Peter and Mary

 

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! This year, as every year, we have made it through to Easter Day and we celebrate with the Risen Christ.

For us, it is something we have always known, ever since we knew anything at all about the Christian faith. God raised Christ from the dead. Christ is risen. But it was far otherwise for the earliest disciples. I’ll come back to the gospel account in a minute, but let’s just look at our first reading, from Acts.

I expect you know the context of Peter’s speech here, but just in case you’ve forgotten, or can’t quite place it for a moment, it’s when he goes to visit the Roman centurion, Cornelius. Now, Peter is in no doubt at all that Jesus has been raised; he not only saw Jesus, but walked and talked and ate with him. Jesus had forgiven him for denying that he knew him, and Peter had also been in the Upper Room at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came, and had been one of the first to explain to the crowds what was happening.

But for now, he is staying with Simon the Tanner, in Joppa, and after lunch one day he goes up on to the roof to have a nap. Or a time of prayer, but I rather think he falls asleep. And he has an extraordinary dream – there is a sheet full of the sort of animals he wouldn’t ever think of eating – pigs, and rats, and things like that. I’ve never watched “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here,” but I gather the contestants on that have something called a bush tucker trial, which presumably involves eating things they wouldn’t normally think of as food – insects and so on. Well, this was Peter’s bush tucker trial, if you like, and he was told, in his dream, to choose something and eat it…. And he refuses, but the voice that told him to choose something now tells him not to call anything unclean that God has called clean. Eventually, he gets the message, and when he wakes up, Cornelius’ envoys are waiting to ask him to come.

Peter would not normally have dreamt of going to a Gentile’s house – yuck! That would have made him totally unclean. But after his dream, such timing, he dare not refuse, and when he gets there he realises what’s happening, and, rather tactlessly, exclaims that he now realises “that it is true that God treats everyone on the same basis. Those who fear him and do what is right are acceptable to him, no matter what race they belong to.” Yeah, big of him! Still, for Peter, who even years later still had trouble eating non-kosher food, that was a huge concession. And he goes on to give the excellent summary of the Good News that we heard read. How God sent Jesus to heal and to overcome the devil, and how he was put to death, but raised – and Peter stresses that he witnessed that, and that he ate and drank with Jesus after he was raised.

Because Peter was, after all, one of the first to see Jesus. But not totally the first. I love the account in John’s gospel; John isn’t known for personal glimpses the way the other gospels are, but this whole account sounds as though it was taken from a very early source – you know, of course, that the gospels were not written down for several decades after the Resurrection, but obviously took their material from earlier works, either written or oral. Perhaps John himself, or even Mary Magdalen, told this story!

It’s the details – Mary, coming early in the morning, probably around 5 am, to finish embalming the body, and finding it not there. And she runs to tell the others, and Peter and John come, and look inside, and they see that, although there is obviously no body in there, the actual grave clothes in which it had been wound are still there, with the headpiece separate. You couldn’t actually do that without disturbing them, surely?

Peter and John head off back to the others, but Mary stays, still in tears because she needs to be by the body, or at least by the tomb, to get her grieving done. And when a man, whom she assumes is the gardener, asks her what’s wrong, she says again, “Where is he? Have you moved him? Where did you put him? Please tell me, please?”

And then the man suddenly says, in that well-known, familiar, much-loved voice: “Mary!”

And Mary takes another look. She blinks. She rubs her eyes. She pinches herself. No, she’s not dreaming. It really, really is! “Oh, my dearest Lord!” she cries, and flings herself into his arms.

We’re not told how long they spent hugging, talking, explaining and weeping in each other’s arms, but eventually Jesus gently explains that, although he’s perfectly alive, and that this is a really real body one can hug, he won’t be around on earth forever, but will ascend to the Father. He can’t stop with Mary for now, but she should go back and tell the others all about it. And so, we are told, she does.

So Peter and Mary both knew, from their own knowledge, that Jesus was raised from the dead in a physical body they could hug, and walk and talk with, and eat and drink with. We know from some other accounts that there were some differences and not everybody recognised him at first, which isn’t too improbable when you think how difficult it is, sometimes, to recognise people out of context – if you meet your hairdresser in the street, for instance.

And if you thought Jesus was dead and buried, how very difficult to recognise him when he came and walked along with you, as he did to Cleopas and his wife that same evening.

So all right. But then, why does it matter? It is something that happened two thousand years ago, isn’t it? Long ago in history.

Well yes, it is. But it is also central to our faith. St Paul says, in his letter to the Corinthians, that if Christ hasn’t been raised, then he – Paul – is a fraud, our sins are not forgiven, and we might as well all go home and eat chocolate! As it is, because Christ has been raised, our sins are forgiven! And we can have life, abundant life. And, it appears, that just as Christ was raised, so shall we be raised from death – our bodies will obviously wear out or rust out one day no matter what we do, and while we may be given “notice to quit”, as it were, it may happen very suddenly. But we believe that because Christ was raised, so we, too, shall be raised to eternal life with him. And we will be changed.

I like to wear a butterfly brooch or two on Easter day, because, for me, butterflies are a symbol of the Resurrection. Butterflies, as you know, start off as caterpillars, and, when they have reached a certain size or body weight, they pupate; they wrap themselves in leaves or silk or something and become what’s called a chrysalis, and eventually, all being well, a butterfly emerges.

That isn’t just a matter of hibernating, like a dormouse or bear; to become a butterfly, caterpillars have to be completely remade. While they are in the pupa, all their bits dissolve away, and are remade from scratch, from the material that is there.  It’s not just a matter of rearranging what is there,

it’s a matter of total breakdown and starting again. The caterpillar more-or-less has to die before it can become a butterfly.

That is seriously scary. Especially as something of the same sort of thing happened to Jesus, before he was raised from death, and may well happen to us, too. We will be remade and raised in some kind of spiritual body, so St Paul says.

And one reason we have eggs at Easter, whether the ordinary kind, or chocolate ones, or both, is that an egg is also a symbol of resurrection. We eat our breakfast eggs and enjoy them, but if an egg is fertilised and incubated, it goes on to hatch out into a bird – the bird grows from scratch inside the egg, but then has to peck its way out, or it will perish.

Christ has been raised, and we will be raised.

And we believe, too, that because Christ was raised, we can be filled with his Holy Spirit, just as the disciples were on that long-ago day of Pentecost. So we don’t have to face going through the transformation that will occur all by ourselves; the Holy Spirit will be with us, strengthening us and enabling us to cope. Not just when we have died, but here, now, today. As we allow the risen Christ more and more access to us, through the Holy Spirit, we will be changed and grown more and more into the person God created us to be.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen. Amen.