A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (25/04/21): Corpus Delicti

 Corpus Delicti

Acts 4:5-12

“Corpus delicti” is a Latin legal term. Translated is means, “The body of the crime.”

It is the evidence that proves that a crime has been committed, which is necessary before anyone can be convicted of that crime. In the case of a murder, of course, that body of evidence is literally a dead body! Without that direct evidence it can be very difficult to prove that a crime has actually been committed.

The next day their rulers, elders and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family.

The whole ruling caste of the people of Israel comes together. They assemble as a court of law, and Peter and John are brought in before them. Alongside them is present a man who used to beg beside the Beautiful Gate at the Temple. This formerly lame man is shown to the court as corpus delicti. He is the body of evidence against Peter and John that a crime has been committed.

But what crime can the body of a man restored to health be evidence of? What could be said to be malicious or harmful in the intentions and actions of Peter and John. Peter’s initial testimony to the court quite rightly points out that he and John have been brought before this court for a good deed. What they have done is cure this man of his affliction. They have brought to an end a condition that had left this man trapped in his body with no option but to depend on the kindness of strangers for his existence. They had liberated this man so that now set free he could be a full and positive participant in society. There is no way round it. It is not possible to spin the evidence of a man who was crippled and healed as a bad thing. It really doesn’t matter what Peter and John’s motives or justifications were. The power or the name which they claim to have used is irrelevant. The body of evidence before the court is that a good deed was done, not that a crime has been committed.

The lame beggar’s former condition and the care which it provoked from some of the temple worshippers might have been used, in a limited way, as a demonstration of the goodness of God. It might have been said that the intersection of his suffering and the willingness of passers-by to help was a good thing. Indeed the Jewish tradition has a term for such a situation, it is called “Mitsvah.” Literally, a good deed done out of religious duty is a “blessing.” But if preventing his starvation when he was lame and unable to fend for himself by giving him money had been a blessing, how much more of a blessing, how much stronger evidence of God’s goodness, is his restoration to health? 

That this man was lame and is now healed is evidence not of a crime, but is in fact powerful evidence of the goodness of the God they are supposed to represent. Indeed this man is the very embodiment of what they expected to see on the Day of the Lord when God’s power breaks into the world to rule. This man is a living proclamation of Good News: He is the poor who has had good news announced to him. He is captive who has been released, the prisoner who has gone free. He is the lame who now walks. And what is more his response to what happened to him was to praise God. He is the very living definition of what happens when God’s power breaks into the world.

The chief priests know this, or at least they should. Howsoever it is brought about, all healing comes from God. It doesn’t matter who did it, or what mechanism they used, or what was their supposed motive, the credit must always go back to God. That is as essential to the priests’ view of God, as it is to Peter and John, as it should be for us. Any healing is always a good thing, which is why it can and it should be ascribed to God. Which is why the man standing alongside Peter and John, if he is “corpus delicti” the body of evidence, he is not evidence of any crime which they have committed since a good deed cannot be a crime.

The problem for the chief priests is that the man’s restoration to health is evidence of a crime. There is a crime here, but is not one which Peter and John have committed. The man standing in court, restored to health points to a different corpus delicti which is the evidence of the chief priest’s crime. He points to a second body which is missing. He points to another body which is actually absent, a body which should be in a tomb on the other side of the city, but isn’t. The man’s presence points to Jesus’ absence. His health is the evidence of their crime, that they had had a hand in killing the Messiah. 

It is clear that their problem is not so much that the man has been healed, but who is getting the credit. They demand of Peter and John:

“By what power or by what name did you do this?”

They are anxious because they already know the answer. And there is no way for them to prevent their crime becoming exposed. Their actions as it turns out are entirely counterproductive, because all they do is provide Peter with an opportunity to proclaim the gospel. Moved by the Holy Spirit he replies to them:

“. . . let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

Peter preaches to the assembled leaders of the nation. His testimony to them is a sermon. And his sermon assumes the basic shape of Christian proclamation: Jesus was rejected. God has raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore Jesus is the way in which you can be restored to God.

We know that Jesus’ death and resurrection lie at the heart of Christian proclamation. The cross is the corpus delicti. The death of Jesus is the body of evidence which demonstrates all crime. The cross is the point where all human alienation from God and all human wickedness that stems from it is gathered together in one place. The cross is the place where human wilfulness finally tries to push God out of the world and do as it pleases. It is evidence of the chief priests’ crime, because they reject the one God has sent to them. It is evidence of Empire’s crime because it tries to rule in God’s world and uses death and violence to do it. It is evidence of all our crimes, because we all have our own share in the denial of God which takes Jesus to the cross.

Jesus’ resurrection establishes that that crime is real. God’s restoration of Jesus to life shows that: The chief priests are wrong, the one they reject is indeed the one God was sending to them. It shows that they had place their trust in a god of the own making which served their own purposes. The Empire is wrong, the true power in this world in not death and violence but life and peace. It shows that those who have ruled in the world not by accepting that their authority belongs to God, and have usurped God by trying to rule for themselves in their own power. And we are all wrong in our resistance to God. It shows we have allowed all sorts of other things than our loyalty to God to determine the shape of our lives, with the disastrous consequences which we see all around us. This corpus delicti indicts Peter and John just as clear as it does the chief priests, Empire and us. But Peter and John have accepted this message and have seen what it really means.

A crime has been committed. Endless crimes have been committed. But in the grace of God those actions do not have the last word. Jesus’ resurrection is also the means which God provides to be restored to God. The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection which provides the means for a crippled man to be restored to health. The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection provides the means for religious people to be turned back to the true and living God, rather serving the one of their own making. The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection provides the means for authority to be exercised in the world for the benefit of all people and all creation. The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection provides the means for us to live the lives which God intended for us, filled with goodness against which there can be no law.

As corpus delicti the gospel is strange. It both proves that a crime has been committed, and convicts us of our guilt of it But is also what sets us free from that crime. Peter neatly summarises what the gospel shows us, in the final sentence of his sermon:

“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Amen.

Corpus Delicti by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter (18/04/21): Peter Preaches

 

Peter Preaches

Acts 3:12-19

The book of Acts contains a collection of early sermons preached by the apostles in the weeks and years following Jesus’ resurrection. Luke recalls, for later Christians, what the first Church proclaimed. He records for us what those first Christians announced to the world. We are given the first public testimony to Christ so that it can serve as a model for our witness to the world. The lectionary picks this up. In the season between Easter and Pentecost we read a series of passages which contains a number of these sermons. Today we have heard Peter preach again. 

Throughout his time with Jesus it was almost always Peter who was first to speak. He is somewhere between quick-witted and carelessly impulsive. Sometimes he found just the right words, to articulate the truth they were witnessing before anyone else could. Like the occasion when he was first to identify Jesus as “The Messiah of God.” (Luke 9:18) But just as often he finds the wrong thought and speaks that out loud. Like the occasion, shortly after his confession of Christ, that he attempts to deny that Jesus must suffer, or the time during Jesus’ trial before the chief priests that he denied ever knowing Jesus.

What up to this point has been a fault as much as a virtue, has now become Peter’s gift to the Church. Since the resurrection and especially since Pentecost seven weeks later, this quickness to speech makes Peter the most prominent public witness to Jesus’ resurrection. On this occasion Peter and John have been on their way into the temple to pray, when they have met a crippled beggar sitting near one of the gates into the temple. The man has cried out to them for help. Peter has replied that he has no money to give the man, but he says:

“what I have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth stand up and walk.”

The man is healed and begins to praise God. This of course draws a crowd, which gives Peter the opportunity to preach:

“You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?”

Peter explains that the lame man has been healed only in the name of Jesus. His sermon takes the shape which is shared by all of the sermons in the book of Acts. His message is that of the first Church, and it remains the essence of Christian preaching ever since. What has been called the “primitive kerygma”, the first proclamation, of the early Church, declared by Peter and recorded by Luke in his book, remains the model for all subsequent preaching by Christians. Luke remembers these early sermons, so that they can serve as both a pattern and as an inspiration for what Christians might always say. The pattern of these sermons is consistent:

“Those who rejected and killed Jesus were wrong.”

“Jesus is vindicated by God who has raised him from the dead.”

“Therefore you should repent, turn to God.”

It is not quite a three point sermon. But it is a pretty succinct outline of the thrust of Christian rhetoric. This is what the Church says. Despite the world’s rejection of God, God in his resurrection of Jesus provides the opportunity to be restored to God. If we were looking for a simple faith, here it is, in the first preaching of the first Christians.

That said, every context provides opportunity to nuance what is said. On this occasion, because Peter’s words are prompted by the healing of the lame man, his sermon can also point to the healing as a further vindication of Jesus. Peter is able to point to further evidence in the world as his hearers are experiencing it of the truth of what he saying. 

“Not only has God raised Jesus from the dead, but now this man has been healed in Jesus’ name.”

“Therefore you should repent, turn to God.”

Peter’s preaching, and Luke’s recollection of it provides a model for what Christians should say, whether they are preachers or not. But in preaching context, the particular moment of speech, is everything. Peter is the model preacher, but what he does and how he speaks is tied to the occasion of his speaking, so that not everything is easily reapplied on every occasion of Christian speaking. Peter is the model preacher, who gives the model Christian testimony, but not everything he says is repeatable, or even beyond reproach.

The context is decisive. Peter speaks the way he does, to the people who are actually in front of him. This crowd is not the same crowd that has been in front of any other Christian who speaks ever since. So that not everything that Peter says can be accepted and uncritically adopted by all Christians in every place at all time and in every situation. Indeed something of the old Peter, whose speech was risky even reckless, is still present in the model Christian speaker. Some of how Peter speaks shows us that from the beginning there have been some aspects of the way Christians have spoken that we are best warned against.

Latent Anti-Semitism

The crowd which Peter speaks to is the crowd of Jerusalem’s residents as they are heading into the temple to pray. Potentially many of those who are listening to Peter now were in the crowd that gathered some months earlier in Jerusalem, who rejected Jesus when Pilate offered him back to them. Peter is probably not unjustified at laying the rejection of Jesus at their feet. They are the same crowd.

And they are probably almost all Jewish. So he can quite reasonably say: 

“You Israelites. . .”

But the context here is absolutely decisive. Subsequent Christians perhaps should not have adopted this manner of speech. It opens the door to Anti-Semitism. The tragedy of Christian history is the history of conflict between Christians and Jews. It is a conflict which became ever more lethal to Jews as the church became more powerful. One of the greatest crimes of the Church in history has been to use the Jewish Messiah against Jews. Peter’s messaging is important. He must draw a distinction between the Church, Christians and everyone else. But his approach cannot be uncritically adopted. He achieves his aim by “othering” a particular group, in this case Jews. We still attempt to draw boundaries around ourselves, to mark the church out as different. But we do so at the risk of separating ourselves from, and even wounding, people that God in Jesus Christ wants us to be united with.

Political Expedience

Something which Peter also does, and which much Christian speech has done since, is to shift the blame for the death of Jesus away from the Roman Empire. And indeed to do it in such a way that further emphasises the possibility of Jewish culpability, by blaming the temple leadership. Peter does his best to exonerate the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate.

“. . . Jesus whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate though he decided to release him.”

Christians have adopted Peter’s model in their attitude to Pilate’s actions. Yet is this really speaking truth to power, in the manner which Jesus himself practised? Pilate may have claimed he found no fault in Jesus. He may have claimed he wanted to release him. But he had Jesus executed anyway. He committed an act which he knew himself to be unjust. Surely that is worse than just being unjust, being knowingly unjust because it is more convenient?

Peter of course has good reasons not to want to provoke the Romans. In the end the Church must live in the world, and create some space for itself to do its work and make its message heard. It is no good bring down the power of Empire on the Church when it is not strong enough to survive. But Peter has opened the door to making the Church comfortable with the power of this world, even when that power is clearly unjust. The Church did adopt Peter’s approach, and as it turns out it was a rather successful strategy. This manner of speaking opened the door to allow Roman elites to adopt Christianity. Pilate remained an important figure in Christian debates with pagans. Both sides wanted to exonerate Pilate. The pagans claimed Pilate was justified in his sentencing of Jesus, because he was the leader of a violent revolutionary gang. The Christian apologists adopted Peter’s line, that Pilate had wanted to release Jesus and was manipulated into having him killed. They argued that Christianity was no threat to those political elites. Their argument succeeded! The Empire became officially Christian, not because it converted the majority of it’s people, but because it gained influence with the ruling elite in Rome. That strategy has been a triumph and a tragedy. It has greatly increased the influence of Christianity in the world. But it has done so by often allying the Church with the powerful and setting it against the poor and the powerless, with who God sides. This shows that even our most successful strategies bring with them profound risks to the message we are actually trying to speak to the world.

Hypocrisy by Omission

Peter is very prompt in the accusation that others had rejected Jesus. He says:

“. . . you rejected the holy and Righteous One. . .”

What Peter fails to mention is that at the point that rejection was made, he had already denied that he ever knew Jesus. Peter is clearly open to an accusation of hypocrisy.

Of course the pulpit is almost never the best place to exercise self-doubt or self-criticism. To be convincing the message must be delivered with a high degree of self confidence. And every preacher knows, as every Christian who shares the gospel knows, that we always must speak beyond where we find ourselves. Speaking on behalf of God in Christ is an unavoidably risky business, we cannot but make ourselves vulnerable. But this can’t go with real forgetfulness. We cannot adopt Peter’s manner of speaking without remembering, as surely he did, that we fall far short of the glory of the one we are pointing. One of the most off-putting characteristics which Christians can sometimes present is self-righteous hypocrisy.

How then can we speak at all? What saves Peter’s and our speech? The answer lies in the grace of God. There is an almost unspoken gap in that proclamation which the Church has made:

“Those who rejected and killed Jesus were wrong.”

“Jesus is vindicated by God who has raised him from the dead.”

“Therefore you should repent, turn to God.”

There is a space of time between, Jesus being raised from the dead and repentance. It is that time in which all Christian speaking exists. It is the time in which we live, the time of God’s patience and forbearance. The time in which the opportunity to turn to God arises. Peter articulates God’s patience:

“I know that you acted in ignorance.”

If Peter knows then certainly God knows. But Peter also knows that God achieves what God sets out to do.

“God fulfilled what he had foretold. . .”

Whilst we must be careful how we speak in this time in between, we can be reassured that despite all the flaws in how Peter spoke and in how we continue to represent the Gospel, God in his patient forbearance continues to work his purpose out, as much despite us as because of us.

Amen.

Peter Preaches by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter (11/04/21): Responding to the Resurrection

 

Responding to the Resurrection

Acts 4:32-35

Luke reports the aftermath of the first Easter, he tells us:

With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Everything that follows in the Church’s history and in the lives of all the Christians begins with this and is build on this foundation. Christianity begins and is build on the foundation of Jesus’ Resurrection and the apostles’ testimony to it. There is no getting round this. The Resurrection is central to Christianity. It is not too much to say: no Resurrection, no Christianity. This observation is true in a double sense. If there is no Resurrection then there is very little content to Christianity. Paul recognised this quite early, he says:

“. . . if Christ has not been raised then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:14)

But in another sense, no Resurrection, no Christianity, because the Church is an immediate response to an historical event. From an historical point of view, if the Resurrection hadn’t happened, the church wouldn’t have happened. It is not just that Christians are “followers of Christ.” We are fundamentally different from the followers of other illustrious (but now dead) teachers/leaders of the past. Christianity is of a fundamentally different order from those other movements that exist in the world. We are not the same as say, Marxists. Our commitment to Christ is not the same as the their commitment to Karl Marxists. Though it has to be said that our commitment to Jesus’ teachings should be at least as strong as theirs is to the teachings of a dead German economist and philosopher! We not only follow the teachings of Jesus, we also respond to something that happened to him. Jesus is alive! That is the witness of the apostles, and that is the testimony of the Church ever since. The demand which that witness and testimony place before us is: how are we, how are you going to respond? What are you going to do about that?

The Resurrection shows that the universe is not as we usually assume it to be. What we thought about the world turns out to be false. The way the world works is not as it appears at first sight. How things are, are not as the “World” is determined to tell us. The event of the Resurrection, and our knowledge of it fundamentally changes our understanding of the world, and our understanding of our place in it. After the Resurrection we do not and we cannot see ourselves and the world in the same light. Jesus was dead, but he hasn’t stayed dead. We acclaim: Christ is alive!

Death does not have the last word about Jesus. The central promise of the gospel is that those who place their trust in Jesus will share in that life. Death will not have the last word over those who follow Jesus, who commit themselves to him and his teaching, who allow his risen life to determine their lives. Which always leaves us with the question, what should that life look like?

How are you going to respond? What are you going to do about that? One might claim that the answer to that question is individual and it is spiritual. That the answer to that question is what we might call “existential.” How we might respond to the Resurrection has to do with ourselves, our own being, own existence.

In particular the Resurrection has the power to change our attitude to our own mortality. The Resurrection of Jesus at the very least gives us grounds for hope about that. The gospel has the power to release us from the fear of death and to live happier and more fulfilled lives. All this may be true. Indeed perhaps if we were to compare the lived experience of Christians with that of non-Christians you would perhaps discover that is the case. Overall, probably, you would find that as a rule Christians do live happier more fulfilled lives. But at the individual level, which of course is what we’re talking about, you would also find plenty of counter examples. There are many non-Christians who live perfectly happy and fulfilled lives, just as there is no shortage of Christians whose lives are burdened even blighted by what live actually brings to them in spite of their faith.

And it has to be said, this individualised, what we might call “existential” take on the Resurrection and on Christianity, is exactly what we might expect to find in a society and culture produced by advanced consumer capitalism. Such a take on the Resurrection and such a response to it owes as much to the individualism of our times as it does to the gospel itself.

How are you going to respond to the Resurrection? What are you going to do about that? One way to answer that question is to ask another: what happened? How did those who had direct experience of the Resurrection respond? What did those who heard the testimony of the apostles do about it? This is, of course, why Luke the book of Acts in the first place, to provide us exactly with that, a picture of how the followers of Jesus responded to the Resurrection. He shows us what happened.

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and of one one mind and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions but everything was owned in common. . . and great grace was upon them all. There was not any needy person among them.”

The first thing that has to be said about Luke’s picture of the first response to the Resurrection is that it is “social.” The impact which the Resurrection has, contrary to how people now might think to respond, was not simply individual and confined to a realm we might call “spiritual.” The Resurrection is a real event in the real world, and it has real world consequences. Whilst it does change individual attitudes of people to themselves, their lives and their mortality, it plays out most importantly in relation to others and in the formation of a community. What happens after the Resurrection is the Church. How to respond to the Resurrection is the Church. The Resurrection has social consequences, it leads to the formation of a distinctive community. This community has two very clear features: It is a reconciled community, they “were of one heart and one soul.” And it practised economic justice, “there was not a needy person among them.” The truth is you can’t have one of those without the other. The contemporary slogan: no justice, no peace, is not wrong. What the Resurrection produces, the immediate response to it is a revolutionary social transformation.

Those who respond to the Resurrection form a reconciled community. People who know about the Resurrection can be at peace with one another. The changed understanding of the universe which Jesus’ Resurrection produces releases those who put their trust in it from the attitudes, the defensiveness and the assertiveness, that sets people against on another. The Resurrection tells us something different about ourselves and about our destiny, that saves us from trying to carve identity and purpose out from one another. Those who are responding to the Resurrection can live at peace with one another because they have a shared purpose and a shared direction. They do, as Luke puts it, have one heart and one soul. 

This might be the picture Luke wants to paint of the first Church. And it is perhaps the picture of the Church which exists in the pious imagination of preachers. But it bears very little resemblance to any church which most of us have had experience of. One of the early opponents of Christianity once said: “See how these Christians love one another.” When those word were uttered the were a backhanded compliment. Christianity was hard to dismiss because it had the power to create reconciled communities. The trouble is, when we quote those ancient words now we tend to do so through gritted teeth, recognising their irony, using them only sarcastically. The early Church, the one pictured by Luke, presents a very fundamental challenge to the contemporary Church. If they responded to the Resurrection in that way, why to it seems so hard for us? 

If the first distinctive feature of the Christian response to the resurrection is seldom seen, it is at least possible to imagine. We can at least imagine being members of a Church where we have be of one heart and one soul with everyone around us. Not least because it has probably happened for all of us, now and again, at least for a moment. The first feature is possible to imagine, the second is almost impossible to picture. The most startling feature of the first response to the Resurrection was its economic impact. The first Church reordered itself, and most particularly its material possessions, for the benefit of all its members. It created a community without private property and with mutual aid, where all possession were held for the benefit of all, where presumably all economic activity was directed to the well-being of the whole community.

Luke’s focus on money and on economic relationships comes as a surprise to us. But in both his Gospel and in the Book of Acts Luke spends a great deal of time discussing issues we almost never dare to mention in church. It was in fact Karl Marx who pointed out that almost all human attitudes and interactions can be traced back to economic causes. Societies, communities, are ordered according to who owns what, and who controls the production and distribution of human needs. Luke was no Marxist. But there is some sense in which the first Christians were communists. After all it is Jesus himself who says:

“For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)

The response of the first Christians to the Resurrection is to reorder their life together, and that means their economic life together, to ensure that it works for the well-being of all. In so doing they achieved the ideal to which communism aspires a society which has, in Karl Marx’s phrase, moved from “each according to their ability” to “each according to their need.” The response to the resurrection is a revolutionary reordering of social and economic relationships. The first church in its life together also presents a picture, a model, of the sort of world God intends for all.

But such a picture of Church life bears no resemblance to the churches we have experience of. And the rejection of private property probably makes us rather uncomfortable. We, I suspect, are not prepared to become communists as part of our response to the Resurrection. We don’t see Christianity making that kind of profound difference to how we order our lives together. Though that response to the apostles’ testimony has never quite died out. There has always remained a small part of the church which has been determined to build the new world inside the shell of the old, and was prepared to begin right away. We could still look, if we wanted to, towards the Catholic Worker Movement founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin or the Bruderhof founded by Eberhard Arnold, for examples of contemporary Christians prepared to live out the same response to the Resurrection as the Christians portrayed by Luke in Acts. Even if, for whatever reasons, we aren’t prepared to go there ourselves, yet.

The picture which Luke offers us of how to respond to the Resurrection is a challenge. It is because the Church we are part of doesn’t look like the Church he describes. This perhaps makes us anxious, but it should also fill us with regret. The Resurrection seems so much more powerful to them than it does to us. But Luke doesn’t write to beat us up about ourselves. He writes to inspire us. His testimony is the same testimony as the apostles. “Christ is alive!” he says. “Look what is possible when you understand how the world really is!” The power which broke the bonds of death at Easter is the same power which is at work in us now. It is the power which will reconcile us to another so that we can live at peace, with one mind and one soul. It is the power which will bring about economic justice, that releases the tight grip of private property, and will mean that no on will be in need. Christ is alive, and that power is still active in the world. It holds out both a challenge and a promise. Our prayer can be that like the first Church for whom it could be said:

“Great grace was was upon them all.”

That this become true for us, and that response to the Resurrection become ours as well.

Amen.

Responding to the Resurrection by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 

A Sermon for Easter Day (04/04/21): The Empty Tomb

 

The Empty Tomb

Mark 16:1-8

The first Easter morning is fundamentally different from every subsequent Easter morning. We don’t and we can’t approach the tomb as a place of disappointment and despair. There is no way for us to unknow what we have already heard about what the women find there. We already know what they do not know, because they haven’t experienced it yet. Every Easter morning we show up at the tomb, knowing what we are going to find there. Or rather we come knowing what we are not going to find. We come glad and expecting, anticipating the joyful celebration of new life that Easter is. That is not how and why, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome approach the tomb. They too think they know what they will find when they get to the tomb. They will find the earthly remains of their master sealed in the ground behind a great stone. 

The women, in contrast to all the other disciples, the women at least have commitment. They are committed enough to Jesus to be drawn back to him, even when all that is left is a corpse. When there is nothing else left to them, they still want to offer their last acts of care, and love, to someone who means so much to them. They want to be with Jesus, even a defeated, dead Jesus. Their desire, their longing to be with him is strong enough to overcome the fear that keeps the others away. Even what Jesus has given to them in their relatively short time together is something that they want to hold onto and nurture. They want to honour their martyred master. So on Saturday evening they had gone out: 

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 

Then early on Sunday morning, as soon as it was light enough for them to find their way through the unfamiliar city, they set off:

And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen they went to the tomb.

It is perhaps worth speculating for a moment, who or what Jesus would be with out the resurrection? We can indulge in some counter-factual thinking. What if when the women got to the tomb they had found what they were expecting? What if when they went to the place where Joseph of Arimathea had put Jesus on Friday night, he was still there, behind the stone which Joseph had rolled across the tomb’s entrance. What if the only problem they had on Sunday morning was the one that had been talking about on their way.

They had been saying to one another, “who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 

My impression of these women is that they are determined and resourceful. Their desire to pay their last respects to their master was such that they would have found someone or something. They would have found a way to gain access to what remained of Jesus. They would have found a way to use the spices they had brought with them to do the last thing on earth they could for Jesus.

And then what? There are of course no shortage of inspiring, but dead, teachers and leaders. There are many wise and insightful individuals whose lessons have lived on, long after they have departed this life. There are numerous movements which bear the name of a long deceased founder. And they the teachings of those who died for what they taught, the lessons of the martyrs are particularly powerful. Would the the two Marys and Salome have become the keepers of Jesus’ legacy In this counter-factual world we are imagining, it is possible to speculate that beginning with the women who came to the tomb on that Sunday morning there would be “Jesusism.”

It is entirely plausible to to think that there would continue to be those who admired, and respected and even acted upon the ethical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, or who were inspired by his philosophical insights. Indeed there are people around us who would be prepared to accept Jesus that way. There are who say can admire Jesus the teacher. There are those who acknowledge the depth of Jesus’ insight, and the injustice of his life cut short. There are those who would place the historical Jesus alongside other great and inspiring thinkers and teachers of the past. There are those who are happy to act as if when the stone was rolled away Jesus was still there and the women were able to do what they were expecting to.

This of course is all counter-factual. There is one detail of the Easter story which is actually undisputed. There is one feature of what the women found on Sunday morning which has never been seriously challenged even by Jesus’ opponents at the time, the very people who had had him killed on Friday. The tomb is empty. When the women get there, Jesus isn’t! Just as we can’t think ourselves into the mood of disappointment and despondency which the women experienced as the approached the tomb, neither can we share their alarm when they get there. We already know what they it cannot come to us as a shock or even a surprise. 

The Easter story is that the tomb is empty! But it takes divine revelation to explain what that means. We are meant to take the “young man dressed in white” as an angel. That is we are meant to understand that he is a messenger from God. He offers to the women the truthful explanation of what they are seeing. His explanation is what makes Easter Easter:

“You are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He has been raised, he is not here. Look there is the place they laid him.” 

That there is a tomb is a clear declaration that Jesus did die. The end result of his crucifixion on Friday was his death. What is more, the women have come to the right place. This is not somebody else’s tomb. It is not empty because it is, as yet, unoccupied, unused. But as it turns out they have come to the wrong place, because Jesus isn’t here. The evidence which the women are asked to pay attention to is the reality of Jesus’ death. They are invited to look at the place where his body had been laid. But they are also told to recognise his absence from that place. The absence of Jesus’ body from the tomb demands an explanation. The “angel” provides the explanation:

“He has been raised.”

This is the acclamation which we make: He is risen, he is risen indeed!

For just a moment the tomb becomes the most important place in the world. But then, just as quickly it becomes irrelevant. And on both occasions it is for the same reason. Those things are so, because Jesus wasn’t there, and he still isn’t. Christ is alive!

The story will move on. For the women in a sense it will come full circle. For them, their time with Jesus, their experience of him, their discipleship to him, began in Galilee, and it is to there they and the other disciples must return. The “angel” gives them an instruction:

“Go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him, just as he told you.”

The place of their ongoing commitment to Jesus is not the tomb. If they believe in Jesus they must go back to Galilee. The call of their discipleship, after the resurrection, is back to the place of their everyday lives. The sphere in which they, and indeed any disciple, will encounter the risen Jesus, is in ordinary life. And as with everything relating to Jesus, this is exactly as he had been saying all along. This is exactly as Jesus predicted, and therefore we can infer, exactly as he intended.

But the curious twist in this story is the women’s reaction. They could approach a dead Jesus. In their disappointment and regret they could go to a tomb. They could overcome their fear of the risks attendant to being associated with a crucified criminal. Which is a fear that the male disciples couldn’t overcome, hence their absence from this scene. But the empty tomb, the lack of Jesus’ body, the prospect of a living Jesus absolutely terrifies them and drives them from this place. A dead teacher can inspire. But a dead teacher is safe. There will be no surprises with a master who is already safely in the grave. All that they are ever going to tell you and everything that they will ever ask you to do is already written down in black and white. It can be controlled. It can be managed. It can be held at a safe distance where it won’t overwhelm you. The risen Jesus is a different prospect altogether. He might send you back to what was your everyday life, but you can’t know what you will find what you get there. Meeting him alive in those circumstances he can tell you something you don’t know, and ask you to do something you didn’t expect. He can’t be managed. He can’t be controlled. He will never be held at a safe distance, so that there is a good chance he may overwhelm you. No wonder the women were terrified! 

The empty tomb, and the resurrection it testifies to, leaves us with a challenge. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to respond? It requires us to answer a question, with our lives: What is the difference between being inspired by a dead teacher and following a living Saviour?

Amen.

The Empty Tomb by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 

A Sermon for Good Friday (02/04/21): Proclamation of the Cross

 

The Proclamation of the Cross

John 18:16b-30

Executions are outside of our experience. There hasn't been in an execution in this country for over 50 years. And for almost 100 years before that they had been done out of sight. So a public execution is something we can have no real knowledge of. But Jesus' execution is public, very public. It is an execution that includes a long walk through crowded city streets and concludes in a public space where travellers are continually passing by. It is not hard to imagine that an execution like this would both chaotic and horrifying. Yet because the focus of the telling of this execution is Jesus, something else emerges. We're not given any details of the press of the crowd. We are not made aware of the noise, of the stench, of the struggle to even put one foot in front of another. We're not given any details of the violence which the soldiers employed. We are not invited to look at them as they assert themselves against the crowd and against their victim. We're not given any details of the tortuous manner of Jesus execution. We are not shown just what it was that the empire did to those it perceived as a threat or as an opponent. And we are especially not given any details of the agony that crucifixion was intended to inflict on Jesus before he died.

Instead what we see is the quiet dignity of Jesus throughout He remains completely in control of himself. He goes willingly to do what he must do. The rage and violence of the world fade and we see his quiet confidence in the goodness of God's will.

I was trying think how I would picture this.

I imagined a film scene portraying all this. The shot would start out with quite a wide focus, with the soldiers and the crowd visible and lots of noise. As the scene progressess the camera would focus closer and close in on just Jesus' face, and with the sound leve gradually reducing. So that through most of the events we would be focused just on the stillness of Jesus' face, in silence.

What emerges from all of this are the two layers of events which always exist. There is what you might call the mundane layer, the surface layer of events that happen. There is contingency of everything. There is the way one thing leads to another, the “just-the-way-it-is” of things that take place. But beyond that there is another layer. There always is but it is most dramatically so here, beyond that mundane there is what God is doing through these events. Behind the chaos and horror of the world there is God's love and power to save.

Bearing his own cross

The victim carrying his own cross was part of the punishment of crucifixion. The one to be executed had to carry the means of their own death to the place where they would die. It is an aspect of the cruelty which is the Empire’s assertion of power over its victims. That Jesus carries his own cross merely reflects the Roman practice of execution. Except that here Jesus demonstrates, as he always does, that he in total command of the events of this hour. Throughout the events of Thursday night and Friday morning others have attempted to assert their control over what is happening and over Jesus' fate. It begins among Jesus’ followers with Peter striking off the High Priest's servants ear with the sword which Jesus tells him to put away. It continues with the Chief Priests in their trial of Jesus. They find him guilty but are unable and unwilling to kill him themselves. And on to Pilate who is unhappy about being manipulated by the Chief Priests and who wants to find some way out of killing Jesus. Throughout all of those things Jesus has remained resolute. He remains set on the course that he knows he must take. So now carrying the cross it continues. He is not dragged to his end. This is not some unfortunate accident. This is not an unfortunate and unforseen turn of events. He steps out in willing acceptance that this is the way it must be, for God's will to be done.

Pilate also wrote an inscription

Another aspect of the punishment of crucifixion was the “titulus.” It was a board with the formal charge against the victim written on it. Often it was hung round the victims neck as they went to the place of execution. And afterwards it was fixed to the cross so that everyone could see what fault the Empire had found in this person. It was also a reminder of the Empire’s power over any who might oppose them. It declared, “See what happens if you try to do this against us!” Pilate wrote: “Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews.” On a legal level that is the charge against Jesus. In the Empire only the Emperor can make a king. That authority is his to give or to take away. Claiming to be a king against the authority of the Emperor is treason. And it is punishable by death, the by traitor’s death, crucifixion. But at the same time what Pilate writes is true. And it in a way he could not understand. Throughout his trial before Jesus the issue had been whether or not Jesus is a king. Jesus acknowledges that he is, but not the kind of king that Pilate knows. Jesus is the king who brings about a different sort of reign. So the sign on the cross becomes also the proclamation of the truth. Jesus is king. If you want to see what God's reign looks like, you have to go to the cross and see.

Not unnaturally the Chief priests are dismayed at this turn of events. Everything they have done, all their manoeuvring, all their machinations, and all their conspiring and manipulation has been to prevent the further public exposure of Jesus and his claim to authority among the people of God. All the world had been going after him and the Chief Priests and their allies didn't like it. And they have tried to put a stop to it. But their plans have completely backfired. Here is Jesus proclaimed as their king. But it is done in a way that humiliates them. They have sold themselves out. They have declared that they knew no king but Caesar, when in truth the only king they should have known is God. they have sold themselves out and gained nothing!

They plead with Pilate to put the more palatable “he claimed to be the king of the Jews” But they are rebuffed. Not because Pilate believed the truth of what he had written, even though ironically it is true. He acts this way because it is a further way to assert his power, and the power of Empire, over the Jewish leadership whom he loathes. The best efforts of the opponents of God, or even of religious people, to prevent the true and living God being made known always end in failure. Since God uses even this death to announce his reign

Many of the Jews read this inscription

The announcement of Jesus' kingship is made in the must public way. Jesus hangs on a cross on a hill by a road just outside the city. Many of the passers by see him lifted up there. The sign which Pilate has written provides translations of the inscription in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. It is written the local vernacular, the language of imperial administration, and the common language of the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean. The proclamation of Jesus kingship is made universally comprehensible. Just as Jesus had predicted, in the dark, on the night Nicodemus had come to speak with him:

“When the Son of Man is lifted up he will draw all people to him.”

What seems like a defeat, what seems like the assertion of worldly power over Jesus, turns out to be his exultation. The crucifixion rather than being the assertion of the world’s power over Jesus turns out to be an ironic coronation and enthronement of Jesus against the world’s power. The cross become the sign to which all God's people are drawn

I thirst

As the end draws near Jesus speaks:

“I thirst”

At that mundane level it is simply a reminder of the pain that accompanies his dying. His thirst is pathological. But in it there is also a reminder of something else that Jesus has said. In the garden, last evening, as Peter tried to prevent Jesus’ arrest, Jesus had said: “Am I not to drink the cup the Father has given me.”

At that other level Jesus' thirst is his desire to do God's will. His thirst symbolises his willingness to embrace his death as fulfilment of his obedience to and loyalty towards God. Jesus thirsts to God's will and the world offers him sour wine. It is a final ironic display of the world's complete misunderstanding. The one hanging on the cross is the one who made good wine at Cana, and more of it than anyone could drink. Yet the world attempts to satisfy the thirst of the One who is himself the source of living water. On the cross the words which Jesus' spoke to the woman at the well forever ring true:

“If you knew who you were speaking to, you would ask me for a drink”

It is finished

At the very end Jesus remains in control. He says:

“It is finished”

Again at the mundane level this looks like a simple statement of fact. His life is at an end. But it is also a declaration of something much deeper and more important. Jesus' death is not a moment of defeat or despair. All the way through Jesus has remained confident and resolute. Now he declares his confidence that God's work is completed in him. God wills only good for those who trust him, despite all appearances to the contrary. It would be easy to dwell on the horror and suffering inflicted on Jesus. Indeed Christians often have. But the horror and the suffering to some extent are just the surface, the way things happen to have happened. More profoundly the crucifixion is the proclamation of Jesus as king

The death of Jesus is the demonstration of his complete confidence in the goodness of God's will toward him. And in that way it has the power to save us.

Amen.

Proclamation of the Cross by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0