You Wouldn't Believe Me if I Told You...
It is the morning and the women who knew Jesus—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary of James, and the others—have a costly task ahead of them. Whilst they grieve Jesus, their friend and teacher, they ready themselves to undertake one of the final acts of care they can offer: the preparing of his body for its burial.
What these women have set out to do is costly. Not only are the spices and oils used in preparing the body expensive ingredients, handling a dead body is costly in their religion. There will be prayers and purification rituals to undertake before they can worship normally again. This work is a true sacrifice.
The women and all of the other disciples are not on the lookout for a resurrected Jesus. They entirely expect to find his body in the tomb when they arrive. When they arrive at the tomb and see the stone rolled away from the entrance, their hearts sink. The most likely explanation for an open tomb is robbery. Joseph was generous in paying for a tomb, rather than a simple grave, and robbers may believe that Jesus was laid to rest with precious personal belongings. The nails used in crucifixions were believed by some to have magical properties, so perhaps these were sought after. Whatever the cause, the distress of the women is doubled at the prospect of seeing Jesus' body not just dead, but further defiled.
In the midst of their confusion on finding the tomb empty, the women are confronted by two men in dazzling clothes, flashing as though they are wearing starlight. These two, surely angels, see the spices and oils as a sign, not of charity, but of unbelief. After all, Jesus promised them that he would suffer and die and that he would rise from the dead. Why would they come looking for him among the dead when he has promised he would not stay here?
The women realize that, yes, in their shock at the crucifixion—the manner of his death was a detail Jesus had not shared with them prior—they had not remembered his promise to return. They hurry back to the eleven men and the other remaining disciples to tell them what they have seen and heard. Our English translation says that the women "told this to the apostles." (Luke 24:10, NRSV) This is rather understated, for the Greek says something more like they "kept on saying to the apostles." The women are excited, telling the story, talking over one another, anxious to share this important news.
The eleven and the rest do not believe their story.
Or, perhaps, more accurately, they question their story. If it were outright disbelief, Peter would not have gone to the tomb to see for himself. Christians, for generations now, have made much of the fact that women were the first to see the good news of Jesus' resurrection and that a group of men discarded their story. The teaching is often that this is a cultural misogyny, that first century Judeans did not believe women to be reliable witnesses of anything. Biblical scholars are not agreed on this.
In the Bible, women are often the first to hear of or participate in new things. Hagar is the first person to name God, (Genesis 16:13) Mary hears the good news of the Incarnation before anyone else, (Luke 1:26-38) and so on. The idea that women are widely held to be unreliable witnesses comes primarily from the writing of one man, Josephus, who is in the midst of a project to ingratiate himself to Roman elites. There is little other writing from the era to suggest that women are not allowed to provide witness or are, as a whole, thought to be unreliable.
To be sure, the culture is riddled with misogynistic ideas, but it seems much more likely, in this case, that the men disbelieve the women, not because of their gender, but because the story they are telling is unbelievable. People do not return from the dead.
Remember, even the women were stunned with disblief before the angels reminded them of what Jesus had promised. Similar to the encounter on the road to Emmaus, this group of disciples need to be reminded, with a bit of divine help, of who Jesus was, what he promised, and to see the plain, unbelievable truth that is before their eyes: Jesus has died and Jesus has been raised.
And this is where you and I find ourselves today. We have been given the news that sin and death are defeated, that we have been reconciled to our God, that life eternal is ours, and that the wedding feast of the lamb has been laid on with places for each of us at it. All this accomplished through the unbelievable death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This is the mystery and the sublime joy of Easter: That whether we forget what was promised, whether we question and hope to see for ourselves, or whether we are so overtaken with it that we keep on telling the story to whomever will listen, Jesus Christ is raised from the dead and this is good news indeed. Alleluia, alleluia.
