Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-july-8-2025
Luke 23:55 – 24:12
23: 55 The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. 56 Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
24:1 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. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8 Then they remembered his words.
9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.12 Peter, however, 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.
As far as we know, nobody actually saw the resurrection happen – all we have is the accounts of its discovery by the female disciples, as well as accounts from those who met Jesus after he rose from the tomb.
But the resurrection is what distinguishes Jesus from all the others who claimed to be the Messiah. The great English theologian and Bible scholar Tom Wright reminds us that there were quite a few others in the ancient Hebrew world who claimed to be – or whose followers claimed they were – the anointed one promised by God. And in a reading from the Acts of the Apostles that was the basis for our Reflection a week or so ago, the great Hebrew scholar and teacher Gamaliel reminded his colleagues in the high council of a number of would-be messiahs whose movements had dispersed after they were arrested or killed. But what distinguished the followers of Jesus from all the other movements is that those who came in the name of Jesus claimed to have encountered their master after he was crucified and then rose from the dead.
Although there are some who call themselves Christians but don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead, the belief in his resurrection remains the central unifying principle of nearly all of us who claim to be his followers 2,000 years later. So the gospel accounts of the first witnesses to the resurrection are critically important passages for us to reflect on, and to be able to talk about. Our shared acceptance of those gospel accounts are instruments by which God makes us what we are, so to speak.
Even among those who don’t claim to be believers, there are lots of people who will tell you that they think Jesus was a very insightful religious philosopher whose teachings are well worth paying attention to. There are even some professed atheists who will admit that, and who will subscribe to the ethics set forth in the sermon on the mount. The members of the Muslim faith revere Jesus as a great prophet. Buddhist leaders like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh have written thoughtful books about the teachings of Jesus. But as much as those outside the Christian faith might respect Jesus and his teachings, they typically dismiss the resurrection as a religious myth invented by the apostles to help recruit people into their new religious movement.
Sadly, lots of people who call themselves Christians don’t really have much of an answer to those who reject the truth of the resurrection. They just say it’s in the Bible and they believe it and that’s that. And of course, that’s not a very persuasive response. There are much better ways to respond when people question the truth of the resurrection accounts.
First of all, As we’ve noted before, nobody who was inventing a story like this in the ancient Near East would have said that the first witnesses to the resurrection were women. The testimony of women just wasn’t given that much credence in that world – in the ancient Hebrew system of law, women’s testimony was specifically stated to be inferior to men’s. And for that matter, even in the gospel accounts, the male disciples dismissed the women’s report that they had seen Jesus. If the gospel accounts were an invented fiction by the disciples, they would have said the resurrection had been discovered by some learned rabbi or a philosopher or a political figure – never by a group of peasant women.
And from the perspective of the early church leaders, if you were inventing a story like this to help you start a new religion, you wouldn’t tell the world that you didn’t believe the report of the resurrection when you heard it. You wouldn’t intentionally make yourself look bad, and cause others to question your leadership. But Peter and the others told stories that did exactly that.
And don’t forget that by this point, Peter had assumed a role as one of the handful of key leaders of the Jesus movement. And if you were in that position, would you make up a story that said you tried to talk Jesus out of the whole idea of being crucified – and that you made Jesus so angry he called you “Satan?” Would you invent a story in which you denied knowing Jesus when he was surrounded by a howling mob, and then ran off crying into the night? Not likely.
Most of us who follow Jesus have heard and read the gospel accounts of this story all our lives. So in a sense, they’ve lost their shock value for us — we miss the truth about how literally incredible they would have been to the people who first read them. The apostles weren’t educated scholars and theologians, but they weren’t fools, either. They had to have known that lots of people – maybe most people – would find their claims about Jesus’ resurrection flat-out unbelievable. But they consistently made those claims anyway.
It seems pretty clear that no one in the ancient Hebrew world would have told the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection the way it’s told in the gospels. Unless, that is, they absolutely believed it to be true. Unless they believed it so whole-heartedly that they were willing to risk the scorn and rejection of the world.
And when the disciples of Jesus went into the world telling this story, a lot of those who heard it really did greet it with contempt. But according to Paul, more than 500 people encountered the risen Jesus. The New Testament even mentions some well-respected people – people known to the early church – who would vouch for the story.
But it wasn’t just their words that vouched for their faith in the story of the resurrection. The more powerful way some of the followers of Jesus demonstrated their sincerity, their complete belief in the story they were telling, was by allowing themselves to be killed as Jesus had been. They said that because Jesus had risen from the dead they believed that they would, too. When the skeptics saw their calm assurance, they found it startling. “Un-nerving” is the term one of the Roman officials used. And then the skeptics started to believe it, too.
A group of peasant women performing a religious burial ritual on a quiet morning find the body of their leader missing, and two mysterious figures tell them something so unbelievable you’d have to be crazy to believe it. And when they repeat the story, even the male members of their movement think they must be delusional. But the women’s insistence on the truth of what they had seen was a stone thrown into the pond of human history – and the ripples are still spreading today, twenty centuries later.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the miracle of the resurrection, and for the faithful witness of those who proclaimed what they had seen. We thank you that by your Spirit, you still bear witness to the truth of the resurrection, that great sign of your victory over death and evil and of the truth of your promise of eternal life with you for your Son’s followers. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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