Sermon 21st September 2014

From now until Advent, adults will ask, and discover answers to, questions on the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

One of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, continues our study - exploring answers to the question:

Did Jesus rise again?

The Bible passage is from Matthew 27: 61 – 28:10

“So they left the tomb in a hurry, afraid and yet filled with joy …”[GNB]/So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy …”[NIVUK]

1.              This morning is the third week in our autumn sermon series that tracks the themes which are typically the topics of examination by groups following the Alpha Course – people who are engaging in an examination of what they believe, why and to what purpose – and in particular what they believe about Jesus, why they believe it and what difference it makes in their lives. 

                  I am anxious to emphasise this setting at the outset – this context of an invitation to examine your faith, my faith.  Had we the usual Alpha course arrangements, this would be more obvious – the gathering together, the talk and then the opportunity to converse and to explore what has been said, to agree, to disagree, to resolve to think further.  In those circumstances it is clearer that Alpha is a chance to review, to question, to build or to rebuild your own understanding of Christian faith and of your own faith.  Alpha groups typically contain a range of understandings from on the one hand those who regard themselves as enthusiastic Christians, to died-in-the-wool agnostic, even atheists on the other.  Since we all have our reasons for being here, that is likely to be reflected here this morning.   

My point – perhaps over laboured – is that the explanations of belief that we relate in these weeks are not intended as spoon-fed dogma, to be written down in the exercise book of life and then lost;  they are intended to provoke – and even if rejected – to encourage you to engage, to assess and respond to them. 

2.              “Did Jesus rise again?”  That’s the question posed this morning.  It is a question to which the vast majority of Christians would be expected to give a resounding “yes!”  Faith in the resurrected Jesus is a central element of our faith – of our creed:  “he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again”.

                  Yet from where does this confidence come from – that allows us to respond with gusto to the Easter greeting, “Alleluia. Christ is risen” with our “He is risen indeed.  Alleluia.”  After all we were not there;  we were not with the Marys at the tomb on that first Easter, we were not in the Upper Room when Jesus came to his followers, we were not in Jerusalem between Easter and the ascension.  Our confidence must draw on be something other than our own first-hand account of our experience?

                  In what follows, I am going to mention the 3 grounds on which, in one combination or another, it is likely that we base our personal confidence in the resurrection.  As I do so I am going to pepper the account with the words of those who were around at the relevant time.

3.              Peter spoke to the crowds following the hearing at the Beautiful Gate:  “You disowned the Holy and Righteous One … . ¹⁵ You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. […]When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”  And Peter told the Sanhedrin after his arrest:  “³⁰ The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead – whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. ³¹ God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Saviour that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. ³² We are witnesses of these things, …”

                  The first ground for confidence in the resurrection is the evidence of witnesses who saw the risen Christ.  We have the direct words of only a few of them – like Peter;  but we have descriptions of other times when Jesus met his followers – in the Upper Room, with Thomas, by the lake side and on the road to Emmaus.  We are told there were other occasions and Paul, writing only a little later, and himself claiming to be one to whom Jesus had appeared “abnormally late”, tells his readers that there were more than 500 people to whom Jesus showed himself in this period (see 1 Cor 15; 3-5).

                  You may want to argue about how historical the whole account of Jesus’ life is anyway and therefore what reliance can be placed on these reported words.  If so, I aim you at Cameron or at least his first sermon in this series as he touched on the evidence for an historical Jesus.  My own response is less learned and, I like to think, more cuddly:  we all love the Peter of the gospels, don’t we – the emotional, the do-er, the authentic fisherman, who says brave things and then, like us, fails?  We identify with this character.  OK good:  so I ask, if that is the case, why not give some time to the post-resurrection Peter?  The man who stands and bellows out his experience of the resurrection?

                  There are alternatives:  this may be propaganda.  If that is what you fear, then read the gospels, Acts and Peter’s letters again.  If you are right, then it is brilliant propaganda, fantastically organised, especially for its period.  An alternative is that the evidence, albeit of a miracle, is persuasive?

4.              Paul spoke to the scholars in Athens:  “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. ³¹ For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”  And we are told:  “When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, ‘We want to hear you again on this subject.’”

                  Wherever you stand on the Christian-Atheist dimension at some stage you will surely have joined these scholars and taken a similarly sceptical view on this or some other matter of faith.  One thing we often do is to put forward other explanations that fit the facts.  There are hundreds of explanations out there which may explain the empty tomb – ranging from those critics that pick up on the differences of detail in the gospel stories to those that create whole new story lines to explain why the tomb was empty for a reason other than a miracle.

There is not time now to perform a post-mortem on the gospel accounts (though some will have done so for A-level?) to try to persuade you that together, while there are differences in the details, there are lots of reasons to believe the very simple story they tell of the burial of the body and of the empty tomb;  that there are very few reasons to disbelieve them.  If interested I can refer you to sources to follow the debate more closely (eg the Reasonable Faith website).  One general point links back to the previous ground – having faith in the tellers:  if determined propaganda is it not odd that the inconsistencies arise and is it not odder that such emphasis should be placed in a story of the crescendo of which paints the hero as a villain being executed?

In any event my second ground for believing in the resurrection is the happening of the empty tomb.

5.              Paul wrote this in the letter we call his letter to the church in Rome: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? ² By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

                  A new life.   For us. The resurrection Paul says was not a magic trick.  It was not even simply a demonstration that God was bigger than the baddy, death.  It was not an episode from a comic book.  It was done to bring us the capacity for life.

                  And this is my last ground for believing that Jesus was raised from the dead.  I was not there on that day and no more than I saw the ministry in Judea or the death on Golgotha, I cannot say that I saw the risen Christ.  But my experience of the love of God, the empowerment to live for Him convinces me that He was not only capable of raising Jesus but did so. 

But I may be crazy – why believe my 3-second unscientific testimony?  You have a point! Think then that this testimony reflects the experience of many others here this morning, many who have sat in this church in days past and millions of others who have gone before.  Think of the experience of the church over the centuries.  Yes be critical – I know you well enough to know you will – but consider too in this context its strengths, its achievements - driven by a common understanding of the power of God in the Risen Jesus.

                  Our experience is the third ground for belief.

6.              “Afraid and yet filled with joy”.  We learn from Matthew that the women who had found the empty tomb and learned of Jesus’ having been raised from death, left the site with mixed emotions.  I invite you to revisit your understanding of the power of God in the resurrection and be prepared for a similar response.