Bless O Lord the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts that they may acceptable to you. Amen.

Before I begin this morning, there’s a little tradition that goes with Easter Sunday called the Easter Acclamation, or the Paschal greeting. Basically one person says ‘Christ is Risen,’ and then the response is, ‘He is Risen indeed!’

So throughout the sermon, at various points I’m going to say ‘Christ is Risen’ and when I do I want you to respond with ‘He is risen indeed’.

What we celebrate today was totally outside of the frame of understanding of every single disciple, and this even though Jesus had told them over and over again that it would happen, that he would be killed and that on the third day he would be raised from the dead.

Yet not one of them believed it would happen. Not one of them took Jesus at his word.

On the day after the Sabbath, on Sunday morning, while it was still dark Mary Magdalene and some other woman went to the tomb of Jesus with special spices to finish the process of preparing his body for burial. Mary went first – by herself – ahead of the others.

She went ahead of them not because she was expecting any kind of surprise, but because she wanted to be alone for a while in the graveyard. She went out alone because her best friend had been tortured and killed and because she wanted to grieve awhile before undergoing the ordeal of doing what was needed to be done, before she touched the wounded lifeless body of Jesus and honour him by treating his broken body with the dignity that the dead should receive.

When she got to the tomb, something was different than it had been when she had been there late on the Friday afternoon. The huge boulder in front of the tomb had been rolled aside – exposing the entrance to the place where Jesus’s body had been laid.

Mary is stunned by this, she is shocked, not because she suddenly figures out that it was true after all, not because she remembers that Jesus said that he would rise from the dead. She is shocked and stunned because she believes that someone has stolen the body.

‘Christ is Risen’ ‘He is risen indeed!’

So Mary turns and she runs and she tells Simon Peter and John the Son of Zebedee exactly that. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” she tells them.

So they quickly returned to the tomb with her and they look in the empty tomb and then they go away in amazement back to their own homes.

And when they go back, with the exception of John, none of them grasp what they had seen, the strips of linen laying on the rock bench and the burial cloth for his head, folded neatly and set apart from the rest of the linen, much in the fashion that a carpenter in those days communicated that a work was finished by placing a folded work cloth neatly on the piece he had been working on.

They return home – still in mourning, for as John puts it in today’s Gospel “as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

‘Christ is Risen’ ‘He is risen indeed!’

When the disciples left, Mary is again left alone by the tomb – and she is weeping. The body of the one she loved is gone. She cannot even do the little thing that she had come to do.

She stands there weeping – and, after a while she musters up her courage and she looks into the tomb. And when she does, she sees two angels dressed in white and seated on the ledge of the tomb where the body of Jesus was supposed to be.

But does she, who has heard the promises of Jesus then believe those promises?

Does she believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead?

When they ask her why she is crying – she says to them: “because someone has taken the body of my Lord and I don’t know where they have put it!” Then – still weeping – still in shock – still unbelieving – still not expecting or hoping for a single thing Mary turns around, and she sees Jesus standing there and she supposes he is the gardener.

Mary doesn’t expect to see Jesus walking about – fully alive – and so she doesn’t see Jesus even when he talks to her even when he says to her – as did the angels – “Woman – why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?”

Still thinking he is the gardener she asks him if he has moved the body. “Tell me,” she says, “where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” It is then that Jesus calls her by name, “Mary” – and it is then – suddenly – that her eyes clear, her heart clears – and she realizes that Jesus is alive and standing in front of her.

‘Christ is Risen’ ‘He is risen indeed!’

And she goes to grab hold of him, embrace him and cling to him but Jesus tells her not to hold onto him but to go and tell the others what she has seen – to tell them that he has risen just as he said he would and that he is returning to his father.

And she does as Jesus has asked. The scriptures record that they do not believe her at first. You can only begin to imagine the shock at what Mary was telling them.

Indeed each of the first disciples has to go through a process of being convinced – of being convinced either by Jesus himself or by the overwhelming testimony of others who have seen him.

The reason I have laid so much stress upon Mary’s disbelief this morning, and upon the disbelief of the other disciples is because we are like them.

We hear the message that Jesus proclaimed. We witness the miracles that he performs in other people’s lives. But when it comes to the hard times, the times of trial and the times of loss and mourning, it can be oh so very hard to believe in what Jesus has said about being raised on the third day, so very hard to believe that not only was he raised – but that we too will be raised, that death does not in fact have the last word.

Why do you weep? said the angels and Jesus, and there are many ways to answer that question. Indeed there are many good reasons to weep. But today – Easter Sunday, the empty tomb, the angels, Mary’s encounter with Jesus and indeed the existence of the church itself is a reminder to us that while there are many reasons to weep, there is also a great reason to rejoice.

Jesus was crucified – he died and he was laid in the tomb but that tomb could not hold him and because of him – it cannot hold any of those whom God loves.

‘Christ is Risen’ ‘He is risen indeed!’

Death is not the end of the story of Jesus nor is it the end of our stories for when we look around – the signs of God’s love are all about us in the midst of our world’s troubles and turmoil. When we look around us we need to listen for the voice of the one who called Mary by name in the garden to speak to us. For Jesus story is not over.

If it were over, if Christ was not raised, the church would never have come into existence for the disciples would never have gone on in the face of the opposition they encountered to proclaim that God raised him from the dead on the third day and that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.

They would never have passed to us their testimony for they would have had nothing to testify about for on that first day for they also did not believe despite all that Jesus had said and done before he died.

Let us thank God for today. Let us thank God for Mary and for all the other disciples who did not believe. Let us thank God for them because their faith tells us that there is hope for us when we weep; hope for us when we do not believe; hope for us when we face the cross and the tomb and feel despair rising up within us.

But most of all let us thank God today for the living Christ – for Jesus of Nazareth – God’s anointed one – for the one who was raised up on the third day and who for us has broken the power of sin and death.

‘Christ is Risen’ ‘He is risen indeed!’ Amen

Revd Kevin – Priest at St.Wilfrid and St.Thomas