Easter Day – Resurrection Certainty

Colossians 3:1- 7       St John 20:1-10

 

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

 

Today in our Gospel we heard of the first moments, according to John, of the breaking in of a new reality in Creation – it is a very subdued account.  We don’t even have an actual appearance of our Lord yet!  We are like those disciples on that first morning, called to believe without seeing.

Mary Magdalene went to the tomb where Jesus had been buried while it was still dark. (As some of us did this morning!)  She sees the stone that had covered the grave had been rolled away. She looked in and saw that the tomb was empty, and she ran to tell Peter and John – “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

John and Peter ran to the tomb, they saw the burial garments but not the Lord’s body – and John says when he looked in, he saw and believed!  And yet it seems they would soon doubt again.  We read elsewhere that when Mary Magdalene came back to the tomb after, she saw Jesus and was sent by him, to tell the disciples she had seen the Lord – “but they would not believe it”, [St Mark 16:11] “it seemed to them an idle tale.” [St Luke 24:11]  It seems also to be a sign they were still doubting, when we read that the disciples sat in a locked room in terror of their own arrest by the authorities, before Jesus showed Himself to them.  They still didn’t believe it.

Can those of us, who have not seen the risen Jesus, believe it?

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Well what is the Resurrection?

We can learn from the book of Nature and the book of Scripture.

Nature itself proclaims the Resurrection.  The Psalmist says, “the heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows his handiwork…there is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard…their words go into the ends of the world.” [19:1,3,4]

We can look to Nature to teach us divine things.  We see the glory of Spring, especially here in the Netherlands, after a winter where so much looks totally dead, and then suddenly reawakens, miraculously!

It points to Resurrection, yet the Word of Nature is not the final answer on the matter.  There is an ambiguity.  We also know that these trees that seem to resurrect in the Spring will one day die and not rise again.

That’s the Word of Nature, what about the Word of God?

Here are a few highlights from the Old Testament.  (In the daily readings during Easter Week you will see some of these and other Old Testament foreshadowings of Resurrection.)

In the Law:

There is the story Abraham and Isaac in Genesis [22] – who offers Isaac up to God in sacrifice thinking his son will surely die but, the angel intercedes at the last moment, and Abraham receives Isaac back in a kind of figure of the resurrection. [Heb 11:19]

The same idea is in Exodus [12] when Israel receives back its first born sons from the final plague, in a sense, by offering up a lamb instead.  The angel of death passes over their houses and their sons escape death, a kind of resurrection.  (And in the people of Israel averting certain death at the hands of the Egptians by passing through the Red Sea and having their enemies destroyed behind them. [Ex 14])

In the Historical writings:

There are the stories of resuscitation of the dead by prophets.  Elijah, raises from death the son of the widow of Zarephath [1 Kings 17:17-24]. And Elisha, raises from death the son of the Shunammite woman. [2 Kings 4:18-37]  They are pointers to the Resurrection, a resuscitation but not a truly a resurrection.

In the Prophets, God speaks sometimes more directly:

God speaks of resurrection, through Isaiah:

“The Lord will destroy …the veil that is spread over all nations.  He will swallow up death forever …” [25:7-8] and a little later, “Your dead shall live, their bodies shall rise.  O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!” [26:19]

The Prophet Jonah is swallowed by a whale and on the third day is spewed out alive on the seashore.  Jesus refers to Jonah, as a sign, to describe his own coming death and resurrection.  But Jonah did not resurrect in that account.

God gives Ezekiel a vision of a valley of dry bones, that come back to life, and they rise up “an exceeding great host.”  [37]  It points to a resurrection but it was vision.

The prophet Daniel is met by a divine being, probably the Archangel Gabriel, who tells him: “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.  And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament…like the stars for ever and ever.” [12:2-3]

In the Wisdom Literature:

Job hints even at the bodily resurrection: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God.” [19:25-27]  Job has a kind of resurrection at the end of the book, but it wasn’t a resurrection.

The Psalms make many apparent references to resurrection, but it’s not certain. [e.g. Psalm 2:6-8; 3:1-5; 16:10; 30:3; 41:18; 118:22-23; ]

All of these references, these shadows, these figures, are they simply metaphors for our own revival in this life?  Do they really speak of a resurrection to eternal life?

Even the Jewish scholars in Jesus’ day, who poured over these texts, could not agree on whether there would be a Resurrection – we learn in the New Testament that the Pharisees believed in resurrection but the Sadducees did not.

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Jesus, the Son of God, came to settle this question for humanity once and for all and to make it possible by His death on the Cross.

First, Jesus states it clearly in his teaching there is a resurrection.

• He told the Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection: as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.” [St Mark 12:26-27]
• Jesus told us that He is the Resurrection and the Life [John 11:25] and that whoever believes in him shall not die, but have eternal life.
• And Jesus told his disciples, several times, that he would suffer cruelly, die and on the third day rise again. “But they understood none of these things, this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things of which were spoken.” [St Luke 18:31f]

Second, Jesus pointed to the Resurrection by some of his miracles – he raised from death the daughter of Jairus, He raised from death of the son of the widow of Nain, He raised from death Lazarus – all these were resuscitations, not resurrections.  These three people would die again, but they point us to resurrection.

Third, and most clearly, Jesus Himself rose from death on the Cross and showed Himself alive to chosen witnesses.  And those witnesses were so astonished with what they saw, that they went, having received the Spirit, despite their fears, to the ends of the earth to proclaim it.

And having proved the Resurrection, by teaching, by miracles, and by His own Resurrection, Jesus opens our eyes to how God has truly been speaking in all of Scripture about the Resurrection, and in all of Nature He has placed for us figures, to give us this hope.

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The Resurrection Jesus promises to each of us is something truly otherworldly.

Nobody saw the resurrection happen, God chose to shroud that moment in mystery.

But in today’s Gospel we read that when Peter looked into the tomb: He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.  His body had not been stolen away, there is a calm in the scene.

There is a materiality and a spirituality associated with His Resurrection, but not as we normally understand them.

Jesus later appears suddenly in the room with the disciples, who had locked all the doors.  There is something otherworldly about this spiritual body.

Yet, Jesus tells them, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see me have…give me something to eat” and he ate it in front of them. [St Luke 24:36f]  He still bore the marks of the nails in his hands and feet and the piercing from the spear in his side.  But we hear nothing in His Resurrection of the cruel marks of scourging all over of his body from His passion.  There seems to be a restoration in some ways and only some marks of the crucifixion, marks of glory, that remain.

Jesus is known sometimes right away and at others times he can hide his identity, as he did on the road to Emmaus. [St Luke 24]

Resurrection is otherworldly.

Today we rejoice in the confirmation by Jesus that resurrection to eternal life is a certainty through Him.  And we await our own glorious resurrection to understand finally for ourselves what this really means.  This promise of Jesus lessens our fear of death (Fr Jos will speak of this next Sunday), and this hope assures us that life, no matter the depth of our suffering, is not a tragedy, ultimately, but leads to glory.

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Resurrection is promised to us at the end of time.  But there are foretastes of that final Resurrection in this life.

This is from a sermon by George Macdonald (the writer whom CS Lewis acknowledges as his mentor):

“Every blessed moment in which a man [thinks] that he has been forgetting his high calling, and sends up to the Father a prayer for aid (that is a waking up to the highest things); every time a man resolves that what he has been doing he will do no more (that is, has true repentance); every time that the love of God, or the feeling of the truth, rouses a man to look first up at the light, then down at the skirts of his own garments—that moment a divine resurrection is [brought about] in the earth. Yea, every time that a man passes from resentment to forgiveness, from cruelty to compassion, from hardness to tenderness, from indifference to carefulness, from selfishness to honesty, from honesty to generosity, from generosity to love,—a resurrection, the bursting of a fresh bud of life out of the grave of evil, gladdens the eye of the Father watching his children.”

I think we all know something about these foretastes of the Resurrection, and we crave it all the more, don’t we.  It is the experience of grace from above sent upon us to reawaken us from a slumbering death and to renewed life in us.  [see also the Collect for Easter, where we pray for this grace, "to put in our minds good desires" and strength of will to do them]  It is to lift up our hearts – we lift them to the Lord.

Which brings us to the Liturgy, where there are many reminders of the Resurrection.  Foremost is the fact that since the early Church we worship on Sunday, celebrating on the day of the Resurrection [Acts 20:7, Rev 1:10, The Didache, St Ignatius of Antioch].  Throughout the liturgy the priest himself is meant to be a vision of the risen Lord in heaven, in the sanctuary, interceding for us.  We explicitly refer to Jesus’ resurrection, even if is not in the Scripture reading, every Sunday, in the Creed, and in the Prayer of Consecration.  And there is a traditional action the priest takes during the singing of the Agnus Dei – the priest’s host is broken over the cup figuring Jesus death, and at the word “peace” (“grant us thy peace”), a portion of that host is dropped into the cup.  It symbolizes the reuniting of soul and body in the resurrection.  And we then eat and drink the Body and Blood, not of a dead Saviour, but of the living Lord.  And Jesus promises us who receive Him, Resurrection [St John 6:54]:

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood, has eternal life in him
and I will raise him up on the last day.

The sorrow of Lent is truly turned to the joy of Easter!

Let us prepare ourselves now, with repentance, and with faith, hope and love, to receive in our hearts the Risen Lord Jesus.

 

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!