“But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  Luke 24:11

Richard Dawkins is a name to conjure with.  You have probably heard of him.  You might even know something about him.  It is possible, perhaps, that you have read some of his work.  It may be that you have read ‘The God Delusion,' or, at least, know something about it.

Dawkins is, without a doubt, a clever man and a gifted communicator.  But when it comes to the spiritual nature of the human condition, he seems to drown in a sea of irrelevance.  For him, the Christian faith is nothing more than an ‘idle tale.'  I don’t wish to put words into his mouth, but I think he would agree with Shakespeare’s Macbeth - that life is nothing more than ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’, and that this would certainly be true of what we might call the Christian life.

Easter Day, of all days, is a day when we Christians joyfully celebrate life.  It is a day of triumph, for we believe that death has been defeated.  However, it is not a day of triumphalism, and we would do well to remember that on that first Easter Day, in the misty dawn, things got off to a somewhat shaky start, if we run with our gospel this morning.  Let me remind you.

I want to focus your attention on our gospel this morning, which tells of the part played by the women that day.  Firstly, let’s take a look at them.  Who were they?  Mary Magdalene we have heard of.  Mary the mother of James we know little about apart from who her son was, but which James was he?  And Joanna?  Well, she was known to Luke, because he mentions her once earlier in the gospel, and like Mary Magdalene she had been healed of a severe mental condition.  These three women were good folk who, it would seem, followed Jesus and looked after him and his twelve disciples.

So early on that morning, the first day of the week, we find them going together to the tomb, carrying spices to prepare the body of Jesus for a proper burial after what had been a hasty interment.  Imagine the scene.  Early dawn, light just beginning to break through, the sun not yet risen, in that kind of half-light.  Things do not go according to plan when they find that the stone covering the entrance to the tomb has been rolled away.  They take a look inside – there is no body there.  As they puzzle over this, suddenly two shining figures, men, appear before them and frighten the life out of them.  They have a message for them.  ‘Don’t look here.  This is a place for dead people.  Jesus is alive!’

They run back to the city and find the eleven remaining disciples, and tell them the good news.  But the reception they get is, to say the least, frosty.  Luke says: ‘….. these words seemed to them (the disciples) an idle tale, and they did not believe them.’.

Now isn’t that just typical of some men?  These were just women, who for three years had done their cooking and laundry.  What did they know?   How could mere women know anything?  If there was anything to be known, then it would be the men who would know it.

To be fair, Peter ran off to check it out, and to his amazement, he found the story to be just as the women had said.

Now, to me, there is a parable here.  In the very earliest days of the church, as a careful reading of church history will show, there were women in leading roles.  These two Marys, together with Joanna, were, according to Luke, the first witnesses that Jesus was risen from the dead – something which came to carry great kudos in the early church.  But it wasn’t long before women became quite sidelined when it came to leadership, partly due, of course, to the spirit of the times, and perhaps the lingering influence of the old religion.

Ever since then, there has been a somewhat dismissive attitude on the part of men with regard to what women can and cannot do.  It is still rampant in some sections of the church.  Just over a year ago, I was told, perfectly seriously, by an Anglican priest that he had a great respect for women, even as ministers, but there was no way that they could be priests.  I have to say that he didn’t really rate me very highly either as I am a mere Methodist! 

Now this is serious, and I have to say that the church, in, for instance, ordaining women to the priesthood, has been rather mealy mouthed in countering the spurious arguments put forward by these ecclesiastical backwoodsmen.  Let me explain, and let me show you how it relates to the Easter message.

The matter of women’s ordination to the priesthood is not about political correctness.  It is about the chickens of the message of the resurrection coming home to roost.  It is about the God who raised Jesus making all things new.  It is about a gospel message which takes new wine and puts it into new wineskins, because if it was put into old ones, they would burst.  The laws, the innumerable laws and their variations of the old religion were no longer adequate.  A new day was dawning, and the message was that things which had never been done before could now happen.  This is what the New Testament calls the Kingdom of God.  It also tells us that if we want to be part of it, we must repent, that is to say, change the way we think.  Now, in the 21st century, we are just beginning fully to realise the implications.

The world-wide Christian church, God bless it, at its best no longer dismisses women to the coffee urn and the flower vase, even though those things bring us all great joy – especially today!  But men, if they were willing, could do these things too.  Women, like men, can take major, as well as minor roles.

We all know about men who feel threatened by clever, intelligent women.  Well, such women have been there all the time, and there are even some among us this morning!  For too long the church managed to consign them to minor roles, especially when it came to the sacraments.  The arguments to support such thinking are, and always have been, extremely thin.  For too long we have been content to stay settled in our old ways, and not make the challenge.

This is no ‘idle tale’.  The Easter message is about new life, living in a new way, the way of the Kingdom.  The old has passed away, the new has come.  That is what we celebrate today.