It really is him
Based on Luke 24:1-12
When I was a child, I was
allowed to walk to and from school on my own as soon as I could safely cross
the road, and from quite an early age, I was pretty much allowed to
disappear all afternoon during weekends, just so long as I was home by
dinner time. Now I am not suggesting the world was a totally safe place back
then. It wasn’t, and I can remember the police visiting my school and
warning us about strangers.
We were never actually
told why, but we clearly understood we should never ever go anywhere with
anyone we did not know, and that we should not believe them if they tried to
tell us our parents had sent them.
One day, when I was
probably about seven or eight, a man approached me outside my school, and
said my mother had sent him to meet me. I didn’t recognise him. What’s more,
he had a beard, so I reckoned he had to be dodgy.
I was not in the least bit
frightened. Quite the contrary. We had all been warned about strangers, but
now I had actually got to meet one. I felt like a trophy hunter who had just
spotted a fine specimen of some exotic species. Now it was time for the
kill. I stood upright, stared him in the eye, and with that simultaneously
rising volume and intonation that only a pre-pubescent boy can achieve,
proclaimed, “NO! I’m not going ANYWHERE with YOU! YOU’RE a STRANGER!”
The stranger froze. So did
everyone else within earshot. Excited chatter suddenly became overwhelming
silence, and parents who had come to collect their children glared at the
stranger with collective malicious intent. The stranger looked terrified,
like a possum caught in headlights. For the first time in my life, I found
myself in control of a tense situation involving grownups, and I must
confess I was quite enjoying it.
The stranger stammered he
really had been sent to meet me. That wasn’t good enough. I didn’t know this
bearded deviant. He named my mother. I didn’t blink. He named my brother. I
started to wonder ever so slightly. I think he might have then named our cat
and dog. I thought a little bit more, not allowing myself to be rushed.
Perhaps my mother really had sent him. But I wasn’t going to take any
chances. I finally agreed to accompany him, but only on the condition that
he walked well in front of me, and I frogmarched him home like a captured
prisoner of war.
I will never forget the
expression on my mother’s face when she saw me escorting the hapless captive
through the back gate. When she finally managed to stop laughing, all was
revealed. The stranger was an old a family friend who lived out of town and
had made an unexpected visit. Mum had sent him to meet me and give me a
surprise. However, he had grown a beard since I had last seen him, and it
simply had not occurred to her that I might not recognise him.
Today is the second Sunday
of Easter, the great 50 day celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. He had
said numerous times he was going die but he would rise again, but nobody
seemed to understand him. I very much doubt if anybody seriously expects him
to come back to life. Healing the sick and feeding large crowds is one
thing. But coming back from the dead after having been mutilated by Roman
scourging and crucifixion is something else. So despite all the times he had
told his friends he would rise again on the third day, Jesus was buried, and
I very much doubt any of them are expecting to see him alive again.
The women who come to his
tomb are not expecting find anything other than a dead body. They have
brought spices with them that they had especially prepared to anoint his
body with.
While the resurrection
accounts vary slightly between the four canonical gospels, they all report
one or more women coming to Jesus’ tomb and finding he is not there.
In the account from the
Gospel According to St Luke that we heard this evening, two men – who are
presumably really angels – ask the women why ‘they are looking for the
living among the dead, and tell them that Jesus is not here, but has risen.
The resurrection of Jesus
is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity. We can hold different views on
such matters as biblical inerrancy, whether the stories about Adam and Eve
and Noah and the ark should be taken literally or allegorically, Mary’s
virginity, how atonement works, and the nature of the Eucharist. But it’s
pretty hard to get around the resurrection.
However, not surprisingly,
there are many views. But it is not my place to tell you what you may or may
not believe.
Some of you will remember
the theological controversies that surrounded Professor Lloyd Geering back
in the 1960s. In particular, his statement, “The resurrection of Jesus is
not an historical event”, and his quotation of Professor Gregor Smith’s
view that “… we may freely say that the bones of Jesus lie somewhere in
Palestine”, in a 1966 article, caused considerable outage. Professor Geering
was not actually saying anything new. Such ideas had long been discussed in
theological circles. What he did that was so radical was to bring these
ideas into the public arena.
I do not personally agree
with Professor Geering. But I am grateful he opened up these issues for
wider discussion. Our faith not only permits us to ask difficult questions
and to sometimes have doubts, and I would argue that true faith requires us
to have questions and occasional doubts. Otherwise it would not be faith at
all, but blind acceptance.
My personal view is that
Jesus is risen, but the texts we rely on clearly show there is different
something about him.
The first actual encounter
of anyone with the risen Jesus in this gospel occurs immediately after the
text we heard tonight, when Jesus appears to the travellers on the road to
Emmaus. And what is clear is that the risen Jesus is different to what Jesus
was like before he was crucified.
He is not immediately
recognised by people who know him. He enters locked rooms, and he appears
and disappears without warning. It is clear he is in a somewhat different
kind of body.
We will not fully
understand this in this life, but St Paul throws some light on the it in his
First Letter to the Corinthians, where he describes how the risen Christ
appeared to his followers, and the hope this brings us, noting that:
53For
this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must
put on immortality. 54When this perishable body puts on
imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying
that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
55
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your
sting?’1
But once Jesus is
recognised, there is no doubt it is really him. Just like I had no trouble
remembering our family friend once his true identity had been revealed to
me.
Humankind was estranged
from God, but we were given a way to be reconciled. And that was for God to
become fully human in Jesus the Christ, experiencing the joy and sorrow,
pleasure and pain, and high hopes and broken dreams that are part of human
life. Including death.
Jesus went to the cross with self-sacrificing love,
and he triumphed over death and sin with his resurrection, and we can be
confident that we too can share in his risen life.
But like the first witnesses to his resurrection
nearly 2,000 years ago, we don’t always recognise Jesus when we see him.
Jesus
taught that when we give food to the hungry, refresh the thirsty, welcome
the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the prisoner,
we do it for him.
So if we to find the risen Jesus in our midst, we
don’t have to look very far. Because he is all around us.
As St John Chrysostom once said, and I often repeat,
“If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not
find him in the chalice”.
Finally, given it is Easter, let’s say the Easter
acclamation one more time. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Darryl Ward
11 April 2021
1 1 Corinthians 15:53-55