Breaking News (Luke 24.1-12)

Honestly, is there anything more insufferable than 24-hour news channels?

If you’ve never had that experience, 24 Hour news is just a continuous loop of the same headlines, the same reports, the same graphics, the same adverts, the same tickertape words running across the screen and on and on and on. Once you’ve watched about… 20 minutes of it you’ve pretty well had enough.

But just occasionally, the tedium, the slow drip torture, is interrupted and your will to live returns. These are the moments when the words “breaking news” flash on the screen and the presenter says, “We’re going to leave that story now because we are getting reports coming in that the trapped miners in Chile have been found alive… or the Palace has announced that Prince William and Kate Middleton are to marry… or a breakthrough new cure has been found for some disease…”

Breaking news is a sudden jolt to the droning information cycle and that’s what Luke chapter 24 is all about. It's on page 1002 of the church Bibles so it would be good to turn to it. And while you're finding the page, let me ask you a question. 

Have you ever wondered what sort of literature the Gospels are? 

Nobody quite knows where to situate the 4 Gospels as a literary category.

They are not quite biographies because they miss so much out. They are highly selective accounts. John tells us this in the last verse of his Gospel; “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” So these are not biographies.

They are certainly not fiction; they are accurate historical records, properly researched and sourced from eye witness testimony. Some people have pointed out occasional superficial differences between them as you wold expect. If you were to read about last week’s Budget in the Mirror, the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Economist you would get quite different views I suspect but closer examination would reveal that they are consistent.

So the Gospels aren’t fiction. But they are not really histories either. Again they omit so much detail. One half of Mark’s Gospel covers over three years and one half is centred on just one week. So they aren’t history books in the way we do historical studies today.

There is no exact literary equivalent to the Gospels. There is nothing else in all literature quite like them. The nearest thing we do have in our culture is extended news bulletins; they are news reports (breaking news, in fact) but – because they are extended reports, they give you a lot of background to the story as well as the main item.

And the big headline event that accounts for why the Gospels were written down is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

If that had never happened, Jesus of Nazareth would have probably have gone down in the footnotes of history as an original communicator, a gifted illusionist and a failed religious reformer. My guess is most of us here would never have heard of him.

But the resurrection changes everything and provides the proof of who he is.

Like a breaking news item on a dreary day at CNN, no one was expecting it.

“On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.”

All four gospels are agreed; these women made their way to the tomb very early in the day, as dawn was breaking. Sunrise at this time of year in Jerusalem is about 5:30am.

As they left for the tomb, they were anticipating doing what they had not had time to do on the Friday – as sun set, marking the beginning of the Sabbath. 

They were expecting a guarded tomb with the stone in place, which would need to be rolled open so that they could wash and embalm Jesus’ body.

The first surprise was that (v2) the stone was already out of place. The second surprise (v3) was that, when they looked in, there was no body there. 

So v4 says they were wondering about this.

What did they wonder?

Did we go to the wrong tomb? No, this was the one.

So why is the body not there? Perhaps it is being embalmed elsewhere?

But why would anyone do that?

And anyway, who moved it?

Maybe we can look around and ask if anyone knows anything more?

Perhaps there’s a…

Third surprise! Suddenly! “Two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them” (v4). 

In fact, surprise is not quite strong enough. Verse 5 says “in their fright the women bowed down…” The men did more than make them jump. There was something eerie, something strange about them.

And then the fourth - and greatest surprise (v4-5). “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day [Friday, Saturday, Sunday…] be raised again.’”

And so the women, dazed, perplexed, still working out what it all meant, but strangely excited, make their way back to break the news to the men that something has rather messed up their plans for the day.

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall.

“What are you doing here?”

“He said it. He said he would be raised when we were in Galilee!”

“What?”

“Yes, after three days Friday, Saturday, Sunday!”

“Have you done the embalming already?”

“Yes! No! We did go. Two men were there.”

“Two men? Oh, good grief, no, there was only one body in the tomb. Can you believe it, they’ve only gone to a grave with two bodies in it. Women have no sense of direction!”

“No! He is risen!”

“What do you mean… risen?

“The men. They said so.”

“Oh, talking skeletons now is it? You just couldn’t make this up.”

“No! He is not in the tomb. Two men told us that Jesus has risen.”

We’re told that the men “did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” 

But Peter (v12) “got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”

What did he wonder?

• Could it be that the women are right?
• So where is he now?
• Hang on. Is this a practical joke? Candid Camera?
• But he did talk about rising didn’t he?
• Whenever you get breaking news, as soon as it’s possible to do so, the news reporters interview eye witnesses and commentators to try and get different perspectives on the story.

“So there’s going to be a royal wedding. What do you think?”

“I think it’s wonderful, I can’t wait.”

“I think when you’ve got hospitals closing down, it’s a waste of public money.”

“I think it’s so important for the country to celebrate.”

“I think it’s terrible for my business that we have another bank holiday.”

There’s nothing like a good argument to break up the tedium of 24 Hour News…

In the early church there were arguments too. There were disagreements.

The Bible tells us that they quarrelled forcefully about food distribution to widows.

They had heated disagreements about whether or not to include Gentiles in the church.

Two key leaders, Paul and Barnabas, had an embarrassing public spat over whether to allow John Mark to go on mission with them because he had deserted the team the last time.

Oh, the first century church could make the Church of England look like a picnic in paradise.

But that church, whatever it squabbled about, was absolutely united and in complete agreement from the very earliest days about the one issue that was most difficult to believe and most likely to cause disagreement; that Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead.

No one in the earliest Christian communities disputed it. No one said “Hang on a minute, a dead man coming to life? This doesn’t quite add up.” There were no major bust ups or emergency councils or big divisions about the resurrection of Christ from the dead. It was the one thing everyone agreed about – such was its status as established fact.

And that, my dear friends is… Hold on..! We’re interrupting this sermon because news is just breaking of several confirmed sightings of a man who was executed on Friday. We’re going live now to our Middle East correspondent. Over to you, Luke…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 31st March 2013