To Receive the Impossible

It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and other women with them who told this to the apostles; but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. - Luke 24:10-11

Luke's account of the Resurrection begins with a group of women coming together early in the morning to prepare the body of Jesus for burial. It is a portrait of women doing "women's work," as is the case with women in so many times and places, taking on certain drudgeries and unpleasant responsibilities that always seem to fall upon women.

The only men present are extraordinary figures donning shining garments. They explain the open sepulcher and the missing corpse by reminding these female followers of Jesus of the words he had spoken to them in Galilee concerning his Crucifixion and Resurrection from the dead.

The women give a report to the 11 remaining apostles and others who were with them, but their words are dismissed with disbelief as an "idle tale." However, the women's report does merit an immediate official investigation of the evidence by a man - ironically Peter - who somehow now emerges as a reliable, responsible witness, notwithstanding his forthright denial of Christ at the time of his suffering. And men have doubted the authority of women's telling and interpreting of the truth of God's Word ever since.

Indeed the report of the Resurrection was no idle tale; the Bible tells us that the risen Christ made numerous appearances to his male followers to rebuke them for their ignorance and unbelief. Today, as then, there are many who would deny the possibility that a person could be raised from the dead, others who would seek to "demythologize" the Resurrection, and still others who would question the rationality of anyone, whether in the first century or today, who would dare to receive and believe this event as life-changing good news.

The report of the Resurrection is liberating truth to those who accept the proclamation that the one person in all of human history who did not have to die because he was God chose death so that others could choose life by believing in him! To reject the Resurrection as fact is to refuse the gift of eternal life and temporal wholeness that has been freely offered to us by the sacrifice of God's son.

For those of us who had no opportunity to be original eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, faith brings direct access to its full meaning and power. The act of believing in the Resurrection is necessary and sufficient to make us Christians. For the believer, the Resurrection of Christ is our assurance that this is not all there is; whether in poverty or in affluence, in sickness or in health, in sorrow or in joyfulness, God has the last word, the final say in everything concerning us. God has demonstrated an ultimate and abiding faithfulness by not letting the body of Jesus waste away in the tomb, by not abandoning even the boldest of promises.

THUS THE HOPE of the resurrection for us is to believe and receive the impossible. The witness of the women reminds us that no problem or situation we face is insurmountable, and it t shows us that we can count on God to send messengers to speak to us in our confusion and disappointment. With this hope we can look despair in the eye, whether in the mirror of our own life experience or in the faces of the dispossessed, and declare with active resolve, "God is able!" With this hope we can speak life whenever and wherever we encounter death - whether the social and economic and moral death experienced daily in our family and community life, or even as we find ourselves reliving in the 1980s what some of our slave forebears felt "in the days when hope unborn had died."

Resurrection faith sustains me in every dimension of my life, especially in my ministry in the parish and in the seminary. In an age that exalts godless self-sufficiency in one's intellectual, economic, and social life, and at the same time indulges in the shameful luxury of discounting the worth and worthiness of those who cannot house and feed themselves, I feel the need for Christians to lift up Paul's declaration, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes."

And as long as the darkness of doubt and despair continues to cast its somber shadow from ghetto to suburb, and from factory to farm, there will be souls waiting to hear and receive the report of Christ's Resurrection, not as an idle tale, but as the liberating truth. May God grant us grace to tell it.

Cheryl J. Sanders was assistant professor of Christian ethics at Howard University Divinity School and associate pastor at Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C., when this article appeared.