Easter 2
Sermon preached by the Revd Anna Matthews
Easter begins with a rolled back stone and an empty tomb. Neatly folded grave clothes indicate that something is afoot – no grave robbers would take the time to unwrap the body and tidy up behind themselves – but the open tomb initially prompts not faith but incomprehension. Where is the body?
The New Testament hands onto us some of this incomprehension at a reality beyond the disciples’ imagining. There’s the encounter with Mary in the garden, where she fails to recognise Jesus until she hears him call her by name. Luke gives us the story of the three women who are told by an angel that Jesus is risen – testimony they pass on but which is not believed by the other disciples. Then Jesus appears incognito alongside the disciples walking to Emmaus, whose eyes are only opened to his identity in the breaking of bread. The risen Jesus appears through locked doors, holds out his pierced hands, shows the disciples the wound in his side. He eats broiled fish and invites them for breakfast. They wonder if they’re seeing a ghost, some sort of apparition, but this figure has tangible heft. A ghost can’t invite Thomas to put his hand in his side. Nor can it swallow grilled fish. What we hear in the Gospel accounts of the resurrection is the disciples’ attempts to describe a life that overwhelms them with its reality. We see the move from hesitation to faith, from astonishment to proclamation. The risen Jesus is identifiably the same Jesus who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. But resurrection is not resuscitation. Resurrection is a new creation.
We’re meant to hear this in the way John describes Jesus’ appearance in the upper room. It’s the first day of the week when Jesus appears to the disciples, a deliberate echo of the first day of creation. And he breathes on them his Spirit, just as the breath or Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters in creation. Easter begins a new creation.
But, unlike the first creation, where God created out of nothing, Easter creates by redeeming and restoring. That’s why the risen Christ bears the marks of his passion: it is not unblemished, unmarked flesh he holds out to the disciples, but very visibly the hands they had seen nailed to the cross on Good Friday. Resurrection doesn’t erase what has gone before, offering a shiny clean slate. It’s harder, and more creative than that: it is God breathing life into wounds, bestowing forgiveness that makes remembering bearable, weaving from the knotted and tangled threads of our life a new story we hadn’t thought possible.
And all of this is possible only from an encounter with the risen Lord. And it’s the disciples who are moved first to stuttering comprehension and faith. They’re his friends, so perhaps we’re not surprised they’re the ones he goes to. But they’re also the ones for whom memory of failure is painfully, shamefully fresh. They hadn’t had the effrontery to be like Judas and step out boldly into the night, but when danger came, they’d all slunk off into the shadows. Proud declarations of bravery and constancy had turned to ash as they’d denied him, distanced themselves from him, deserted him.
That’s what’s on their minds as they gather behind locked doors. That, and grief and sorrow and fear. They’re a community without a leader, sheep without a shepherd. Locking themselves in is how they try to keep the world at bay, and to hide from its dangers. And then the risen Jesus appears and breathes his Spirit onto them, and a new creation begins. The disciples are frightened and Jesus speaks peace. They are tormented by the memory of their failures and he gives them the ministry of reconciliation.
In the resurrection of Jesus, their lives are put back together again. Not from nothing, not as though the past was erased, but because Jesus speaks a new creation into being. The reign of sin is at an end because Jesus is risen from the dead, and that means that sin’s grip on the disciples, on us, is not final. We are not defined by the things we’ve done, or the shame or guilt we carry, or by a past we fear will never let us go. Our identity is in Christ: he’s the one who gets to tell us who we are. And in the resurrection, he appears to his fickle, faithless friends to tell them that his love is stronger than their failures. They may deny or forsake or betray him, but he will not deny or forsake or betray them. Or us.
Like the risen Christ who calls us into his resurrection life, and like the disciples in the upper room, we still bear the wounds of our lives. But in Jesus’ presence we discover a love that makes truth bearable. The resurrection doesn’t tell us that we’re innocent in Eden once more – Holy Week surely puts paid to that fantasy. But it does tell us we’re loved, and that love, finally, is stronger than death.
After the initial resurrection appearances, all of which are testimony to the reality of a new life that dawns from beyond the grave – a life that the earliest disciples had seen with their eyes, and looked at and touched with their hands (1 John 1.1) – the risen Lord goes on being present in the gathered Christian community. In the Gospel reading we hear of his gift to the disciples of peace and forgiveness; in our reading from Acts we hear that ‘the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul… There was not a needy person among them’. The risen life of Christ is visible, tangible, in the Christian community – in unity and forgiveness and in life shared together. For there not to be a needy person among them requires the sort of community where people can be open about their need, as well as able to give from what they have. That asks both for trustworthiness among believers as well as the sort of vulnerability that is willing to admit to need. We shut ourselves off from each other and from Christ if we pretend we have no need, just as if we pretend we have no sin nor need of forgiveness we deceive ourselves.
The risen Christ is present in Christian communities that tell the truth. Where Peter can confess his denial and find the grace of forgiveness. Where others can name the particular ways our sin denies Christ and be offered the hope of new life. Where we can say what’s going on for us, what our needs are – from the practical need for food or a roof over our heads to the need that speaks when we dare to say to another ‘I’m lonely’ or ‘I’m scared’ or ‘I can’t do this any longer’ or ‘I don’t know what to do.’ We are so schooled in invulnerability in our culture, so used to striving for independence, that it’s a shock to realise that one of the primary ways the risen Christ makes himself known to us is through each other. And we can’t do that if we’re busy pretending we have no wounds, and no need either for one another or for the new life Christ offers.
Easter begins with a rolled back stone and an empty tomb. But it doesn’t end there, for the risen Christ goes on breathing his Spirit into his disciples, ministering his forgiveness, and forming communities that make no sense if he is not risen from the dead. The new creation goes on in us, bringing us to truthful confession – of our sins and of Jesus’ Lordship – and touching our wounds with the grace of resurrection. Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, alleluia.