Two thousand years ago a radical Jewish preacher was publicly executed on trumped up charges, and his body was placed in a tomb. And then, only a couple of days later, so the story goes, he was alive again. Surely this is the stuff of legend – no-one comes back from the dead. Its just not possible. But it’s a nice idea isn’t it. It gives us all a bit of hope to hold into. And if we try and love each other as he told his followers to do, we’ll all become much better people.

Well, my friends, we are not here to celebrate a ‘nice idea’. We are here to celebrate Christ truly risen from the dead. But the Easter message is one which many find difficult to accept. It is a unique event - dead people stay dead normally - and naturally we are sceptical of events which are without precedent, and so completely at odds with our understanding of the way the universe works.

It was the same for the disciples. Their leader and teacher was dead; their hopes shattered. The last thing they expected was for him to come back to life. The Easter story is one of coming to faith. We do not hear of Christ dramatically bursting from the tomb in front of an audience - his resurrection was a hidden event, in the middle of the night, in a sealed tomb. Unlike the last supper, the crucifixion and other events of the last week, we cannot depict or describe it. For it is not simply a human event - a man being resuscitated - but God’s mysterious power doing something new, a unique moment like that of creation itself. Like the disciples we can only gradually come to appreciate its full impact.

In the gospel we’ve just heard John describes three key moments in this journey of faith. First, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb while it is still dark - not a minor detail, for the darkness lasts until someone comes to believe that Jesus has indeed risen from the dead. Mary sees the stone that sealed the tomb rolled away and, that is enough for her to run back and fetch the others, as she jumps to the most obvious conclusion that the body of Jesus had been taken away. We can understand her reluctance to look inside the tomb, fearful of the unknown, and the unnamed disciple whom Jesus loved seems to share that reluctance at first. But it is this disciple who first sees beyond the empty tomb and discarded cloths, who sees and believes that the Lord has risen. Mary lingers at the tomb, still stricken with grief as she holds on to the only credible explanation - that the body had been removed. She is the first to meet the risen Lord, but does not recognise him until he speaks her name, and then it is her privilege to share the great news with the other disciples. Later on that day Peter and the other disciples meet Christ in the upper room, and they to come to believe in him.

Other gospel writers tell things slightly differently, but all describe the discovery of an empty tomb. Mark, in its original version, ends on a rather abrupt note, with the terrified women fleeing the tomb, but Matthew and Luke both describe more than one appearance of the risen Lord.

For two thousand years people have tried to deny the truth of the Easter message. Some insist it is the stuff of legend, developed over time as his followers tried to keep alive the memory of this inspiring teacher. Others point to a conspiracy designed to keep an organisation going for the benefit of those its top. This is the stuff of so-called historical novels but it has ancient roots. Matthew tells of the Jewish authorities requesting a guard at the tomb for fear the disciples would remove the body - but in fact it is they who become the conspirators by bribing the guards to say they did just that. If it was a conspiracy, then the disciples can hardly be said to have benefited from it. All but one of the 12 lost their lives for proclaiming the resurrection - not to mention the vast number of martyrs and victims of persecution since.

The other, less extreme charge - that of a story which developed over time - is more insidious. But in a society which is increasingly sceptical of religious claims, I think it is important to explain very clearly why the actual, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most satisfactory explanation of the events which followed his death on the cross - in other words, why the Easter story is true - for it is - , and also why it matters that it is true. There is another reason for us to be clear about this: for the gospel accounts all contain some sort of charge to share the good news with others. Mary Magdalene is told by the Lord ‘go to my brothers’. The Easter story is not simply a joyful thing for us to celebrate, but good news, which must be spread.

Noone at that time would have expected a dead man to rise from the dead in the way Jesus did - even if he was the messiah. At that time there was a widespread belief among many, though not all, Jews, that there would be a some sort of resurrection at the end of time, when the Messiah came, but there was no expectation that the messiah would die and rise first. The fact that Jesus had died would have disproved any claims that he was the messiah. The resurrection turned the disciple’s world upside down, so something must have happened for them to believe it. They couldn’t have been carrying on regardless, refusing to face facts, and deluding themselves with the thought that he was still alive, if they weren’t expecting him to come back to life in the first place. What they believe and proclaimed was so radical that it led to their persecution and deaths. They certainly weren’t regarded by their contemporaries as a harmless group just trying to nice to people.

The empty tomb and the appearences are both essential parts of the story. Mary Magdalene’s response to the empty tomb is the obvious one, at a time when grave robbers were prevelant. But it is inconceivable that the disciples could have come to faith in the resurrection if the tomb hadn’t been empty. Resurrection, to first century Jews, and to most people, means a body. If he was still in the tomb, something that could have easily been checked, they could not have claimed he was still alive. It is implausible that the women, roman soldiers and high priests all got the wrong tomb, and the old suggestion that Jesus hadn’t actually died on the cross, only fallen unconscious, later revived by the cool of the tomb, is patently nonsense. The Romans knew how to kill people.

What of the appearances? The gospel writers are at pains to demonstrate that although the risen Jesus seemed not be limited by walls and by distances as people generally are, he was not a ghost: he can be touched, and he can eat. Visions, hallucinations and dreams were all well known in the ancient world, but they would usually be taken to imply that the person appearing in them was dead. The appearances of Jesus in the days following his resurrection are a different thing altogether. But without an empty tomb as well, they would surely not be enough.

So the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus are both necessary, and together they are enough, to explain the Easter faith of the disciples, which spread rapidly through their preaching which convinced some and angered others.

Ultimately, however, the resurrection remains an unprovable event. If we have no faith, if we are not even open to the possibility that there is a God who is able to act in the world, then the resurrection will remain either a deceit or a nice myth. And if it isn’t true, then there is no point us being here at all.

But if a man really did come back from the dead, then it is an event of unique significance for the whole human race. It cannot fail to have an impact on the whole of humanity, for it means that death no longer has quite the same final power over us as it once did. In fact, its significance extends beyond the human race to the whole of creation, for creation is no longer subject to death and decay in the way it once was, now that is has proved unable to hold one man in its grasp.

Jesus is unique among all people as the one man able to defeat death. It was because he was a man, one of us, that he was able to die. But it was because he was the Son of God sent by the Father that death was unable to hold him. It took the incarnate Son of God, fully human and fully divine, to break death’s hold over creation. Death is, of course, still a very present reality. For some, this will be a barrier to faith in Jesus Christ. St Paul describes Christ as the ‘first fruits’ of those who have died. The resurrection from the dead has come through one man, so that we will all be made alive in Christ, but in the proper order: first Christ, then the rest of us when he comes again in glory. So we will still die, but death will not be the end for us. Now that Christ has risen from the dead, death no longer has any power over humanity. Death has been put to death on the cross, so it becomes not an end, but the doorway to eternal life.

Christ invites us to new life with him. It is because he has risen from the dead that we can be sure that his promise of eternal life is true. It is because he has risen from the dead that we can worship him as God. It is because he has ascended to the Father that we can experience his presence with us when we meet in his name, and above all when we receive him in the eucharist. We must pray earnestly for the gift of faith, because if we have faith, then we are already raised up to new life that will never end, but can only get better. And if we have faith, it is our duty to bear witness to God’s power, to raise Christ and all of us up to new life, so that all may hear and believe the truth we celebrate today.