Each Easter, especially with sermons to prepare, the gospel narrarives (along with 1 Corinthians 15) prod and provoke me about how they tell the narrative of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the provocation includes trying to put together the differences between the accounts as much as the common features. Last year's reflection is here. This year's takes a different course.
1. For the most part the gospel narratives are not doing the apologetics we might like them to do.
We can approach the narratives looking for proof that the resurreaction actually occurred as an event in history - an event we can, more or less, prove because X, Y, Z. But the narratives mostly do not answer our question "Did the resurrection of Jesus take place as an observable event (or set of events - empty tomb, consistent set of appearances, etc)?".
Rather, they tell us about encounters between people and the risen Jesus:
- some designed to inform us about how we might encounter the risen Jesus (e.g. in the breaking of the bread, per the Walk to Emmaus story in Luke 24, or through faith not sight, per Thomas meeting Jesus in John 20) and what our re-action to such encounter might be (e.g. undertaking the Great Commission, per the endings of Matthew's and Luke's Gospels; or being sent into the world as Jesus himself was sent, per John 20), and
- at least two designed to inform us of significant commissioning or recommissioning of key apostles (per 1 Corinthians 15 for Paul, and John 21 for Simon Peter and for the Beloved Disciple).
2. Nevertheless, there is some apologetics going on
- Matthew 28:11-15 offers a refutation of any notion that the tomb was empty because the body was stolen (as does John 20:13ff);
- 1 Corinthians 15:4-8 offers the availability of an extensive set of witnesses (500+, although some have died) to the resurrection appearances, some two decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus.
3. Some choices are made as resurrections narratives are composed, which demonstrates that the gospel writers (and others, such as Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, or whomever laid down the tradition behind what he says there) were not mere reporters of the discovery of the empty tomb and of subsequent appearances of Jesus in the sense of sticking to the facts and the facts only. Editorial choices were made!
Consider: the 1 Corinthians 15 account, verses 3-12, mentions no women receiving appearances (other than the implication that a group as large as 500 people [even when described as "500 brothers"] would have included women and men, but each of the gospel accounts is definitive, women were among the key witnesses (to the empty tomb and an appearance of Jesus, Matthew 28; to the empty tomb, Mark 16 and Luke 24; and (albeit a single woman, Mary Magdalene) to the empty tomb and an appearance of Jesus, John 20.
Focusing on women in the resurrection narratives, consider also whom each gospel describes as being present at the discovery of the empty tomb:
Matthew: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary [28:1]
Mark: Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome [16:1]
Luke: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them [24:10]
John: Mary Magdalene [20:1]
Mark and Luke both have three or more women in the group which makes the discovery. Matthew reduces this to two women. John reduces this further to one woman. The woman common to all four narratives is Mary Magdalene.
In a cultural milieu which features crowds and groups doing things, there is reason to suppose that Mark and Luke are correct, there was a group of women who went together to the tomb.
Matthew simplifies things: the group becomes two. John, keen on telling us about individual encounters people have with Jesus (Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, the lame man at the pools of Bethsaida, the blind man) further reduces the group to one, Mary Magdalene.
Luke, incidentally, despite following Mark, consistent with his preface in Luke 1 (he will correct otther accounts), leaves Salome's name out of the group he describes, and adds another name in and proposes that there was quite a large group of women who went to the tomb.
That is, each of the gospel writers, on the simple matter of retailing the names of the women who discover the empty tomb, goes about things in their own way.
Unexpectedly, then, we find Matthew offering a narrative in chapter 28 which is a little messy (Jesus is going to meet the disciples in Galilee, which he does, but he also meets the women, soon after, in Jerusalem), Mark may (if 16:1-8 be indeed the ending of his gospel) or may not (if there is a lost ending) be consistent with his whole narrative, that he tells us much about Jesus and leaves much out, Luke offers an entrancing, compelling, inspiring story, the Walk to Emmaus, which is wholly missing from any other account, and John is, well, John, very different to the other three gospels.
And, as noted in earlier years, in their compositions, the four writers have varying attitudes to "Jerusalem (and surrounds)" and "Galilee" as the potential loci of the resurrections appearances (Matthew, both; Mark, Galilee; Luke, Jerusalem only; John, both).
Jesus rose from the dead but as with Jesus' birth, the gospel writers go about their renditions of the resurrection events in differing ways. Bethlehem is common to the birth narratives, and the empty tomb is common to the resurrection narratives in the gospels. Otherwise, recollections vary and/or narratival strategies in telling us the wondrous news of Jesus vary.
4. Finally, I am struck again, and going back to the theme of "apologetics," by Acts 10:40-41: God's own strategy with the manifestations of the risen Jesus was not to prove to the world at large that Jesus rose from the dead (apologetics), but to strengthen the faith of those who believed in Jesus and to embolden them to preach the Good News (Acts 10:42-43) (empowerment).
In Acts 10:44, the outcome of Peter's preaching is not that people stroked their chins and declared as one body of people, "Ah, I now see, Jesus did indeed rise from the dead." The outcome is that "the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word."
The ultimate proof, if we may so speak, of the resurrection of Jesus is that the Holy Spirit falls upon us, the living presence of Jesus Christ in the world today.
Yesterday's Sermon
Alternatively to the above, you might like to see/hear my sermon from Easter Day, 2026, at the Transitional Cathedral, Christchurch, here, with sermon starting around 26:15.
