May I speak in the name of the living God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

How did the disciples get it so wrong? How could they have forgotten all that Jesus had said on the various occasions when he had predicted both his death and his resurrection. I can understand them not wanting to accept that he was going to die. But when he did die why didn’t they think – well we didn’t really expect or want this, but it has happened, so perhaps what he said about rising in three days will have happened too, let’s go and see.

But dead men don’t rise.

Early in the morning the three women approached the tomb not expecting to find it empty. They were bearing precious herbs and oils to wash the body of their Lord. They had come to comb his hair, to sponge away the dried blood, to massage the precious myrrh ointment into his skin – ritual acts of care traditionally done before finally sealing a body in a tomb. But as they approached, they wondered how they would get access to the cave, given it was sealed with a great boulder. On arrival they saw that the stone had been rolled away, the tomb was empty, and there was a young man sitting there.

And they were frightened. Not because he might have risen but no doubt fearing that Jesus whose life had been stolen from him had now even had his body stolen away. That would have been the final insult following on all those other insults of his arrest, his mock trial and his judicial execution.

So, having come with a sense that death had defeated all their hopes and dreams, it now seemed that death had even swallowed up the body of their Lord. And we can perhaps understand that as we know from what we see and read about people who for one reason or another have no body to bury – maybe a loved one lost at sea or just someone missing and presumed dead.

Then the young man who was there spoke. He told them not to be alarmed he said: “you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

You might expect that at that point they would have not only remembered all that Jesus had predicted. You might have thought that that young man’s words would have been a great encouragement and comfort to them.

And more than that they might have remembered recent times spent with Jesus and listening to him and all that he had said about being killed and rising again.

But none of that seems to have been in the mind of these disciples. Rather surprisingly we read that what the young man said seems to have had just the opposite effect. We are told they went out and fled from the tomb because terror and amazement had seized them. The word for terror is our word trauma. After all dead men don’t rise. So, what on earth was going on?

What were they afraid of? Did they think the young man was lying, perhaps a Roman guard having a bit of sick fun at their expense?

Or were they terrified because they realised that it was true – that Jesus was alive and if Jesus was alive nothing could ever be the same again. They are told to go to Galilee to meet with him. So, what is it he will have to say to them there? what will he expect of them from then on? Who knows? They don’t know and that could raise terrifying prospects for them.

Today we follow in the footsteps of those women Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome. Those three women didn’t see Jesus. Neither do we. They didn’t hear Jesus call their names. Neither have we. They weren’t invited to touch his wounded hands. Nor have we. They stand beside us today. Like them we have to make decisions on the basis of what we have been told. We too have been told that He has risen as he said he would.

There is of course very good evidence for accepting what we have been told about the resurrection.

As a lawyer I have always been attracted to examine the evidence for the resurrection. I have an old book here, published in 1734, called “The Tryal of the Witnesses”. In 1729 a theologian called Thomas Woolston had published a book questioning the literal historicity of the miracles of Jesus including the resurrection. He was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to 12 months in prison.

My book is an account of what happened when some members of one of the Inns of Court, responding to that book held a mock trial in which the apostles were charged with falsifying the evidence for the resurrection. Twelve of the group played the part of the jury and having examined the evidence, they found the apostles not guilty of giving false evidence.

A much more recent book is called “Who Moved the Stone”. It is written by a journalist, and the first chapter is entitled “the book that refused to be written”. Frank Morrison had set out to write a book to explain why the account of the resurrection could not be true. But as he examined the evidence, he was persuaded that it had happened.

And now like the women in our reading, we have been told that he is risen. And like them we have to decide how we will respond.

The followers of Jesus took time to work it out. Each came at it in their own way. As the Dean reminded us this morning the only real response is to acknowledge that we have been sent out to speak of what we have witnessed.

Maggi Dawn, author and theologian, wrote recently on her blog: “It’s a good thing to remember that the church season of Easter is 50 days long, and that even for the first disciples, while Easter morning brought a certain amount of hope and promise, it was also quite bewildering, and it took them some time to work out the detail of what to do next. The same is true for us. We can never just go back to where we were before – back to the world, back to the church, back to life as if nothing has happened. Every place we have ever been will now look different because we have met Jesus. Easter isn’t a single day of celebration, but a hinge moment in a life that is being transformed.”

Now we have the 50 days of this Easter season to work out what our response will be.

Dead men don’t rise – but now is Christ risen from the dead!

Amen.