MATTHEW 28: 8-15
Matthew in the Margins…Easter 3…Revised 2020
Mary & Mary can't get away from the tomb fast enough! Maybe some of us still can't get away from the Easter Event fast enough because it's too hard? M & M, though, have a foretaste of great joy, based, at this point, only on what they've been told. But they ain't seen nothin yet! Not even Jesus Himself raised from death. In our reading they're just racing off to tell the other disciples something they've been told. Hearsay. Not admissible in court. The sort of thing at the root of a lot of poor religion. Then Jesus Himself greets them. “G’day”, He says. As if nothing much has happened since they were together last. M & M can't hide their emotion. Then He tells them not to be afraid.
Fear, of various kinds, blocks progress in our faith journeys more than just about any-thing else! Reassured, the women go off to tell the other disciples this glimmer of even better news to come. That the Raised Christ first entrusts His message to the womenfolk who've already proved themselves more reliable than His male disciples during His lifetime is a rebuke to patriarchalism! In any form. Under any guise!
Has the Raised Christ appeared to us in some meaningful way? Have we stopped being afraid? Do we believe? Are we freed enough from any fear of being scoffed at to pass on the Good News? The Greatest News of All Time?
'What is truth?' a certain person once asked when Truth was staring him in the face (JN 18:38). That there was a plot along the lines MT claims stands up better than most alternatives. It sounds very human. It makes sense. If we are honest, might any talk of susceptibilities in v. 15 be more likely to be of own susceptibilities than those of Jewish people today?
Differing accounts of where Jesus appeared look very much like plays in the game of getting the edge over an opposing faction within the emerging early church. Gaining control. Playing Religious Monopoly!
If we can't preach Jesus raised & alive among us more meaningfully than often passes for an ‘Easter Message’ today, are we simply joining forces with those priests of old whom MT says hatched a lie?
Brian
Afterthought: If you could ask Jesus one question, what would it be?" If I were game, I think I'd like to ask, “Was it all worth it”? Yet God persists with us. In dogged love. Hoping against hope. Loving, as against lack of loving! Still appearing where we need God to be rather than where we might like God to be.
