Not making things up
A sermon for Easter 2025
Acts 10:34-43
1 Cor 15:19-26
Luke 24:1-12
Quite a few years ago, when I was studying theology, I took a course that looked in depth at the accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the New Testament (NT), and then at the way various thinkers – from NT times onwards – have interpreted those events for their respective generations. It was a fascinating course that helped me look at Jesus’ death from perspectives that were new to me, and confirmed (to me, anyway) the necessity of the resurrection if Jesus is to be understood as Saviour – a necessity that St Paul argues for at length in chapter 15 of his first letter to the Corinthians, a snippet of which we heard as the second reading this morning.
So, the course was very illuminating, but it also had its scandalizing moments. One of these came fairly early on in the series, when the lecturer declared that there were no witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. My immediate thought was that that must be wrong, because each of our four gospels refer to women – and later men – who encounter the tomb that Jesus has risen from, and who quickly thereafter find themselves in the presence of the risen Christ. Surely, they are witnesses to the resurrection?
Well, yes; they were witnesses to Christ being alive on the third day after his death on the cross, but (there is always a but) they were not witnesses to the act of resurrection itself; that is to say, neither they, nor anyone else reported on in the New Testament, was present when Jesus’ body transformed from its beaten, lifeless state to its glorified, eternal one. Instead, what we have in the New Testament are accounts of people who saw the secondary effects (the consequences) of the resurrection (the empty tomb, discarded wrappings), as well as accounts and references to people who encountered the risen Christ.
The fact that there isn’t an account in the New Testament of anyone seeing the resurrection take place may seem to weaken the case that Jesus rose from the dead, but that absence actually increases the likelihood that the report we heard from Luke’s Gospel this morning has an historical basis. That is so because if Luke was in the habit of simply making stories up about Jesus, it would be in his interest to introduce a trusted figure into the tale who had seen the resurrection unfold – perhaps Joseph of Arimathea going back to pay homage to Jesus after the sabbath ended, seeing the resurrection occur through a gap between the stone door and the wall.
Luke, of course, doesn’t fabricate such an account. Instead, he reports on the less persuasive testimony he has which involves female disciples discovering Jesus’ body missing from the tomb it had been laid in about 36 hours earlier.
One of the reasons this piece of testimony was not very persuasive is that then – as now – the most likely explanation for the absence of Jesus’ body was that someone had gone in and taken it away. That may seem unlikely, but when you think about the circumstances in which Jesus was killed, there would have been people with quite strong motivation to get Jesus’ body out of the tomb.
Perhaps the most likely candidates were the religious authorities who conspired to do away with Jesus because they thought he was a heretic and/or troublemaker. Those individuals would not have taken well to the body of such a man lying in an expensive part of the cemetery where they themselves had tombs (remember that Jesus was in the tomb of a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, well-connected with the religious authorities). To maintain the value of their investment -as they saw it – those particular enemies of Jesus would have happily arranged to have his body removed from Joseph’s tomb and thrown into a pit at Golgotha alongside the other victims of crucifixion.
We could also say that if Luke were interested in fabricating stories that seemed highly plausible, he wouldn’t have the witnesses to the empty tomb being a group of women – not in first century Mediterranean culture. No, if he was in the business of making things up, Luke would have cast Joseph of Arimathea or other men of substance as the primary witnesses.
So, in all likelihood, Luke is reporting this morning on an account that he firmly believes to be historical.
That’s great.
It’s good to know that in this passage all the indications are that Luke was a conscientious reporter of tradition; God give us more conscientious reporters of tradition (and everything else for that matter)!
But what assurance does this give us of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection?
Good question on Easter Sunday morning!
Well, it gives us a lot of assurance, because it gives us confidence that when Luke goes on to write about the vivid appearances of Jesus to his disciples from that day forward, he is also reporting fairly, truthfully and honestly on eye-witness testimony and long-held, cherished traditions of the first-century Christian community.
And that is precisely what Luke does after the passage we heard this morning. He goes on to give an account of two disciples leaving Jerusalem that day who are joined by a mysterious traveler who turns out to be Jesus (Luke 24:13-33). Not long after, Jesus appeared in bodily form to the disciples in Jerusalem, where he spoke, ate and taught them at length. (Luke 24:36-49). In a nutshell, Luke’s honesty in reporting on the empty tomb gives us confidence that these appearances really did happen.
What also gives us confidence that Jesus was victorious over death is the testimony of St Paul which is significantly earlier in composition than the Gospel of Luke. In one of his early letters (Galatians) Paul reported on how his life was turned upside down (for the better) by an encounter with the risen Christ (Gal1:11-24).
That encounter was not something that Paul sought. In fact, he was dead set against Christ and his followers. Nevertheless, Jesus interrupted him ‘big time’ on the road to Damascus and caused Paul to become the most successful Apostle of Christ ever. It is that radical transformation that is perhaps the strongest evidence we have of the reality of Christ’s resurrection – because it is an early account from a direct witness who was in no way looking for or expecting a visit from the risen Christ.
From the point of his conversion onwards, Paul never lost his faith in the reality of Christ’s resurrection.
We see that in the second reading this morning from his first letter to the Corinthians where he is adamant that Christ has been raised to a higher, eternal form of life to which we, as his disciples live in hope of attaining ourselves (1 Corinthians 15:23) – he is the ‘first fruits’ of a harvest that we hope to be a part of.
It is that promise which we are celebrating today, and which we will continue to celebrate for the fifty days of Easter, boldly proclaiming that Christ is risen! Alleluia! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Tony Surman