you help feed our bodies and minds and souls what tangible reason do we have to believe? If your faith in God doesn’t move you to work for change and for justice in a desperately unfair world, isn’t it just empty words?'

Perhaps the third world is rather like Thomas, waiting for hard proof that our faith is real, because fine words aren’t enough.

Or perhaps – and here’s a shocker – perhaps it’s we in the west who, like the disciples, are in trouble. Locked in the prison of our materialism. Locked into cycles of consumption we can’t get out of. Desperately fearful, though we have less to fear than 90% of people on the planet.

And perhaps, just perhaps, the third world plays the role of Christ here – coming to us wounded, and yet full of joy and faith. Because the truth of the matter is that Christian faith is actually at its most vibrant in the emerging world, for all its problems.

Time and again, as we hear from Christian Aid each year, I’m struck by how much people in the third world have to teach us about generosity, joy and community, though in material terms they have so little. Think of the vitality and the vibrancy and the colour and the music that comes out of these places, for all their poverty.

On the surface it’s obvious who the needy partner is in this annual exchange between ourselves and the poor of the world. On reflection it’s not nearly so obvious.

One last thought – and it comes in the form of a question. Where do we find Jesus?

It strikes me, not just from this story, but from the whole Biblical witness, that we find Christ among those who need him most.

A small group of fearful disciples, hiding behind locked doors and wondering what on earth the future holds for them.

An elderly group of Christian Aid volunteers, gathered in a church in an affluent suburb; trying hard to live with a different agenda to their near neighbours.

A young group of Nicaraguan workers, putting in a hard shift in the factory and the marketplace so that a whole community can eat, and their kids can be educated.

A congregation in North East Scotland, gathering for worship as they’ve always done, and wondering how to keep being the church in a culture that refuses to stand still.

Christ, who sees our needs, stands in our midst, shows us the wounds he bore for our sins, and speaks his peace over us.

And we are blessed, in the midst of our doubt, and given good, solid reason to believe.

Thanks be to God.