What an amazing passage from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians! And the great thing about Easter is that you get to keep the order of service, take it home and read it again whenever you want to!
It is easy to take for granted that we have so many first century letters in the Bible. They are documents of such rarity and importance. ‘Eye-witness testimony’ of an extraordinary time. And Paul is already the second generation of those who met Jesus, because as he says, he was not one of the original followers of Jesus, who walked and talked and ate and drank with him in Galilee and Jerusalem. Paul met the risen Christ, on the road to Damascus and the encounter totally changed his life.
This letter was written just 21 years after the event. Amongst religious documents, that is unheard of, because so many of the world’s religions were founded at a time when most people could not read and write, and the good news was passed on by word of mouth. For example, Buddha’s words were written down 800 years after his death. Paul has met and spent time with Cephas (whom we know as the disciple Peter) and James. Two men who began life as fishermen and were -at the time of writing – now leading a church in Jerusalem. From Jesus to Peter, from Peter to Paul, from Paul to Corinth, from Corinth to us! ‘For I handed on to you what I in turn had received.’
Paul was the great traveller. Fuelled by the grace of God (as he says in our reading today) he is the reason that Christianity spread so rapidly. Having met Peter and James he zoomed off again to yet another port city in the Roman Empire and is writing this letter from Ephesus. And thank God that he did. Because a mere X years after the events, we have the most concise and perfect summary of the impact of the resurrection.
Now, in 2025, the idea of a man claiming to be the son of God, a man who is cruelly betrayed and then tortured to death somehow rising from the death is a story that even AI would struggle to make up.
But the reason I believe in the resurrection, the reason it has changed my life, is the testimony of those who were there. Every time I read the scriptures about this event, I am mesmerised by the witness of Mary Magdalen, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and Mary Clopas, of Peter and the disciples on the road to Emmaus. These were utterly broken and devastated people who had seen their friend and teacher die. Something happened which totally transformed them, which filled them with energy and life, joy and grace. This is what resurrection is – for them and for us. A life-changing, life-giving event which, when you trust its truth, still has the power to blast away the consuming grottiness and misery of life.
And you know what? The truth of it is not really so hard to believe. Because as the Gospel reading on page 9 shows us, the first words the risen Christ spoke to a broken and fearful group of disciples were about peace and forgiveness. Just as the poetry of Genesis tells us that God breathed life into the first human, now the risen Christ breathes new life into each one of us with a message of peace and forgiveness. All we are asked to do is to ‘receive it.’ This gift of grace. This beautiful chain of truth which stretches across the centuries, ‘for what I have received, I hand on to you’. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia! Now, let’s go out and change the world. Amen.
