Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Easter Sunday, 5 April 2026

Jeremiah 31:1-6
Matthew 28:1-10.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

This is the message at the heart of Easter; the affirmation at the heart of the Christian faith; the ultimate happy ending; the happy ending that makes all other happy endings possible. This year we are listening to Matthew’s version of the story, possibly the most extraordinary of the four gospel tellings. We accompany two women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, as they go to see the tomb. These two women have followed Jesus from Galilee and been among those who provided for him. They have watched every stage of Jesus’ journey, from life to death to burial. Now they come to sit in vigil. They have not brought anything with which to anoint the body; as we heard on Maundy Thursday, Jesus’ body was anointed before his death, at Bethany, when an unnamed woman poured costly ointment from an alabaster jar over his head. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary have simply come to see the tomb and to mourn their dead friend.

What the women find at the tomb, though, is so astounding that Matthew can only describe it in apocalyptic, end-of-the-world language. All heaven breaks loose. There is a great earthquake. An angel of the Lord, with a face like lightning and clothes like snow, descends from heaven and rolls the stone back. The angel perches atop the stone, mocking those who thought the tomb could confine and control Jesus. The guards set by the chief priests and the Pharisees are terrified and pass out. But the women are reassured by the angel and given a message that has them running back to the other disciples in fear and great joy: ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him’.

Matthew is telling us that after the events of Good Friday, Jesus truly was dead. And he did not come back to life through any power or virtue of his own. Matthew’s story of angels and earthquakes reveals that God has been at work. Jesus has been raised by God.

Today is a day of celebration, but I want us for a moment to return to the events of Good Friday. And I am going to say something that I never thought I would ever say: I am grateful to the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. I do not know if you caught it, but Mr Netanyahu recently caused quite a stir by talking about Jesus. He was paraphrasing a secular historian, William Durant, and he said, ‘History proves that, unfortunately and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation.’

Now, obviously, Mr Netanyahu is trying to get the United States of America to continue its actions against Iran, and he probably knows that about six-in-ten Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the conflict, and twice as many think it will make the USA less safe in the long run as think it will make the country safer. He was making a political point, not a theological one. But even so …

Both Mr Durant and Mr Netanyahu are wrong. Here we are, two thousand years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, on the other side of the world from where they happened, remembering the events of those three days and living our lives in their light. The United Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, although the largest contiguous empire in human history and, at its height, stretching from Japan to Eastern Europe, lasted for fewer than sixty years and split apart in the days of Genghis Khan’s grandchildren.

On the other hand, maybe as he understands the world, Mr Netanyahu is right. Genghis Khan lived for some sixty-five years; Jesus for about half that. Genghis Khan died the ruler of large parts of China and Central Asia; Jesus was executed as a common criminal, put to death in a way so shameful that Cicero considered it bad taste to mention it in polite company. Genghis Khan killed millions; the Roman forces of law and order, the religious leaders of Temple Judaism, and a howling mob, all combined to kill Jesus. Maybe in Mr Netanyahu’s mind, that means Genghis Khan won.

Jesus’ death was certainly a problem for his first followers. As the Apostle Paul wrote, ‘For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ (1 Corinthians 1:22-24) In Matthew’s description of the crucifixion every element of the abuse of Jesus is based on the words of the Hebrew prophets and the Psalms so that Matthew can argue it all happened in accordance with the Scriptures, for the benefit of those Jews who demand signs.

According to both Mark and Matthew, Jesus’ final words on the cross were the first words of Psalm 22, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ or ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Psalm 22 is both a psalm of pain and a prayer of trust. The psalmist ends by proclaiming that God did not hide God’s face from him, but heard him when he cried out, and the very last line is that ‘Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it’.

Whether Jesus’ quoting of Psalm 22 meant that he was thinking of the whole psalm, including its concluding praise of God, or whether Jesus was held in lament, the resurrection we celebrate today shows that God was present with Jesus at the crucifixion. Jesus was killed by humans frightened by someone who challenged the political and religious status quo. At his death, the chief priests, the scribes, the elders, and the bandits all mocked Jesus. His life seemed to have been a failure. His message from God, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’ (Matthew 12:7; Matthew 9:13) seemed to be overruled by a God demanding sacrifice. But in the resurrection, God completely overturns that apparent failure. I have said before that my favourite description of the resurrection is as civil disobedience. When Rome executed rebels on the cross, it used the Empire’s most degrading form of execution to discourage further rebellion. A few crucifixions were expected to end a movement. But God refuses to accept Rome’s verdict on Jesus. God disobeys the Roman law and by doing so challenges every force of law and order that persecutes the innocent or is used in the service of hatred and prejudice. Judicial killing no longer has a place in the world after the resurrection.

Despite the resurrection, the kingdom of God has not yet fully come, and God’s will is not yet fully done on earth as in heaven. While we celebrate the resurrection, we remember the crucifixion. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, later executed by the Nazis, wrote: ‘not only is Jesus Christ the goal of our prayer; he himself also accompanies us in our prayer … For our sake he cried on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Now we know that there is no longer any suffering on earth in which Christ will not be with us, suffering with us and praying with us – Christ the only helper.’[1] As Jürgen Moltmann said, ‘there is no suffering which in the history of God is not God’s suffering; no death which has not been God’s death in the history on Golgotha’.[2]

We still live in a world of unjustified suffering, a world in which the Iranian regime kills thousands of protesters; the USA bombs an Iranian girls’ elementary school; Israel has just killed more than twelve hundred people in Lebanon, including more than one hundred children and fifty health workers. Jürgen Moltmann writes:

Anyone who suffers without cause first thinks that he has been forsaken by God … But anyone who cries out to God in their suffering echoes the death cry of the Son of God. In that case, God is not just a hidden someone set over against him to whom he cries, but in a profound sense the human God who cries with him and intercedes for him with his cross where man in his torment is dumb.[3]

In Jesus’ death on the cross, God experiences our god-forsakenness, and that means that no matter what happens, human beings never suffer alone. It seems to me that to believe that God suffers with us is vastly better for the world than to believe that God wants us to avenge suffering with violence.

But that God shares our suffering is not humanity’s only comfort. As we celebrate the resurrection, we remember the crucifixion; when we remember the crucifixion, we celebrate the resurrection. The two cannot be separated; God is with us in our suffering, and our faithful God promises that the day will come when we will once again take our tambourines and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. In God’s raising of Jesus, we see God’s intentions for the whole creation, which is why the whole creation says hallelujah, the earth awaking raises shouts of praise, and all creatures, human and animal, rejoice that we are in God’s care. In the resurrection, light has defeated darkness, love has defeated hate, hope has defeated despair, and life has defeated death.

We are followers of Jesus Christ, not Genghis Khan, and we know that evil can never finally and fully defeat good, no matter what temporary victories it may seem to win. So let the church with gladness hymns of triumph sing, for the Lord is living, death has lost its sting! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1970), p. 49.

[2] Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (London: SCM Press, 1974), p. 255.

[3] Moltmann, The Crucified God, p. 261.