Mark 16:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Christ is risen! [He is risen indeed! Alleluia!]
Resurrection. New life out of death. It really is that simple. It's the way the world is. It's what happens every morning when the sun rises, every spring when buds sprout out of dead stems. It's what happens every time a child is born, every time people decide to forgive one another in spite of past wrongs, to trust one another again.
Yet at the same time, we know it's not at all simple. Dead men don't get up again. Wounding words cannot be unspoken. Children are not always whole, safe, cherished.
The thing about resurrection is that it's what we hope so hard for, we hardly dare believe it's really true. There is so much death in the news, we yearn for life. There is so much bad news in the world, in our country and even in our own families, we long for good news that walks about among us.
We don't want to be taken in by fakes, to have our hopes raised and then dashed, to have others laugh at us as gullible fools. So often we keep our hopes silent and hidden.
But they are there, nonetheless. We hear in church about God's covenant with God's people: forever, for everyone, for freedom, for growth, for us. And we want it to be true. For if it's not true, then God is proved a liar - and then there is nowhere safe for us to stand. Yet if it is true, through Jesus' death and resurrection we have become part of God's new covenant with humanity, abundant life that begins here and now and goes on even when we die.
Of course, if it is true, this news is going to disrupt our expectations of how the world is. The God who sides with the victims, with the powerless, has the last laugh over the death-dealing power structures of this world. And if we are really honest with ourselves, do we really want that? Might not a nice predictable life lived by the rules of power and rewarded with status, followed by a peaceful death, be preferable?
With all these contradictory feelings, how can we with integrity hold to the words we have just proclaimed, words that lie at the heart of our faith? Where can we look for evidence to support our hopes and dispel our fears?
At the heart of Mark's Gospel - as we have already heard this morning, it's the earliest account of our Gospel faith - women who were taking spices to anoint Jesus' dead body heard the news of his resurrection from a young man dressed in white. Later Gospels give us more clues to this messenger's identity - his clothes are dazzling; he is a supernatural being, an angel. But of course all God's messengers, whether they are spirit or flesh and blood, are angels - that's what the word means. And in this, the earliest account, the good news that Christ is risen is passed on by a man explaining their unhoped-for and unnerving experience of an empty grave.
For some of us, the message of Christ's resurrection will be received in just this way: through the hopeful interpretation of events in our world. And if we look closer, there are indeed signs of hope to be seen. Not the ‘green shoots of recovery' a politician recently regretted having mentioned, the beginning of a return to business as normal. If God has indeed raised Jesus from death, nothing and no one can be the same again.
But hear a story from the Times of April 7th. Priviledge Thulambo and her daughters Valerie, 21, and Lorraine, 19, won permission in the High Court to bring a judicial review of the Home Secretary's decision that they have no grounds to challenge deportation. Mrs Thulambo, 39, who was living in Sheffield with her daughters before they were sent to Yarl's Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire three months ago, said: "I can't believe it, after all I have gone through. This has given me hope."
Here is resurrection, new life out of death for three vulnerable women, one despairing enough to try killing herself rather than being taken back to Zimbabwe - and members of this church, campaigning for the Thulambos, have been among the angels passing on that message to them.
Yet while the women's belief in Jesus' resurrection depends on their interpretation of an inexplicable natural event, others believe through a specifically supernatural experience. Take Paul, for example. After his death, Jesus appears to Peter, to his twelve close disciples, to a crowd of believers, to James and to others - yet what does Paul do? He reckons these people are not only mistaken, but wicked. Only God can forgive sins. And someone who has died by crucifixion, a death specifically cursed by the Jewish Law, someone who has made claims verging on blasphemy, is not the sort of person God would raise from death. These Christians are shameless heretics - the only thing to do with them is to imprison as many as possible. While Jesus' friends are surprised and delighted by his new life, Paul believes only in Jesus' death. Until that moment when, on the road to Damascus, the story of Jesus becomes Paul's story too.
For some of us, like Paul, as we have seen in recent months' Messengers - what an apt title for our own magazine! - what's called religious experience has played a major role in our spiritual lives, helping us to make sense of God and the world. For others, as we have just considered, it is through the love of ordinary human beings in the darkest times of our lives that we have gratefully recognised the love of God. Yet neither is a knock-down proof to convince any cynic that resurrection is real. Religious experience can be put down to brain activity; people can give and receive love without God having to be brought into the equation.
So what is it that shapes our own experience, natural or supernatural, into the conviction that Christ is risen? It is the Gospel stories passed on from person to person, telling us about the God who cares so much about us as to become human, to share our death, and to bring us into life that will not die again. And that brings us into the position of John Mark, traditionally known as the writer of Mark's Gospel. It's thought Mark's signature is that little story we heard on Sunday of the young man in Gethsemane, fleeing from the temple guards, who left his cloak behind in their grasp.
So he had some knowledge of Jesus and his message. But other than that cameo role, Mark never turns up in the Gospels. He is someone who listens to the stories others tell about Jesus and tries to make sense of them. And we in St Andrew's are in that same position.
In a few moments we will share in our Easter Communion, joining in another story of Jesus that has been passed down to us for two thousand years. They are powerful, these stories. They have staying power, believing for us when belief seems hollow, giving us hope when life seems full of despair. Now they are in our hands. Will you pass them onto the next generation, telling how they have shaped your life? Or will you be like the women at the tomb, seized by terror and amazement, and say nothing to anyone?
Christ is risen! [He is risen indeed! Alleluia!]