Acts 10: 34-43, Matthew 28:1-10
I wouldn’t be so grandiose as to describe myself as a scientist, but I certainly had a scientific education and my career before ordination involved translating the latest agricultural research into practical advice for my clients. For that reason, I find the need for proof compelling. However, science and faith are often portrayed as in opposition to each other. Surely, to give up a nicely paid career for a life of ministry is a form of intellectual suicide!
From a modern secular perspective, such an accusation probably makes sense, but it fails to understand how science actually works. In theory, scientific theories are constructed to explain observable facts. Each theory then becomes the accepted orthodoxy. Over time, people develop a vested interest in the theory being true. Scientific grants begin to depend on it being true. Eventually, increasing data begins to chip away at the theories’ foundations until, in the end, it crumbles to be replaced with a better theory to explain the observable facts. One would hope that such developments would be greeted with open minded enquiry, but so often vested interest leads to powerful resistance. In the earliest phases of scientific enquiry, such resistance was positively dangerous. At the time of Galileo, everyone thought all the planetary bodies revolved around the Earth. This theory was partly superstition, partly distorted theology, and partly a ‘it makes sense’ populist frame of mind. Look up at the sky; surely it's obvious that everything revolves around us. Galileo used his telescope to examine the skies and concluded, rightly we now know, that the Earth revolved around the Sun. His observations didn’t fit the theory and eventually, despite violent opposition, the old theory was consigned to the dustbin.
I want to argue that a similar, rapid reassessment of reality is happening on that first Easter Sunday. New information is making all the old assessments of Jesus obsolete. Life can never be the same again. Matthew’s account is a raw story of the women’s experience of the risen Jesus and the supernatural events that surrounded it. There is little explanation, just wide-eyed wonder and a re-framing of their experience.
Peter’s sermon to Cornelius’ household represents a more reflective piece some time after the event. It is a monumental event in the history of the Church because it’s the first time the Christian message is preached outside the Jewish community. Peter had to undergo a paradigm shift himself, even to be there in the first place. A good Jewish boy like Peter wasn’t meant to associate with Gentiles like Cornelius. It requires the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit in a dream to prepare him for it. His vision was of setting aside the strict dietary laws about unclean animals. Cornelius had also had a dream telling him that he needed to send for Peter, who had some very important news for him. The messengers arrived at Peter’s doorstep just as his dream had finished. He realises he has to reassess his attitude to Gentiles and follows the servants back to Cornelius’ house, where he discovers he has gathered a large crowd of people to listen to the sermon. The sceptical might want to dismiss this as fanciful. All I can say is that I have confirmed people from other religious traditions who came to faith because they had dreams of Jesus speaking to them in a similar way.
We are on the cusp here of our own history of faith. Without this sermon, the Christian faith would have remained a Jewish sect. But the extraordinary news of the resurrection has begun to spread. We all know how things can spread around the world in hours through social media. Many will have been mourning last week on the tragic news on St Helena that Jonathan, the oldest giant tortoise in the world, had died. Imagine our joy a day or so later when we discovered it was a crypto scam and Jonanthan remains with us, alive and well. Its very good news. It spread like wildfire. Good news does that.
However, even though the news of the resurrection is spreading, albeit slower than through social media, he remains keen to ensure that what he says is grounded in reality and evidence. The implications of this news are life changing. He knows the vulnerability of subjective experience alone when life gets difficult.
Peter starts with what is already generally known. The life, teaching and death of Jesus was already well known and not especially controversial or implausible. Numerous eye-witness stories were circulating of miraculous healings. You could still talk to various people who were quite literally dead before they met with Jesus. His teachings were beginning to be recorded, later to be collated into the historical accounts we now know as the Gospels. His character, shown in his kindness to the poor and marginalised, and his courage, shown in his preparedness to confront injustice, were common currency. People already concluded during his extraordinary life that he couldn’t do the things he did without divine assistance. Even his persecutors accepted that. He died in front of many witnesses in broad daylight. There was no question that he was dead. Competent executioners expressed their surprise that he had died so quickly and adopted forensic techniques to assure themselves he had.
All of that was known to Cornelius and his household but the next bit, the resurrection, was much harder to believe. That’s why Peter goes to some length to explain his credentials as an eyewitness to it. He had seen Jesus and spoken to him after he had clearly died and been buried. In a moving and intimate scene by a lakeside, Jesus had publicly restored and forgiven him after his threefold denial. He’d eaten with him; he’d seen the scars of the nails. It wasn’t a hallucination. Many others had witnessed it too. Silly theories by liberal theologians that he ‘rose in their hearts’ rather than actually and bodily would have had no credibility at all to a first century middle eastern audience. In light of the spread of the Gospel and Christian experience since, they have very little credibility to a 21st-century audience either. Jesus really did die, and he really did rise again from the dead.
Having established all that, he moves on to the implications. We can no longer regard Jesus as simply a man, or a great moral teacher or prophet. In Jesus, God has done something extraordinary. In one of the resurrection accounts, doubting Thomas, who missed the first appearances, refuses to believe unless he sees Jesus personally. Its not an unreasonable request. But a week later, when he does see Jesus, he falls on his knees and says, “My Lord, and my God!” Jesus doesn’t rebuke him for theological inaccuracy; he rebukes him for being slow to get the point. The disciples had been forced to come to the unavoidable conclusion that Jesus was God incarnate, the real God showing himself as a human being. As God, he would be the one who would judge the world at the end of time, assessing everyone’s actions, living and dead. This was what they had been preaching from after Pentecost until this moment.
His sermon concludes with an invitation. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Remarkably, without an altar call, the Holy Spirit descends on those who were listening, takes this truth and writes it in the hearts of his listeners, just as the Holy Spirit did to them at Pentecost. All of this continues to be just as true today as it was then. It would remain true, even as our culture denies it, and even if no one believed it. Scientifically, the resurrection is the annoying observation that means any and every theory of life has to be ditched unless it responds to and incorporates that astonishing truth: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
The resurrection vindicates all that has gone before. Jesus has died for us, if we receive the benefits as a gift, we can be forgiven and given a new start. Because of the resurrection, the power of God himself can be released into human hearts. Because of the resurrection, death has been defeated, and eternity is open. I should finish with an invitation. If that is not your experience this morning, can I suggest you use those prayers we used at the beginning of the service when we renewed our baptismal commitment as your own act of commitment to God Talk to one of the clergy afterwards; we would love to pray for you. There is forgiveness and new life to be lived. May we all seize the opportunity.
Amen