Easter sermon 08

Easter Address.

Mark’’s account of the resurrection begins with the three women going to the tomb where the body of Jesus had been placed after the crucifixtion.

Have you ever wondered why those three women - Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome went to the tomb of Jesus - when they knew that the tomb, hewn from the rock, was sealed by a large stone placed in front of it by Joseph of Aramathea.

Joseph was a respected member of the Council, it says. What council ?, I wondered. It is still the custom in the Middle East for bodies to be buried as soon as possible after death - no three days waiting for them. In the normal course of events Jesus would have been taken down from the cross and buried straight away - but the Sabbath intervened - so his body had to be kept until the day after.

The women must have expected to be able to enter the tomb and wash the body. They must have expected someone to have moved the stone by the time they got there. Perhaps they expected to meet Joseph of Aramathea and some of the other disciples - but there was no one and the stone had already been moved.

With the stone moved, they might have thought that the disciples had already taken the body for burial.

Who was the man in white who told them that Jesus had been raised? We assume it must have been an angel - it was certainly someone they did not recognise as one of their own and it terrified them. But it could have been anyone - the body might have been moved and already buried. Jesus might have recovered from the ordeal and been taken away secretly to recover.

The women are told that Jesus has gone ahead of them to Galilee. It took them a long time before they plucked up the courage to tell anyone. There the gospel story ends in the oldest versions of Marks Gospel :

And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west , the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.

Once upon a time the gospels used to circulate separately, so If you only had Mark’s gospel - that was as much as you had to go on.

And yet out of this grew a new religion - Christianity.

It seems a flimsy base to build from - certainly to build the resurrection story on. But it worked.

I was recently reading a book by Karen Armstrong about Buddhism and she makes some good points that apply equally to Christianity as well as Buddhism.

You have to take your mind back to those biblical times and imagine what life must have been like. Life was not easy. The country was occupied by the Romans but run under licence by the High Priest and the temple. The Jewish religion had become elitist - it was fashionable for young aristocrats - particularly Greek ones to adopt Judaism in a celebrity sort of way and be seen strutting or lounging around the Temple.

Religion for ordinary people had become a set of very strict rules and laws about what they could and couldn’t do; - about the Sabbath; about eating, about clothing, about cleanliness.

Jonathon Sachs has spoken about people ‘Being imprisoned in their religion’

Judaism was a strict religion but it had become a religion without a soul. People suffered under the Romans, paying taxes, facing restrictions, having to register for a census - while the rich kept to themselves and enjoyed quite a good life.

For ordinary people, their religion was not satisfying a spiritual thirst in their souls. Was this all there was? A life of hardship and then you die - and when you die - that is it!

It was a time when people were seeking for a deeper meaning to life - and their religion was not meeting it. There were prophets everywhere - of all colours and hues. John the Baptist was one. Today we would call him a pentecostal - baptism and a washing away of the troubles of this life to become something new - with new purpose - a feeling of being special.

But how could they be sinners when all the world was sinning against them? They were washed straight back into the troubles they were seeking to escape from.

The story of Jesus was different. He was not a prophet calling people back to the law; he was not threatening retribution on the people. Here was a new teaching that did appeal. It appealed because it bypassed the High Priest, the Temple and all the elite chavs.
It said to people that they did not have to seek God through the Temple. They did not have to listen to the arguments between the Pharisees and the Saducees. They did not have to be fixed in a rigid class or caste system.

He taught that all people were equal before God and he taught that all people had a direct link to God. God the punishing tyrant of Israel was not that sort of God after all. God - the God Jesus taught about was a loving God - who heard the prayers of individuals.

Individual was the word. Whatever life had done to you. Into whatever dark corner life had pushed you, you , the individual, still belonged to God.

Here too was a religion about love - about individual love. About being on an equal footing with everyone else - all being in the same tribe.

Indeed there was no classification into master or slave, husband or wife, tax gatherer or scribe,- all were brothers and sisters together. All were bound into this new religion of love your God and love your neighbour as yourself.

It is no wonder the Priests were against him and all that he was saying. No wonder it rattled the Romans that there could be the seed of a revolution in this conquered territory. Best to let the High Priest and the Temple restore the status quo.

So they got rid of him. What happens next? It should have been the end - except there was no body to bury. There were stories that he was alive. Stories of a miraculous resurrection; there were stories that like Elijah the greatest prophet, Jesus had been taken up into heaven to be with the God he worshipped.

What could they do? They could not stop the stories circulating. They had no live body to exile, imprison or crucify again. They no longer had a dead body to seal in a tomb. They could not prove that the adventure was over.

So lost souls found something to believe in. This was a new and exciting religion. Those who adopted it felt they had found their spirits at last, unlocked the secret of living.

For them, the rules of imprisoning rules of society as well of religion had been broken down. Now there could be a life where all were brothers and sisters together. Authority could do what it liked. The followers were immune from it.

And it caught on. Not only in Jerusalem which revolted against the Roman rule and suffered dreadfully - which rather killed off the joy of this new religion.

But across the Greek and Roman world, there was a hunger for spirituality. A life of pleasure was inadequate - there had to be something else. Following astrology meant you were trapped in a life and could not change it - so the new religion flourished - and the Roman authority did their best to quell it - but they failed.

Only Constantine found the answer. He adopted this new religion himself and then imposed on it the rules and structure of his empire. He took away the freedom and reimposed authority on this run away religion and its churches.

Over the centuries this transformed religion stamped out every other form of religion it came across - either by conquest or by the zeal of missionaries.

What does Christianity do today. Well it does do good work around the world. It tries to make parts of the world better in God’s name. There are many sincere and caring people who devote their lives to it. But it can still be bigoted, inflexible and authoritarian.

But it remains the guardian of those old scriptures. It might have altered and amended them a bit - but the essential message is the same: that the way of life is still knowing that we are spiritual individuals. True fulfilment in life is loving each other as friends, as brothers and sisters. Joy is feeling loved by your fellow beings and by the God who can be approached directly through prayer. A church is a community of care.

There is no place for the sins of envy, contempt and exploitation. All are equal before God, man or woman, high or low.

When that stone rolled away, the teaching of Jesus escaped into the world. How could it be stopped? Believe what you will about what happened next , there are many theories to follow if you do not want to accept the miracle.- but it is those golden rules of love - love your god, love your neighbour that were released into the spirits of his followers that were the paradigm moment in history.

Christianity has had its ups and downs. It has almost managed to make itself irrelevant in today's modern world. Christianity loves its past but its future, I believe, is back there at the beginning with the stone rolled away and the angel who says, “he is not here. From that moment all can still be free.


tony mcneile