Luke 24:1-12

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took spices…  So begins Luke’s account of the day of resurrection. Why the women went so early is not really known, perhaps they were eager to get to the tomb after what must have seemed like the longest Sabbath in history kept them home and bereft after the death of Jesus thirty-six hours before. Maybe they just wanted to avoid the midday heat of Israel in the Spring. Nonetheless, all of the accounts of that first Resurrection Sunday say that it was early, before dawn or as the day was dawning, and that it was women who went to the tomb.

Today we gather on this hill above our city, as the day is dawning, as many Christians have done or shall do around the world today. Some will gather in their chapels or cathedrals and move on to tea and toast together, some will gather on beaches and eat barbequed fish, some will gather in gardens and then move into church. Wherever we gather today as Christians in fellowship we gather as believers in hope; not only as people who accept the facts of the resurrection, that Jesus really did walk out of his own tomb before the women got there; but also as people whose hope is in God to do the same through us, and to raise us from our depths when the world and the powers have buried us. We are people of quiet hope, early morning faith, and like the women who didn’t know the tomb was empty when they brought tears and embalming spices, we bring our doubts and our deaths to an emptied tomb to be reconciled with the One who is Life Abundant.

Next Friday some of us will gather again at dawn, in the centre of our town, to commemorate another sacred event – the beach landings at Anzac. You may not like me using the word “sacred” about that gathering, which no doubt will be far more numerous in attendance than this one, and perhaps better understood by the people of Stawell than what we are doing today: nonetheless it is a day “set apart from ordinary use” and it marks an event which changed our people. We know that death leads to life, and the sacrifice of some brings the hope of freedom to all. The dawn of Christ meant the death of no one else, unlike what happened in the dawn at Gallipoli and Villiers Bretonneux:  Resurrection Day and the Harrowing of Hell should have been The War To End All Wars. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends is a quote from John 15:13 and Jesus speaking of himself during his last meal with those same friends. Lest we forget that as we gather at dawn in six days’ time. Now, as we leave this hill for tea and toast at the Uniting Church in town, and then into what happens today in worship and later at City Park, and whatever this week brings for Australia, let us never forget Jesus’ specific love for our neighbours and ourselves amidst his love for the whole world.

God defend our free land, and to God be the Glory. Christ is risen.