This sermon was delivered on Thursday 25th February 2021 at St John’s College Preaching Service.

Reading: Luke 23:55 – 24:12

Jesus is risen! Jesus is risen! Amen!? Do you my sisters and brothers in Christ, followers of our Lord Jesus, do you believe me when I say that Jesus is risen? Yes!? Well that’s great because Jesus’ disciples didn’t believe that Jesus was risen when the women at the tomb came and told them. The resurrection: the greatest thing that has ever happened, the reason that the Christian faith is good news, and the disciples completely miss it. This is the best news they could have ever heard, and yet they brush it off as “idle talk,” as nonsense. The good news, the gospel, came to the disciples, and they didn’t recognise it, and in doing so, they were missing out on the life-changing good news of Jesus for their lives. 

I’m sure many of us might be thinking that if we were in the disciples’ shoes that we wouldn’t miss the good news. But I want to challenge you to not presume too much of yourself. When you hear the good news of Jesus speaking to you today, do you always hear it? When God and his gospel presents itself to us in many forms in our lives, do we always see it? I know that I certainly don’t always see God’s good news, even when it is screaming at me right in my face. And I can guess that I am not alone in this. Therefore, as we explore God’s word together, let’s offer this time to God in prayer. 

Lord we pray that as we reflect and digest your word, that we may be open to see and hear your good news to us here today. May are hearts be expectant, and always searching for your truth. Speak to us Lord we pray and give us ears to listen. Amen. 

We have looked at so many great women of faith over the course of this series from the OT and the NT and I feel so honoured to be preaching on what I think is the most exciting passage in this series as we look at the women at the tomb. Our reading follows on after Jesus’ crucifixion in Luke’s gospel. Jesus died and was buried by Joseph of Arimathea, and the women who had watched Jesus be crucified, now watch to see where he was buried. Luke mentions that these women had come to Jerusalem with Jesus from Galilee. They are not new to the story but have been faithfully following Jesus for some time. And as faithful followers, they wanted to anoint Jesus’ dead body with spices and ointments, as was custom, and as faithful Jews they rested on the sabbath and waited until Sunday morning to go to the tomb.  What characterises these women from the off is that these women are faithful, faithful and loyal to Jesus. They were there with Jesus in Galilee, they were there with him in Jerusalem, they saw him at his crucifixion. The Synoptic gospels say the women stood watching at distance, but John’s gospel even places some of these women near the cross (Jn 19:25). Then they follow to see where Jesus is buried, and they returned as soon as they can to prepare Jesus’ body faithfully according to Jewish custom. On and on, these women are faithful to Jesus. They always want to be where he is, and they are always following after him, seeking him with their whole lives. The disciples were terrified after Jesus had died, and were determined to stay hidden, but even after Jesus had died, these faithful women pursued Jesus above bending to their fears, and in their faithfulness, they stumble upon good news, great news in fact; the greatest news in the whole of eternity. Jesus has been resurrected from the dead, and it is in the transforming power of Jesus’ resurrection that we share in the hope of new life, both now as we are made new in Christ, and in the life to come. 

(1) Seek after Jesus, and the rest will follow

These women at the tomb demonstrate the first thing that I want you to take away from today. (1) Seek after Jesus, and the rest will follow.  Seek after Jesus and the rest will follow. The women sought after Jesus, whether alive or dead, they chose to be faithful and loyal to him, and nothing was going to stop that. During the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given unto you’ (Matt 6:33). And from this we know it is when we seek Jesus first, when we pursue God first, that the rest will follow. For the women it was receiving the good news at the empty tomb of Jesus’ resurrection. I don’t know how significant they thought the resurrection was at the time, but I am sure they came to see the significance of the resurrection. But I’m sure that all that really mattered to them at that point was that the Jesus they loved and followed was alive.

2) The Proclamation of the Good News flows out of faithfulness

The good news of Jesus’ resurrection sparks something in the women. The two men in the tomb, who are presumably angels, told the women three things: Firstly, they asked why they searched for the living among the dead. Secondly, they follow on from that by confirming that Jesus is risen. Then thirdly, they then reminded the women of what Jesus had told them previously about his death and resurrection. That was it. This was all that the angels told them. This was not followed with direct instructions or commission to go and tell others about the resurrection, but that is what the women go and do. This is not meant to say the women were wrong in going to tell the disciples about the resurrection, but I want to stress that their desire to tell others about the resurrection didn’t stem from a command, rather it was the response evoked by the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. The good news demands to be told; it bursts out from our soul because that is what it does. It is a light that cannot be put under a bowl. This is the second point that I want you to take away from this. (2) The Proclamation of the Good News flows out of faithfulness. The proclamation of the good news flows out of faithfulness. The women’s faithfulness had brought them to seek Jesus and as they sought Jesus, they discovered his good news, his gospel. This is something about faith that I’m sure many of us can recognise in our own lives; that when we seek Jesus, we see him and discover his good news for our lives. This good news didn’t come with any instruction manual, not even an IKEA picture manual, yet the women had a clear response to the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. They went to the disciples and told them about everything they had seen; they told them everything they could about the good news of Jesus’ resurrection because the overwhelming goodness of the gospel compelled them to tell others. It was the first thing they did having heard the gospel. The good news of Jesus’ resurrection compels us to proclaim and tell it to others. Because this good news completely transforms our lives, the lives we live are transformed to proclaim the good news that Jesus is risen. And we know this to be true from our own lives. The good news of Jesus has completely changed our lives, and shaped and transformed it for the proclaiming and sharing of this good news with others. Many of us are here at Durham for growing in that very purpose. We are telling others that Jesus is risen because we too, like the women at the tomb, believe that this is the greatest news in all of eternity. And like the women, we are to share all of it. The women came and told the disciples all of what had happened. The good news we share is not just a single event, but in one act of resurrection, the rest of God’s salvific story comes together. And likewise, we don’t just tell others that Jesus is risen, but we share what all of this means, how it connects the dots along the story of creation, fall and redemption, and how it affects everything about us. 

(3) Be expectant to see God’s good news from anywhere and from anyone

Yet, when the women go and tell the disciples everything they have seen, then are met with disbelief from the disciples. Even when the women at the tomb told the disciples of the empty tomb, they thought the women were being silly and doubted them. The disciples have just been told the good news, the greatest news ever told, and they brush it off as nonsense. For me this begs the question, why was the women’s proclamation of the gospel met with doubt and suspicious rather than the rejoicing you would expect? 

Scholars debate about whether the disciples did not believe the women’s story of the empty tomb because they as women were untrustworthy messengers, or because the message itself was completely unbelievable. These women were not strangers to the disciples as they too were followers of Jesus. Luke names a few of them including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. These were familiar women to the disciples and so I hope that their words carried some weight. However, despite how much Jesus had said about his death and resurrection, no one, including the disciples, were expecting him at this point to be raised back to life. Therefore, the disciples were not expectant or open to see and hear the good news; they had closed off from hoping and were hidden away in fear. My third point that I want you to take away from today is to (3) Be expectant to see God’s good news from anywhere and from anyone. Be expectant to see God’s good news from anywhere and from anyone. The disciples had given up hope on what Jesus had promised, and so they had stopped looking with expectation for what Jesus was doing. This of course is not to suggest that the women had some inside scoop that Jesus was going be resurrected. The women and the disciples had all heard what Jesus had said about his resurrection, but they too were not expecting his resurrection, which is very evident as they went to go and anoint his dead body. But what I think the women at the tomb hold onto is a desire to seek Jesus, and with that comes an expectation that they will find him. We need to keep our eyes and ears open, expectant that God is wanting to speak to us, not only the truth of his good news but what that fully means to us. We need to be expectant to hear everything about Jesus and the good news of his resurrection. And if there is anything the Christian Church has learnt after two thousand years is that there are not enough years in this life, or even eternity, to fully comprehend and understand what the good news of Jesus’ resurrection means to us. We can only be faithfully expectant to discover more of the good news than what we knew before. This is why we need to be expectant of God’s good news at all times. Like the disciples, we might not expect the good news to come in the form of women at the tomb proclaiming that Jesus is risen, but then again, we just said that we can never fully understand the depths of the gospel. All we can do faithfully seek Jesus, and trust that he will faithfully reveal himself in return. 

Challenge to Men

I think it is important that we recognise that part of the problem here was not only that the disciples were not expectant of the good news, but that they were not expectant to hear it from their sisters in Christ. They respond to the good news with disbelief – they miss it. As they disbelieve the women, they are in some way disbelieving Jesus, disbelieving what he had predicted about his death and resurrection, but also disbelieving the ways Jesus chooses to reveal the good news to world.^[1] It begs the question of when do we disbelieve the good news of Jesus. When do we greet the proclamation of the gospel and Jesus in our sisters in Christ and meet it with suspicion? Present within the disciples is a disbelief that this good news, even though it is first hand, corroborated testimony, is not true and does not deserved to be taken seriously. This is a tremendous mistake, and it is one that, like the disciples, the church is still making today. 

In particular I want to challenge men to reflect on the ways in which they have been like disciples. When we have heard the good news of Jesus and God’s voice speaking into our lives from our sisters and brushed it off as it was nothing. Women were the first proclaimers of the gospel and were at the centre of the birth of the church. And yet how often do we not view their proclamation of the gospel with as much belief? How often do we brush off the truth of God that they are speaking into our lives because we had the audacity and the arrogance to ignore God speaking to us through them? I challenge you my brothers, as I challenge myself, to ask how we are ensuring that we are seeing women as genuine partners in the proclamation of the Gospel. We need to take ownership to see them as Jesus saw them. Otherwise, like the disciples, we are going to keep missing the good news God is speaking to us. 

A common way in which men are missing what Christians sisters are saying is through ‘mansplaining.’ ‘Mansplaining’ is when a man explains something probably already understood, typically to a woman, in a way that is condescending. Underlying mansplaining is a belief that the woman doesn’t know a thing without the input of a man; something can’t be right unless a man has said. How many of you men have heard a woman tell you about their individual experience or a piece of information that they know, and you have proceeded to explain their own thing to them, sometimes even looking it up on Wikipedia to confirm it is true? You might think this is just clarification or checking you have understood what the person has said, but I argue that mansplaining is different to repeating back to someone to clarify what they have said; that is a form of active listening, whereas mansplaining is an act of ignorant listening. Mansplaining is a common example of men doubting what women are saying, where we don’t value as highly as what they have to say, even when they are speaking the truth of God. So often women are discredited even when they are the best and most credible source of that information. Afterall, why did the disciples not believe the women about the tomb even when they were the most informed about the empty tomb? It can be argued that Peter did respond to the women. When hearing the news at least Peter went to go and find out more, but he was only going to have confirmed what the women have already told him. He is trying to find out more about what has happened to Jesus, which is good because he is seeking God, but he again has missed what God had already said to him through the women. This delays Peter hearing the good news, and also fails to see the women truly as proclaimers of God’s good news and voice, and as faithful followers of Jesus. 

If we keep doubting when women speak God’s truth to us and into our church, our lives are going to suffer, and life of the church will suffer, because it is missing out on God speaking to us. We might get there via some doubt and exploration like Peter, which is okay, but it does still come with a delay to hearing the good news which is present before us, and it still fails to see women as proclaimers of the good news, like Jesus had entrusted them to be. Not only do women speak God’s good news and truth, but they also speak out against the news which is not good. Just this month we look to the revelations about Ravi Zacharias and how an inability to hear the sexual abuse allegations made by victims, allowed this injustice of sexual abuse take place again and again. We failed to hear their voices and believe that they said as they called out injustice. A failure to believe women and to give them a chance to be genuinely heard, prevent God’s justice from being done, and from God’s good news and truth pervading into our lives and our church. 

Conclusion

We need to be open to hearing God’s truth and the good news from anywhere or from anyone. This includes women, but it also includes so many others in our church who are ignored due to age, race, sexuality, wealth and much more. This sermon isn’t meant to be an attack on men, but it is a challenge for the whole church about we are seeking God and are remaining faithfully expectant for God to speak at any time and through anyone, because the good news gives birth to proclamation. If God could speak through Balaam’s donkey, then I think that demonstrates that God can speak and will speak through anyone – there is a clear precedence. 

Be prepared to see the God’s good news and voice from the child and the elderly, the foreigner and the local, the straight and the queer, the white and the black, the poor and the rich, the learned and the illiterate, the male and the female, the Greek and the Jew, the slave and the free. Jesus is our shepherd and we are his sheep, and as his sheep we need to be always looking out for our shepherd Jesus’ voice, in whatever manner it comes, because the voice of the shepherd is good news to the sheep; the voice of a saviour is good news to us who need saving. Let us be faithfully expectant of God to speak through others, because the good news will burst out from all places that the ever-reaching gospel touches. 

Amen. 

Bibliography

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Ben Witherington III. The Gospel of Luke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

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^[1] Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 653.