“He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words.
“But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense”
It seems that, on the morning of the resurrection, everyone has forgotten what Jesus had promised to do. Even though the story has unfolded just as He promised, it seems that grief has overtaken them, quite naturally I might add, and their expectations were that their journey of life and hope with Jesus was all over.
Even when the women at the tomb remember His words, told to them by those guarding the tomb and rush to report them to the disciples, “their words seemed to them like nonsense”. Rationality and necessity have quickly replaced the fire of hope in the disciples. Now they are seeking self-preservation as the smouldering embers of their hope have been stubbed out. And yet it is Peter, he who had denied Jesus three times only days before, who has something pricked within him, runs to the tomb, and finds, gloriously, that the words of the women are true. Jesus has risen. He is alive. Things will never be the same.
It’s easy for us to retreat into rationality when things in our spiritual lives seem to go wrong. After all, we think, the gospel stands up to rational and philosophical scrutiny. And so it does, but the truth of the resurrection and the life is that it is so far away from “normal” so out of the ordinary, that it should offend our sensibilities. We should question it, interrogate it, doubt it. We can do all these things, but then it will still be true. Whatever we think or feel, Jesus did die, and on the third day rise again. He did prove Himself and the truth of His claims, once and for all. It is our privilege and our destiny to work out what all that means for us and for those we love, and those we meet today, every day for the rest of our lives.