Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 10, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! That is the Easter proclamation. It is the joyous good news that we celebrate today. It is our assurance of God’s unshakable love for us, that love from which not even death can separate us. Because God raised Jesus from the grave, we know that death does not have the last word. Because God raised Jesus from the grave we know that our sin is forgiven and that the only thing that separates us from God is our own stubbornness in continuing to believe that anything does. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! That is the best news there ever was or ever could be. It is the proclamation of faith that gives us strength, hope, courage, and joy, today and throughout our lives.

And there's one striking fact about the stories of the Lord's Resurrection in all four of the Gospels that I don't know if you're aware of. In my experience, the church hasn't talked about this fact much, even though it's right there in all of the stories. Or if this fact is noticed in passing, in my experience at least no one ever talks much about its significance. In all four Gospels, the people who first witnessed the Resurrection, the people to whom the Risen Lord first appeared, and the people whom he first told to go spread the incredible good news, were women. In Matthew's version that we heard this evening, Jesus first appears to Mary Magdalene and another women identified only as "the other Mary." In other Gospels the cast of women differs slightly. Mary Magdalene, though, is one of the first witnesses in all four Gospels. That's not an accident. Today we understand that the Gospel's depiction of Jesus' Disciples as all men is incorrect. Clearly he had women Disciples. Mary Magdalene was one. There is today very little doubt about that. It is also very clear that for all the Evangelists she is the first Apostle, the first one sent to bring the good news of the Resurrection. That's what an Apostle is. The word comes from the Greek word meaning "to send." An Apostle is a messenger, one who is sent with a message, in this case the message of the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene is our ancestor in the faith every bit as much as Peter and the other men whom we know as Disciples and Apostles. The Risen Christ appeared first to his women Disciples; and it seems to me that this fact is profoundly important, in at least a couple of ways.

First of all, it important that in all four Gospels these first Resurrection appearances to the women take place right near the tomb where Jesus' body had lain. Now, presumably, the risen Christ could have appeared anywhere; but he chose to appear to the women near the tomb. Why? Well, to answer that we have to ask, I think, why the women were at the tomb. Matthew's account says only that they had gone to see the tomb. In Mark and Luke, however, we read that the women had gone to the tomb to anoint the Lord's body with spices, which was the burial custom of the time. The men had fled in terror; but the faithful women continued to serve Jesus even after his death. Surely they knew about the guard that had been posted, but they weren't scared off. They came to perform one last good service for the one they had followed faithfully during his life. It was when they came to serve the Lord that the risen Christ appeared to them.

There's a profound lesson there. We too experience the risen Christ in our lives when we serve the Lord. How do we serve the Lord? As reported in Matthew's Gospel from which we read tonight Jesus told us how: "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." Matthew 25:40 We serve the Lord by serving the hungry and homeless, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned. We can't anoint Christ's body, but we can offer good service to those for whom Jesus gave his life--the outcast, the marginalized, the powerless, the voiceless, those whom society rejects and scorns, those whom society calls worthless, calls sinners, simply because of their station in life or because of something about the persons God created them to be. When we do that we, like the women of that first Easter morning, will experience the risen Christ in our lives. We will feel the joy and the peace that they felt.

And that leads directly into the other way in which I think the fact that the resurrected Christ first appeared to the women is important. You see, in Judea in the first century, women were among those marginalized, powerless, voiceless people. They ran the family household perhaps, and I don't mean to dismiss the importance of that vital work; but in the public arena they were nobodies. No one cared what they thought. They weren't supposed to speak, or at least they weren't supposed to speak to men other than their husbands. Public life, both civic and religious, was the province of men. Women weren't welcome. In public life, they were outcasts. They were on the outside looking in, dismissed because of the type of person God had created them to be.

And they were to ones to whom the risen Christ first appeared on that first Easter day. He could have appeared first to the men. The men weren't at the tomb, but surely Christ knew where they were and could have gone to them. Next week we'll see him doing just that in the Gospel reading from John known as the story of Doubting Thomas. He could have appeared first to the men, but he didn't. He appeared to the women, to the powerless and the voiceless. And he gave them power and voice. He said: "You, yes you, go and tell the men. I know women aren't supposed to tell men anything in this culture. I don't care. That's the world's way. It's not my way. I chose you. Now get on with it." And they did; and even though according to various Gospel accounts the men didn't believe them--they were just women, after all--the men at least went and checked it out themselves and found that it was true. And because they did, we're here tonight rejoicing and celebrating God's victory over sin and death in the Resurrection of the Lord.

The Resurrection that we celebrate tonight is good news for everyone. It is the ultimate sign of God's refusal to let the sin of the world, or even death itself, separate us from God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Yet at least one more thing is clear from the way the Gospels tell the story: The Resurrection is especially good news for the outcasts, the marginalized, the scorned, and the powerless. The risen Christ chose the women as the first witnesses, as the first Apostles. He opted in those whom society opted out. He still does. Amen.