Delivered Easter Day, 2010
by Rev Dr John Evans
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
John 20:1-18
Easter is about new life; resurrection; new beginnings, hope!
Have you heard about the Fremantle Dockers? That little known AFL football club. My football club. A good source of my sermon illustrations about humility and hopelessness. You may remember a recent illustration about applying the mercy rule as in baseball to football. Anyhow. Last year they were second last. They promised so little and delivered even less. They bravely fought off Richmond for the wooden spoon. This year, after one gruelling round of the competition, they are second! What a turn around. Can you believe it, second. Top four. True it is only on percentages. And true it is only round one. Second. I can only dream.
So if you can forgive my madness, the thing is – it all depends when you view something for you to get an appropriate perspective, at least have half a chance of surmising what might be going on in say a football season, or in the life of a government, or even the effectiveness of a minister within a congregation. Your view of the football season will be very different after say round 20, than after round one or two; or your view of a government or political leader will be very different after the so called honeymoon period is over. Indeed the Age newspaper, in their reviewing of the AFL games, has each week the standard observation about what was the turning point in a game. Thus was it when Pavlich took a stupendous mark, lifted the team’s morale and from there on, it was Freo’s game. Or was it when someone needlessly gave away a 50 metre penalty or two; or whatever.
Now sometimes in the course of a game, or life generally, we will know instantly something was a turning point. The game, or more dramatically our life, as a result of this event will be forever changed. So the tragic death of a loved one – you know will change your life, but you are not sure how it will change, and what that event all means – but you know it will be different. On other occasions it will not be so clear. There will at first be the imperceptible shifts – the growing maturity and independence of a child, or the first signs of a breakdown in a relationship – which, only with hindsight, and when you add all the other bits of the jigsaw in, will be clear what actually happened and what it all means. Hindsight. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It helps us to piece together the bits and pieces that that have unfolded and see – yes, that part of the game was the turning point; that decision, that health incident was the beginning of the change, and my life is now so different. So as life unfolds, and you give yourself an opportunity to reflect upon it, you will see the turning points.
The long passion and then the Easter day narrative of scripture – by and large endeavour to tell a story – as it happened; detailing the twists and turns – at the time. Some matters would seem trivial, inconsequential, others are obviously significant. But as the opportunity arises later, sometimes much later, greater import and weight is given to those events. With hindsight the followers of Christ came to realise that this time and these events indeed were a turning point; a turning point in all of history. They would sensed something then, but it was only later other insights and implications could be drawn. For example Peter, in his sermon at Cornelius’ place in Caesarea, begins to see that in the whole sweep of Jewish history, no the whole sweep of world history, that Jesus’ death and being “raised on the third day” meant something. . . he had a new insight “God shows no partiality”. In this instance that God’s love extended to gentiles, as well as Jews. Pivotal to this new view, was trying to understand Jesus’ crucifixion and then the empty tomb. Later Paul, as only Paul can do, begins his reflection on what all of this – what the death and resurrection – meant. Not only what it may have meant for Jesus, but what it means for those who follow him in later times. Again, with hindsight Paul sees Easter as being the critical turning event:
“For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being;”
And so his observation with hindsight is
“For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ”. . . . which means, as he says just a little further on “The last enemy to be destroyed is death”!
Wow! Some long bows? Certainly such sweeping theological propositions were not on the mind of say Peter, John and the other disciples or the various women around Jesus, like Mary Magdalene, that time of Passover. As the various gospel accounts quite clearly show – yes they were aware that there life had been turned upside down by the dramatic turn of events in recent days: tumultuous crowds, teaching, intimate meals, betrayal by Judas, trials and crucifixion – but they were more focused on coping with their own emotion and feelings to begin to understand what all of this might mean for them, than for their Jewish faith and for the world.
The Easter Day accounts of scripture get at the very human response to what is unfolding – and it would seem the followers of Jesus are having profound difficulty in coping. But then even here, these accounts of what happen are processed through the lens of hindsight as they the participants, their friends and new followers of Jesus, now the crucified and risen Jesus, reflect on what happened.
To begin with there is profound grief. Their companion has been unjustly and cruelly killed. Indeed Mary Magdalene, it would seem, is coming to perform ritual aspects of mourning and anointing the body. On the discovery of the stone rolled away she informs Peter and the so call beloved disciple – she runs to do this, and the two disciples also run back to the tomb. There is an urgency and confusion as she and the disciples are endeavouring to come to terms with the fast paced events of the preceding days and it is still going on. In John’s account of this Easter morn, he explicitly has Peter and the beloved disciple being confused and flummoxed at the tomb: “for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise form the dead.”
Then famously Mary does not recognise Jesus. She mistakes him to be the gardener. A simple, yet telling incident in which her whole frame of reference and what might be happening around her is still working off what she would expect to happen after the turmoil of the events of these last couple of days. Mary has just encountered an empty tomb. But an empty tomb was at that moment not something to celebrate. It was just further compounding the misery of the earlier days, Again she was hit while she was down. So “where have you laid him” – is the reasonable and appropriate question.
The turning point in the story comes, not with the rolled away stone, not with the discovery of the empty tomb, not with a strange encounter with angels, it comes with her name being uttered – “Mary!” Her being personally addressed. (That was Mary’s experience, it is clear it was different for others in the various Easter accounts.)
Now when we look at these stories we have a tendency to want to examine them in some minute detail, apply our scientific logic to them, and ask well how did that happen? In fact such is quite a strange twist. We in the 21st we are quite comfortable with the good man even the divinely inspired man being martyred; the problem is the resurrection. For ancient peoples it would have been the other way around – why was the divine being killed, and not why and how was there some resurrection. Be that as it is – looking with hindsight, these events around the time of the Passover in a year when Pilate was governor and Caiaphas was the High Priest of the temple - it transformed the life of the followers of this man Jesus of Nazareth, and all sorts of implications could be drawn.
Jesus and is message of a new way of life, a new kingdom of heaven as he called it, was not dead and buried, it all of a sudden had new life, energy – it was beginning to ring true.
The betrayal, denials, the abuse of power, the self serving complicity, the way of the mob – all to have Jesus killed; our sin – is somehow wiped away because the cross, death does not ultimately triumph. Life, indeed new life, triumphs. Or if you are a disciple, all of sudden the teaching of Jesus which seemed obscure or even offensive, like the Son of Man having to suffer, begins to make sense. Then like Paul you ponder some more, and you see that it is because you believe this has all happened for Jesus (and not because you are a good observer of the law) you may have a renewed relationship with God.
Death and resurrection; cross and new life become the prism through which you view all sorts of important and critical questions and issues: our relationship with God, our relationship with others, the meaning of our life and the ground of our hope.
With hindsight the followers, the disciples, the apostles were able to piece together, reflect upon what happened at that particular Passover time. They told their various accounts. Our gospels piece together these different perspectives, and at times it would seem contradictory accounts of what happened. For example, one women or several, one angel or two, tell the disciples first, or after seeing the gardener and so on. It seems to be a very human attempt to piece together a turning event in history – sort of as it was unfolding, not with much of a view as to how it was all happening, but by the time the dust had settled, being aware that something remarkable, God filled – had happened. Christ, in short hand way, had been raised from the dead. He was not simply resuscitated – Jesus says to Mary in the garden “Do not hold on to me I have not ascended to the father”. No he was present in a different way. This story helps the followers, then and now to understand the continuing presence of Christ in their lives. Here, these Easter events, were the ultimate God filled moment. Jesus was no longer just dead and buried. He was alive.
And the exciting thing is what that all means, we are still working out, living out and experiencing today.
