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That reading that Margaret read to us always reminds me of watching Wimbledon. You know, as the ball goes that way and this way and the crowd go like that, like that. Because Paul is saying it goes from one end to the other. If there’s no resurrection from the dead, Jesus has not been raised. And if he wasn’t raised, our preaching is in vain. And if those who die are not raised, then Jesus was not raised and your faith is futile. And so it goes on back and forth because it seems apparently some Christians, some believers in the Corinthian church were denying or doubting the truth of the resurrection.

Now, to understand what a big deal this is to Paul and what a big deal it is to us, I think we really need to go back to the early verses in this chapter. I’m going to read them to you. It starts like this, “Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and in which you take your stand. By this gospel, you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Otherwise, you believed in vain.” Then he goes on to say this, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, that’s Peter, and then to the Twelve, and after that He appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. And then He appeared to James, and then to all the Apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born.”

Paul’s making clear here that the resurrection is not an optional extra. You can’t really have the Christian faith without the truth of the resurrection. It is absolutely foundational, he insists. He passed it on as of first importance.

But when you think about it, it’s a breathtaking claim that Jesus rose from the dead. We’ve heard it so often, I think, that we don’t often kind of interrogate it. I want to do that this morning. I want to ask just a couple of questions. And my first question is, how does Paul’s statement stand up to investigation?

Let’s quickly take it line by line. The first thing he says is that Christ died. About that fact, I think there’s little disagreement. We can take that as a given. Then interestingly, he goes on to say he was buried. Now that is interesting, because I don’t know whether you’ve ever noticed, but outside of the gospels, the New Testament letters, never mention the empty tomb, they never mention the burial of Jesus. And here is an oblique mention of that. And again, there’s no real debate about the fact that the tomb was empty when the disciples went to it on that first Easter Sunday morning. There’s no debate about the fact that it was empty. What has been debated across the centuries is, why?

Several explanations have been put forward. The first is that the disciples actually snuck up in the night and stole the body. Now, I can’t think of anything less likely than that. They were scared. They were scattered. Quite simply, they didn’t have the guts to do such a thing. I think we can dismiss that one.

Then there’s the one that sometimes offered that the authorities actually removed the body to prevent it becoming a shrine. Well, that’s relatively easy to deal with because when the disciples appeared in Jerusalem a few short weeks later proclaiming that Christ had risen from the dead, it would have been a very simple matter to produce the remains of the body and say, “It’s not true”. They didn’t do that.

Or, one that was something of a favourite for some time, the women went to the wrong tomb. And you know that bit where Mary meets… she assumes it to be the gardener who says, “He is not here”, and what was actually happening, it really was the gardener, and he was pointing to the right tomb. Well again, same answer, you could easily produce the body.

And finally, you can live with this one if you want: the empty tomb is sheer fantasy. It never happened. You know what? Fantastic tales get blown away. The very existence of the Christian church, its very survival in those early years, makes you think, nah, this thing is not founded on fantasy like that.

I don’t know whether you’ve ever read Frank Morrison’s book, written way back in the 1930s, Who Moved the Stone? He began very cynically thinking that this was merely myth or pretence, and decided he would investigate it, and discovered that for him the evidence of the empty tomb was inescapable, even irrefutable. He submitted it to Faber and Faber. T S Eliot, the great poet, was on the board of Faber. He recommended its use. It was published. T S Eliot recommended it to G K Chesterton, a writer of great detective stories, who said, this has really been approached like a detective.

The empty tomb really stands as a fact, undeniable.

But that leaves us with Paul’s biggest claim, that he was raised on the third day and that he appeared and so he goes on.

All the emphasis is on the fact that the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples. Now again, there are several positions you can take. You can see that it simply didn’t happen. Just a lie. That will not stand up. Clearly something did happen. And so Paul lists a whole list of appearances. Easter Sunday when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, that was the first. Then he appeared to Peter. Then of course to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. On the Sunday evening to the disciples in a locked room, and a week later when Thomas was there. Some weeks later to the disciples on the shore of Galilee, and ate with them. To the 11 disciples on a mountain in Galilee. And then to more than 500 brothers and sisters, and then to James, his brother, and then at his ascension, and then later us to one untimely born, Paul says, to me.

Now, what do we make of these appearances? Well, again, there are several different positions. Some people say… I mean, if your world view is that it simply cannot happen, dead men don’t come back, then you can stay with that position. But some of those disciples died before the end of their natural life. And very few people will die for a lie.

The other thing that convinces me that something did happen is the fact that the gospel narratives agree on different points of what happened, but they never try to tidy it up. They leave it as it is. A police officer will tell you if there’s a crime, and six people who witnessed it gave exactly the same story to the last detail, he or she will suspect collusion. If they agree on the main things, but from their different perspectives, see different things, in love, the ring of truth. Something did happen.

Now it’s been suggested that it was some kind of collective hallucination. They wanted it. They longed for Jesus to be alive. So it was a hallucination. That won’t stand up. Now imagine that we were locked in this church for five days. No food nothing to drink, all of us in the same room. It is quite possible, indeed it may be probable, that we would start to hallucinate and share some kind of collective hallucination. But these stories of the appearance, sometimes they were to individuals, sometimes they were to a crowd, sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors, and even in one of the records, the gospel writers say they believed, but some doubted. No, the conditions were all wrong for it to be hallucination. Or, some have suggested it was a ghost. It was just his spirit. But that runs contrary to the persistent witness of the Gospels. The risen Christ had a real body. I mean, this is a remarkable thing that they’re saying. He had a real body. He said to Thomas, “There’s the nail print, touch. See the wound in my hand?” When he appears to the disciples by the lake of Galilee, he eats some fish with them. Ghosts don’t eat fish. Now there is a persistent witness that this was a real body.

Or, I’ve heard this one, Jesus didn’t actually die. He was obviously seriously hurt, but in the coolness of the tomb, he had swooned away, and somehow or other, he wandered out of the tomb, and that’s what his disciples met. Now, I can say with the greatest authority that I know this not to be true. Let me tell you a little story. When we lived in Bristol, I think it was, we knew a little lady. She was one of those lovely people that you get in every church. We ran a luncheon club, and she was always there every time to help. She was always in and about the church. We missed her for two or three days. First day, we didn’t worry. Second day, we worried. Third day, we contacted the police to break into her house. Now, I remember as if it was yesterday. It was a young policeman who got the door in, but there was no way he was going upstairs. He had not seen a dead person before. So, I took a deep breath and climbed the stairs. Now, what happened was at that moment, she came walking along the landing in a white nightdress. All the gospel records say when the disciples saw Jesus, they wanted to worship. I’m going to tell you that on that morning, falling on my knees in worship was the last thing I wanted to do. I think my words were, “Where’s the toilet? Get me there quickly”.

Now, something really happened in those 40 days after his death that changed the world, and changed everything forever.

So, I want to ask, that’s all good and well, but what difference does that make today? And that brings me back to the passage that Margaret read for us. If you deny the resurrection, Christ was not raised. If Christ was not raised, we are not raised. If you refuse to believe that we are raised then Christ was not raised, you’re stuck in a bit of a hole.

I’m going to limit myself to saying two things. First of all, it makes a great deal of difference to how we view life. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is given to us in and through the ascended Jesus. It’s implicit all the way through the New Testament, but Paul spells it out in the first chapter of Ephesians: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which God has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and”, wait for it, “his incomparably great power for us who believe. The power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead”. That makes a difference to how we live.

One of the things I really, really appreciate, since being part of an Anglican church, is that every week, as we did this morning, we take time for repentance. That’s great. And through the liturgy, we receive the grace of God’s forgiveness. Just occasionally, I have a little worry that we could end up believing, if we’re not careful, that the only thing God can do about my sinfulness is to forgive it. But if the same mighty power that raised Jesus from the dead lives and works in me, then I ought to live a different kind of life. Of course, I will still sin, but I shouldn’t keep on doing the same sin day after day, week after week. It makes an enormous difference to how we live. If we do not live with something of the power of the resurrection in us, then I think we, in a way, deny the resurrection.

It makes a great difference to how we live and how we see life. Here’s a second thing. It makes a great difference to how we see and how we face death. Again, people offer various suggestions, you know, that one…and forgive me, I don’t ever want to insult anybody’s grief… but too often I’ve heard that poem at funerals, you know, “Don’t worry, I’m just in another room.” You know what? If you’ve ever lost anybody you love, it does matter. They’re not just in another room. Death is a big deal. The Bible describes it as the last enemy to be destroyed. It really, really does matter.

Or that one, you’ve seen this so often in popular stuff: when we die, we become angels. No, we don’t. Angels are a completely different order of creation. They are ethereal beings. The promise of the resurrection is that we rise again, more ourselves than we have ever been before.

Or, here’s something that’s going, have you heard of grief tech? Have you heard the phrase grief tech? Let me tell you about it. I’ll read to you, so I make sure I get it right. ‘This emerging concept is increasingly being referred to as grief tech, and it involves using photos, text messages, audio and video recordings left behind by the departed to create a virtual clone that talks, sounds and looks just like them. Grief tech has been made possible by the rise of generative AI, which has quickly proven itself capable of producing text near impossible to distinguish from human-generated content. It can also accurately mimic a person’s voice based on just a few seconds of audio and create surprisingly realistic video content.’

There is a growing industry in inviting people to go on communicating with the person they’ve lost. You know what? It sounds to me suspiciously like a new digital version of spiritualism. And one of the things we need to do with those we have loved and lost is release them. To try to hold on to them like that is spiritually, mentally, emotionally unhealthy.

What we believe about death is that those who die in Christ will be raised with a brand new body like his, not floating like an angel, not sitting on a cloud playing a harp, but raised to newness of life in the new creation.

Now, strictly speaking, I accept that the general tenor of the New Testament is that for those who we have lost, who have died, there is a time of rest. And on that great day of the coming of the King and the new creation breaking in upon us, they will be raised to life. But I also remember too, that Jesus said to the dying thief on the cross, this day, you shall be with me in paradise. So, I think it’s okay to maybe compress the whole thing. I also know that there’s a great deal more poetry in Scripture than there is systematic theology. So, I’m going to finish by reading… I don’t know whether you know Stewart Henderson’s wonderful poem, This Day in Paradise. I’ve memorised it and read it at more than a few funerals that I’ve conducted. It moves my soul. I’m going to read it for you this morning. For all of us, and that will be just about all of us, who’ve lost someone we love. For all of us, who will one day face death ourselves. And that, without being remotely morbid, is, without a doubt, all of us.

“This day in paradise, new feet are treading through high halls of gold.

This day in paradise, new legs are striding over jewelled fields in which the diamond is considered ordinary.

This day in paradise, new eyes have glimpsed the deep fire, ready to flame the stale earth pure.

This day in paradise, new blood, the rose red juice that gushed at Golgotha, now ripples and races down the pure veins of a recently arrived beloved.

This day in paradise, a new heart pounds in praise, a new body shaped by sacrifice.

This day in paradise, the daunting dark of death has no point, no place and no meaning.

And whilst we mourn and weep through these human hours, this day in paradise, the blazing embrace between Saviour and son. This day in paradise, the blazing embrace between Saviour and daughter.

This day in paradise, the blazing embrace between Saviour and beloved child. Goes on, and on, and on, and on”.

And as Margaret said earlier, Hallelujah!