Bible reading: Luke 24:1-12.

Message.

“Do not allow the testimony of women to be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their gender … as it is probable that they may not tell the truth, either out of hope of gain or fear of punishment”.

Those aren’t (you’ll be pleased to hear) my words; they were written by the first century Jewish historian, whose aim was to justify Judaism to cultured Romans. Along the way he provided the earliest independent reference to Jesus and also wrote about “the brother of Jesus, called Christ, whose name was James”. Josephus is clearly a useful person for us to know about, but he did seem to have a problem with women – probably because he wanted to make his Jewish culture palatable to the macho-minded Romans.

That seems an odd place to begin an Easter sermon, doesn’t it? It is, until we start thinking of the story as the Gospels describe it. For we read that the first people to go to Jesus’s tomb, the first people to see the stone rolled away, the first people to encounter the angelic figure, the first people to see that Jesus’s body had vanished – were women, three or possibly four, the accounts are not entirely consistent. And what do we also read? We read that they rushed back to the other disciples (we can imagine them hammering on their front doors, shouting, “Wake up! Wake up! We’ve got the most amazing news to tell you!”) – and we read that the disciples, with the commendable exception of Peter, dismissed their claims as typical female nonsense: the tomb couldn’t have been empty, they couldn’t have met an angel, Jesus who’d they’d seen crucified couldn’t possible have come back to life. The women were simply wrong, hysterical and out of their minds.

But, of course, they weren’t, as the male disciples later found out. They had been too quick to rubbish what the women had said. There were a couple of reasons for this. One is, of course, that the news the women brought was, quite literally, unbelievable. Everyone knew that dead people didn’t come back to life – and they’d witnessed Jesus dying in a particularly horrific way. The disciples appear to have forgotten his promise to rise again – well, how could any sensible person take such a prophecy literally? He must have been referring to “the last day” when every soul would be brought back to life, not a literal resurrection. I suspect that we’d have had the same reaction.

However we must also think of gender bias. We’ve already seen how the Jewish legal system of the day scorned women’s testimonies, although this was nowhere stipulated in the law of Moses, it was a view which, encouraged by the scribes and Pharisees, had grown up over the years and very much reflected the lowly status of women in Jewish society. Pagan society took a similar line; indeed Celsus, the second century Greek philosopher who wrote the first extended critique of Christianity, mocked the faith simply because it was popular among children, slaves and w omen. Jesus’ male disciples were men of their age; doubting the women’s testimony was their natural or default reaction.

However the women come out of the Passion and Easter story far better than the men – or, at least, most of them; even before that morning they had shown exceptional loyalty. For many of Jesus’ male followers had deserted him when he was arrested and crucified but “the women who had followed him from Galilee” stayed with him to the end. These same women also followed Joseph of Arimathea when he took Jesus’ body, wanting to see exactly where it was placed so they could return after the Sabbath to anoint it with funeral spices and perfumes. True, the Jewish authorities and Roman soldiers were unlikely to take any action against “poor defenceless women”; but they still showed courage in sticking with a man who was considered a rebel, disrupter and criminal. That’s because they loved him and wanted to do right by him.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

You may wonder why it was – and is – so important to recognise the part played by women at Easter. One reason – and this is going to sound a bit strange – is that it makes this incredible story more likely to be true. Let me explain. If you’re going to call witnesses to give evidence about something that’s happened, you’ll choose the people who are most likely to be believed – which, in first century Palestine, meant men. But the Gospels turn this on its head as the primary witnesses for Jesus’ resurrection are the supposedly unreliable and emotional women. If the disciples or the early Church had made up the story, they’d never have done that! The fact that despised women are so central to the accounts is a strong pointer to their truthfulness: as Peter says in his first letter, we Christians aren’t following “cleverly devised truths” but are basing our faith on a historical event.

That’s one reason for the Gospels giving women such a central place in the Easter story. But there is another: scholars seem to agree that it’s a deliberate ploy by their authors to show that the Christian faith is for all people and gives them all equal status. Paul gets a black mark for ignoring the women in his list of people who saw the risen Jesus. However he does say, in a verse I’ve often quoted, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. Here is the Christian faith turning the norms of society upside-down, or perhaps ripping them to shreds. Women aren’t second-class citizens in God’s kingdom, good only for cooking, cleaning and child-bearing, they are to be given the same status, respect and opportunities as men. Sadly there are some churches, even today, which don’t seem to realise this; they don’t let women develop their gifts but quietly force them into supporting roles.

I need to say something more before I close, something which lies at the heart of this story: it’s the fact that the women weren’t believed, their accounts were ignored or written off by the men. Ravi Zacharias ran a well-known and respected evangelistic organisation. In 2017 an employee alleged that Zacharias had sexually abused her but, due to his reputation as a Christian leader, she was not believed. However other women came forward over the next few years until it became obvious that, in fact, Zacharias was a sexual predator who had used his power to abuse hundred of women (he died in 2020). Amy Orr-Ewing, a British theologian who worked for Ravi’s organisation later wrote, “ ‘Believe women’ has become the contested slogan of the Me Too movement. I know what happens if we don’t. In the past months I have been living in the eye of a storm of trauma, dismay, and profound grief as new allegations of abuse have battered this organization”.

Such disbelief is all too common. Diane Langberg is an American psychologist who has worked with trauma victims for 50 years. Early in her career a client told her that she had been abused by her father. Langberg wasn’t sure what to do, so went to talk to her supervisor. His reaction was simple but shocking: “Women make these things up. Your job is to not be taken in by them”. Things are better today, but by no means perfect, and one thing that Langberg has learned is that women must be believed when they are describing such distressing things. In all her years of work she has only uncovered two false allegations; all the rest have been true. Diane is a Christian; thinking of the Easter story, I guess she’d say that those Easter disciples show men exactly how not to behave when women tell them their story.

That seems a downbeat and depressing – if realistic – note on which to close; it’s definitely not what you were expecting to hear on Easter morning. All I can say that I think, I hope, that is the unlikely way that God led me to speak today. If I have disappointed or offended anyone, I am sorry; conversely, if this message has spoken to your heart, then I am glad. Women make up half of the world’s population yet in many countries they are still sidelined, excluded from areas of society, silenced, sometimes even imprisoned in their homes. Their voices need to be heard and, when they are heard, they need to be listened to and believed. For if they are, then they and also men will be able to blossom, flourish and enjoy Christ’s new Easter life.