Happy Easter to you all. Jesus is alive! Alleluia!
Of all the characters in the New Testament, Joseph of Arimathea is surely one of the most mysterious. He was a secret, “under the radar” disciple. He had followed Jesus from a distance presumably because he was afraid of the consequences of being identified as a sympathiser. It was dangerous for a member of the Jewish Ruling Council to be seen to approve of Jesus of Nazareth and his radical, provocative message.
Everyone knew that the authorities were hatching a plan to do away with Jesus. So Joseph kept a low profile. But when Jesus died, it was Joseph of Arimathea who went to Pilate (Mark 15.43 says “he went boldly to him”) to ask for the body. It was this Joseph who supplied the tomb; a rich man’s sepulchre, cut into a hillside, prepared for his own death when the time came.
There’s a rumour going round, you know, that Joseph’s request that day provoked some dismay in his circle of friends. “Why did you give up your own superb stone crafted tomb, to that troublemaker, that no-good rabble-rouser and common criminal, Jesus of Nazareth? And they say that Joseph replied, “Well, he only needed it for the weekend!”
Mark’s Strange Ending
A few years ago, Kathie and I went to see a film by David Lynch purely on the strength of the critical acclaim. “A cinematic masterpiece,” “Magnificent,” “An astounding achievement…” So we were very keen to see the film and not at all surprised that there was a long queue outside the cinema. Oh, but the film was a complete disappointment! It was the most absurd, disconnected, pretentious film we had ever seen.
It was obscure to the point of being unfathomable. The plot was incoherent and disconnected. The dialogue was ambiguous. The roles were confusing and interchangeable. But I remember saying to Kathie when the titles came up “Do you think that’s the end?” because it would not have been entirely surprising if the titles had come in the middle. The ending, such as it was, was bizarrely unclear. Apart from that, it was a good film…
Have you seen films like that, or read books, that sort of finish suspended in mid air? There’s one in the Bible and it’s the Gospel of Mark. The old ending of this Gospel says literally in v8; “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid of…”
Our translations tidy the grammar up a bit and make the sentence coherent by removing the word “of” but no one knows why this Gospel ends so abruptly in mid sentence. Certainly v9-20 in our Bibles were added later by another author in an effort to tidy up the very unsatisfactory ending.
I mean, in a document designed to announce to the world the good news of the risen Christ you really want to end on a more positive note than; “Nobody said a word to a soul because they were scared.” By the way, the meaning is; “They said nothing to anyone as they hurried back to the city.” We know from Matthew and Luke that they did tell Peter and the other disciples what they had seen once they arrived.
But why this ending that is more confusion than conclusion? Why do the oldest manuscripts we have finish in mid-sentence? Was Mark about to finish writing up his Gospel when the authorities burst in and arrested him? Was the edge of the papyrus burned in the great fire of Rome? Mark’s Gospel was almost certainly written there, probably based on shorthand notes from Peter’s preaching.
Did the original ending offend Peter, who tore it off? We can speculate, as we love to do, but the reality is that will never know. When I meet him in heaven I shall remember to ask; “Now tell me Mark, what on earth happened to the end of your Gospel?”
What we do know is that the earliest Christians tried several times to add a postscript to round things off and make the ending more coherent and appropriate. And, I believe, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they concluded the story with what they knew from the other Gospels and the Acts, backed up by their own experiences and observations.
When you think about it, v9-20 are the best evidence possible that signs and wonders were a normal and recurring accompaniment to the preaching of the gospel in the first and second centuries. It would be a bit embarrassing if people added a new ending to Mark’s Gospel two centuries later claiming that amazing signs would occur whenever the gospel is preached if everybody knew perfectly well that they did not.
1) Foretold by Prophets
We’ll come back to Mark in a moment. But we’re going to look now at 1 Corinthians 15, (page 1091) which is the earliest explanation of the resurrection we have. We don’t always realise this, given the order that things appear in our New Testament, but the letters were mostly written before the Gospels.
The Apostle Paul had to write this letter because the church in Corinth was going badly wrong. In v12 he asks them a blunt question; “How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” So one of the main causes of the moral scandal, spiritual immaturity and relational disarray there was that they had already lost their grip on how central and foundational the resurrection is. “Jesus rising again? Oh, it’s not that important what you think about it really…”
Yes it is! In v3 Paul describes it as being of first importance. It’s at the very top of the list of absolutely essential things. Paul has to get very serious here. In v2 he spells out what is at stake. “By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.”
In other words, if you let the resurrection go, you’ve lost everything. So he says in v1 and 3, “Look, I just need to tell you again, I need to remind you of what I said to you before. You received it, you took a stand on it, remember?”… And this is totally non-negotiable. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried and raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” He’s saying, “Look. It’s like I told you before. It’s just as the Bible says.”
Now, as I just said, when Paul wrote this letter, the Gospels hadn’t yet been written. So what Scriptures is Paul talking about here? He’s talking about the Old Testament. So where does it mention in the Old Testament about Jesus dying and rising again? Everywhere.
In the very first book of the Old Testament, there’s a story about a lamb, with its head in thorns, on a hillside outside Jerusalem, which God has provided as a sacrifice. In the very last book of the Old Testament there’s a prophecy about the sun of righteousness, risen with healing in his wings. From Genesis to Malachi, the death and resurrection of Christ casts its majestic, royal shadow.
And supremely so in Isaiah 53, written 700 years before Christ and yet describing his virgin birth, his innocence, his silence at his trial, his humiliations, his bleeding wounds, his violent death on behalf of others, his burial in a borrowed grave, his resurrection and his great reward.
So Christ died, was buried and was raised. The Scriptures had said it would happen exactly as it did - but who could have seen it at the time? Now, with hindsight, you can see that Isaiah was scarily accurate. That’s where Paul starts off in 1 Corinthians 15.1-4. “Look,” he is saying, “I didn’t invent this, I received it unembellished as it is and handed it on to you without changing it at any point.”
In every age up to this present one, people have not failed to keep passing on this gospel of grace to the next generation. A friend of mine, who is a retired minister now, once told me about an old parishioner of his who was lamenting all the changes and innovations being introduced in church, “I don’t know,” he said, “if Jesus could see all this, he’d turn in his grave!” But he’s not in his grave!
That’s where Paul is coming from here in v1 and v3. Jesus really is alive. I received it. I passed it on to you as my top priority; “first importance” is the phrase he uses.
2) Authenticated by Eye Witnesses
Apart from saying that it was prophesied that all this would happen, what else does Paul say? He runs off a list of people who saw Jesus after he was raised.
In v5-8 he says that Jesus appeared to Peter, then the twelve, then five hundred others, then to James, then everyone else, then me.
But wait a minute! Hey! What about the women then? All four gospels agree that Jesus appeared, first of all, not to Peter, nor to any other man for that matter, but to a number of women, (Mark specifically names three of them) who had got up before dawn to anoint the body, while all the men were still snoring away in their beds, it must be noted. Why did Paul not mention them as well? Didn’t the ladies count? Is the Bible really that sexist?
The answer is that in that culture, in the great and noble Roman Empire, no woman was admitted as a legal witness. Their testimony in court was not considered reliable enough to be valid. It’s the world that was chauvinist. It was into this male-dominated culture that Paul wrote, in about AD 50, “Men and women are one in Christ.” Nobody had ever written anything like that before.
It’s still radical today. Did you know, for example, that even in enlightened France, the secular torchbearer of liberty, equality and fraternity; women were denied the vote until 1945! In Islamic Pakistan it was 1956 and most of the Gulf States have only just got round to it in this 21st Century! I want to contest what you sometimes hear about Christianity being the origin and guardian of global misogyny. It is, in fact, the exact opposite.
So Paul, from v5 onwards, is simply running off the official list of legally authorised witnesses for his Corinthian readers, who had only heard about the resurrection second hand. And it’s quite a list, starting with Peter and then the twelve. Nitpickers might say that technically it was eleven, Judas having already committed suicide. In fact, the disciples were always called “the twelve” even when that description was not numerically exact.
Back to Mark’s Gospel (page 967 if you want to look at it yourself): v2-3 give some incidental details that bear the hallmarks of eye-witness testimony. Whenever the police interview people about an event they may have witnessed they always seem to want to know what time it was when such and such occurred. Here, it was “just after sunrise.”
In the numbness that is characteristic after an unexpected death, and there being no time to prepare the body for burial before the holiday, it occurs to the women only now that there will be a hefty stone blocking the tomb entrance. “Ah! Who’s going to roll this thing away from the entrance to the tomb?” “Oh dear! You’re right, I hadn’t even thought about that.”
Someone might say, “But so what?” Three women and eleven men might have invented it. Well, what would be the point of making the story up? It certainly wasn’t to get their hands on the Life Insurance was it?! However, for the sake of fairness, let’s say that they may have made the story up. But history shows that ten of the men were harried, tried and executed for spreading the story of Christ’s resurrection.
Would they accept beheading and crucifixion if they knew their message was bogus? Wouldn’t at least one of them cave in when the heat was on and say, “Actually, we made the story up. We actually buried the body 300 yards away.” Or whatever… in fact, they would never have got past the guards to steal the body.
Perhaps they were just deluded? What if they just made a big mistake and there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this apparent extraordinary miracle? What if, for example, the authorities moved the body and didn’t tell anyone. (Incidentally, that couldn’t have happened because the authorities were desperate to put an end to the disciples preaching about the resurrection and could have easily done so by producing a body – but they never did).
And anyway, in v6 Paul makes it quite clear that human error on the part of the disciples cannot be possible. “After that, Jesus appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still alive today.”
If I said to you that my Uncle Reg really existed, you might or might not believe me. Right. I could show you a photograph of him, but you might say it could be a picture of anyone. OK. If I said to you that I know a handful of people who knew him, you could say that they might have been set up by me to deceive you.
But if I told you that I could call about five hundred people who knew him, who spoke with him, who ate and drank with him, who worked with him on his farm and that you could meet them for yourself if you want, you would have to conclude that what I was saying was true.
That’s what Paul is saying here in verse 6. “Shortly after his death and burial, Jesus appeared alive to over 500 people at once. If you don’t believe me and you don’t trust the apostles,” the implication here is: “Go and check it out with someone else who saw it with their own eyes. Any one of five hundred plus people. Take your pick. They’ll tell you that this is no hoax, it really happened.”
So Paul begins this long chapter on the resurrection by patiently laying its vital foundation once more. The ancient writings predicted Jesus would die and rise again. He was seen alive by many witnesses. Lives were changed and nearly two millennia later, lives are still being changed; men and women, rich and poor, young and old, highly educated or illiterate, on every continent, in every culture. The reality of Christ’s resurrection is being discovered and experienced every day, all over the Earth.
Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday
I’ll finish with this thought: Everybody knows where Jesus was at the moment of his arrest - in the Garden of Gethsemane, several hundred metres from Jerusalem’s city walls. Everybody knows where he was at the moment of his resurrection three days later - in another garden; this time in a burial garden close to Golgotha. For Friday and Sunday it all seems clear enough. But where was he on Saturday?
This is the question the Bishop of Sheffield asked a class of sixth formers a couple of years ago. “Where do you think Jesus was between Good Friday and Easter Sunday?” Dead silence… And then a sixteen year-old girl raised her hand and gave a breathtaking reply. “I don’t know where he was exactly, but I wonder if he was in deepest hell, looking for Judas his lost friend?”
I don’t know how theologically precise that is; the Bible doesn’t exactly put it that way. In fact, as I explained a few weeks ago, the First Letter of Peter says he was actually in the place of the dead preaching to imprisoned spirits, victims of Noah’s flood who, unlike every generation since, never experienced God’s mercy.
But I do think that young person’s reply shows a remarkable understanding of the scope of the love of Jesus. This is the Good Shepherd who goes looking for one lost sheep. This is the Jesus who forgives and restores the most wicked, the most fallen, the most evil. This is the Jesus who saves every sinner who humbly turns to him, who heals the sick, who restores the strength of the weary, who renews hope of the desperate, who binds up those with a broken heart.
Open your heart to Jesus and experience his grave-busting power for yourself. Jesus is alive today. He brings real forgiveness today, true freedom, deep healing today, new life, fresh hope and a bright future today to all who come to him in faith.
Christ is risen!
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 12th April 2009
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