Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I want to talk today about three things. I want to invite you to come to the cross, I want to invite you to come to the tomb, and I want to invite you to come or to go to the world. I want to visit the tomb again, and I want to have a little profile or look at the women. Who were the women at the cross? Who were the women at the tomb? Who were these women that were there and were the only ones basically nearest to Christ bar John the beloved disciple who stood at the cross?

They didn't go to the cross like we do. They didn't go to the cross saying, "What can he do for me? What did he do for me?" That's how we will come to church—what he did for us. We've been singing about it, we'll be thinking about it, we'll be hearing sermons about it. We are not coming to the cross in our thoughts and prayers this Easter like these women came. These women didn't come saying, "What can he do for me?" He was dead! Life had gone out.

They came saying, "What can I do for him?" or "What can I do for the corpse that I might do the last earthly thing I can out of respect?" And that's an important point, and I want you to keep it in mind as we think about these women. As I began to investigate why ever were they there, what kept them there, and why ever were they the only ones that braved—and it was a very brave thing to do—the hierarchy and the soldiers and the army and the world to go to the tomb?

And why did they run around Jerusalem telling everybody he'd risen from the dead and certainly risked their necks and their lives? Why? What was the motivation? Well, they stood at the cross to support him definitely. And we're going to read about that in Mark's Gospel and Matthew's Gospel—just two little incidents here. In Matthew 28, starting at the top of the chapter, it says:

"After the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, Mary Salome, went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow and the guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men."

"And the angel said to the woman, 'Don't be afraid, for I know that you're here looking for Jesus who was crucified. You're looking for a dead man. He's not here. He's not a dead man. He's risen, he's alive, he's a live man. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples he has risen from the dead and he's going before you into Galilee. There you will see him. Now I've told you.'"

"So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy—mixed emotions if there's ever an example of mixed emotions it must be this—afraid yet filled with joy. And they ran to tell his disciples and suddenly Jesus met them. 'Greetings,' he said. 'Shalom.' And they came and clasped his feet and worshipped him and Jesus said, 'Don't be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me.'"

Now it's interesting if you read all the accounts, there's a little bit of difference in each of them. It's just as if four of us went to a baseball game and came home and wrote an account of it. All of us would see different things. All of us would see some of the same things, but all of us would see the things that perhaps we were interested in seeing. And so as you read the different accounts, you might say, "Oh, the Bible contradicts itself; this doesn't say this and this says this."

One says an angel from heaven came and pushed the stone aside and sat on it. And another account says they went into the tomb and found a young man—an angel sitting inside the tomb where the body of Jesus had lain and he has a conversation with the women. And another one says two angels met them and the women ran away and they were so afraid they didn't say anything.

And so what you have to do when you study the scriptures is to realize that everybody's taking a snapshot of what happened. And if you put all the snapshots together, and then if somebody clever could mix them all up and make the picture whole, you'd get the whole picture. And there probably were two angels. Maybe there were more; maybe there was a legion of angels—certainly two that manifested themselves in one instance and then there was one angel sitting on the stone with a puckish smile on his face, rolled the stone away with a finger and sat on it. Such is the power of God.

We don't know quite which women were in a group and which was apart. We know Mary Magdalene was apart, alone, at one point and then in another account she was with the women going to the tomb. And so you have to realize that there were a bunch of women going to the tomb. Some of them are named, some of them are not. But it was the women that day that went to the tomb. And we do know how many women stood at the cross because they are named. They are named. They stood at the cross to support the one they loved more than life itself.

And I suppose it was considered little enough on earth. The soldiers would look around and see a few grieving people. At a crucifixion relatives were allowed to come and stand and support their loved one. They were even allowed to offer them a sponge filled with vinegar to help them with the pain. And so the soldiers would not bother them standing as it says in one account, a little way off. They would not be allowed up to the cross but they would be allowed a little way off. It was considered little enough by those soldiers—those little group of women stayed to watch Jesus being crucified. But it was considered everything in heaven and the Father smiled.

And I believe the angels applauded. The idea that God smiles on women or smiled on women in Jesus' day was a statement that would have made a lot of men unfortunately in Jesus' time laugh because women were considered less than nothing. They were lumped together with slaves and children. Children were not considered very highly either, not just women. Wives, slaves, and children were the property of the man of the house. They were considered property. And actually, a father could actually sell his daughter either into servitude or into marriage in a sense or for some other reason.

So he had rights over wives and children and of course slaves. Women were not allowed to be taught the Torah. Better to give the Torah to a dog than to a woman, some of the extreme Pharisees would say. And so women in the life of Jesus had a pretty low status until Jesus lifted it. And we often argue about what Paul said women can do. What we need to do is study what Jesus did with women first, and then it'll throw light on what Paul did. And actually Paul hired the status of women as well.

But when I look at Jesus and I see him touching women and I see him talking to women and I see him teaching women, it always excites me very much as a woman. And I am a woman in a free world, in a country that honors women and gives women place and abilities and opportunities, and that's where I was born. We cannot arrange where we are born. We cannot arrange what color our skin is. We cannot arrange what part of the globe we're born on or in. But women who couldn't arrange it either were all around Jesus in his ministry.

As I was thinking about it, I was realizing that Jesus touched women and allowed them to touch him, which was absolutely taboo by the Rabbis in his day. An orthodox Jew would not even talk to a woman that was not his wife in public. And the thought of touching a woman or allowing a woman to touch you was always causing gasps whenever Jesus allowed it to happen. The woman that touched the hem of his garment, for example—he turned around and said, "Who touched me?"

He brought attention to it and I can imagine how terrified she was because there was all sorts of repercussions in that culture if a woman would brazenly touch a man or his garments or anything to do with him. And yet Jesus turned around and said, "Who touched me?" And she came trembling and afraid, realizing that she had been healed, that for 12 years she had been bleeding. A Jew would never go near blood, never go near a dead body—it would defile him and he would have to be ritually cleansed if this happened.

And yet here is Jesus, this Rabbi, this teacher, with a strange new attitude to women. And he calls her out and he says, "Daughter, daughter!" Another time he called somebody a daughter of Abraham and I can imagine all the sons of Abraham standing there saying, "Has anybody ever heard anybody else—has anybody ever heard anybody that they can remember back from Abraham and Jacob and all our forefathers call somebody a daughter of Abraham?" Sons of Abraham there are, but daughter of Abraham? And in a nice loud voice Jesus said courteously with dignity, "Daughter of Abraham," and he smiled at her.

So he allowed people to touch him. He also touched a dead body. He cared for a widow whose only son had just died. She lived in Nain. Jesus and his disciples came upon them right at the beginning of his ministry. One of the first things he did—he touched the body. Can you imagine the crowd? They were on the way to bury him. The whole village was with them. The service had been held. Everyone was very sorry for this woman.

Now she would be reduced to penury. Now she would be reduced to awful things because she only had one son and he was dead, and in that culture that meant she would not be cared for. And so this was a terrible thing that had happened. And Jesus stands and looks at the dead body. It was a bier and the young man it says was lying there, perhaps loosely wrapped around with grave clothes. And Jesus touches the bier and touches the body and everybody is absolutely horrified. And then he talks to a dead man! And says, "Young man, get up." The young man sits up. Put yourself there, think about it.

And then Jesus gives the young man, helps him off his funeral bed, and gives him into the hands of his mother—a woman. So here's Jesus touching dead people and here's Jesus caring about widows. It says Jesus said to her two words: "Don't cry. Don't cry." Moved with compassion, touching, talking to women. Teaching women! Have you ever heard any such thing? Well they never had. "Mary, come here, I need to teach you something. I need to tell you about the cross. In a week I'm coming up to be crucified but don't worry about it, I will rise again from the dead."

Who was listening? Nobody. Were the disciples? No. Mary was. Martha wasn't. She was distracted by all her doing, remember. And so can we be. Jesus wanted to teach. The Rabbi wanted to teach a woman? Have a woman sit at his feet and be taught? Incredible. Touching, talking, teaching. What a wonderful thing Jesus did. He said, "I died for women as much as I died for men." But it's in his teaching that the interest comes to me. Women in the parables of Jesus—have a look sometime. Matthew has most parables in it. Just start and read right through Matthew.

Give yourself an hour, sit down—it'll only take that long. And every time you come to a parable, notice how many women are used as examples in them. And this was an absolute precedent. No Rabbi, no teacher ever used women's illustrations. Now sometimes we sit in church and we feel a bit like that don't we? We think, "If I hear one more illustration about football I will get up and leave this church! When is somebody up there going to think about me and my world? And me at home, and me with the children, and me brushing out the house if I've lost something that's very important to me?"

"And me kneading the dough and making the food for my family and what the leaven means and the ingredients in my food?" Jesus used illustrations about women, for women, women's world, women's lives. Can you imagine the women who were in his audience? How excited they must have been? And when you look at who he uses in his parables and why he uses them, that really blows your mind. Jesus used parables often to talk about his care and compassion for the last, the least, and the lost. The last, the least, and the lost.

And he often put in his stories people like the publican who was praying in the temple, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner," a despised publican, tax collector. He used parables in twins, in twos. And if you look at them in the twos, teaching about the same thing in the same chapter, you've got a parable about a publican who is praying and in the same breath he begins to talk about a widow who comes to an unjust judge and persists until she receives her reward and what she needs from the judge.

He uses a woman in an exemplary example and a man in a not very good light. In that parable he uses the publican, the man, in a very good light and he uses the Pharisee who doesn't even bow his head and says, "I thank thee God I'm not like other women"—another man in a bad light. And so Jesus wants to tell us—women and men. God made man, male man, female man. It's one word. God made humanity male and female. And Jesus wanted us to know it. The last, the least, and the lost.

And I think it's in that parable of the lost coin—it's a threesome, that parable isn't it? The lost sheep, the lost son, the lost coin. And he uses the example of the shepherd as a picture of God seeking the lost sheep. He uses the woman as an example of God seeking the lost coin, and he uses the father as an example of God seeking the lost son. An analogy where a woman is used as an analogy of God the Father? What an incredible thing. So you have to understand Jesus has been expanding people's minds all over the place in his attitude to women.

And so maybe it shouldn't surprise us that women are at the cross, because they loved him. They appreciated it, and they gave up everything to follow him. Now I want to look quickly at who was there. Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary was there at his birth obviously. She welcomed him to her womb and to her world. At the beginning of time a woman was deceived and the race fell. In the fullness of time a woman conceived and the race was saved, we believe, by the son that was born of this woman.

The seed of the woman will bruise the serpent's head, prophecy in Genesis 3. The descendant of Eve will crush Satan one day. We believe that happened at the cross of Christ. So Mary was there at his birth, through his life, and at his death. She was still very young when the sword pierced her heart as she stood at Calvary. The old man in the temple had said, "A sword will also pierce your heart," a prophecy. A sword would pierce her son's heart literally, and as she watched that happen, a sword pierced his mother's heart.

Awfully young to have a baby. Awfully young to watch a crucifixion, your son's crucifixion. She was probably 45 years of age. So here was Mary at the foot of the cross. What should or what could she do for Jesus? Just be there. Just be there. Which interests me very much because when one of your children's in trouble it's very hard to think about anything else, isn't it? It was obvious that Mary would be there because that was one of her children on the cross.

But for us, let me just apply this for a minute. It's very, very hard when we are distracted as mothers when one of our children is in trouble to concentrate on Mary's son or the son of this mother, isn't it? Have you ever been in Easter services and been struggling with something that's happened to one of your children in the family? How hard is it to concentrate? How hard is it not to be at the cross? And I would invite you this Easter as you come, whatever's happening in your life, to try and concentrate and realize that you can sit through a whole weekend of Easter services and you may as well not be here if you're not able to stand at the cross and think about him.

I remember an incident many, many years ago. It was Good Friday. I was here in church and I was sitting in the pew in the new sanctuary having a conversation with God, and this was my conversation I'll share it from my heart. Easter comes around as quickly as Christmas, Lord, or so it seems, I murmured as I slipped into a back pew. Yes. I'm glad so many people come to Good Friday services, Lord. I'm glad I can be here. There was silence.

"I'm trying to concentrate, Lord, to focus on what it's all about. It's hard for you, Jill, when you're so worried about your son," he said simply. Yes. I tried and tried to keep my mind on the service, but at the end of the day there I was with my thoughts anywhere but where they should have been, worrying myself into a state. And the last hymn was announced and I gave a guilty start. "Lord, forgive me," I cried from the deep chamber of my soul. "I feel terrible, I couldn't concentrate. In fact, I may as well not have been here. You see my son is in trouble; he's dying inside."

Then I heard his sweet understanding saying to my soul, "When my son was dying, I couldn't think about anything else either. I know what's happening in your heart." And then I was able to sit quietly till all the people left the sanctuary and then I could worship. And I thought about the day his son came home through the front door, all bloodied and beaten up. And I wept. "So sorry, Father, so sorry, Father, for my part in all of that. Forgive me." "Done," I heard him say. "See you on resurrection morning."

Then I could pray, "Father, thank you for Good Friday. Never let me get used to the things I know. Let them never be old hat. Forgive my distracted heart. Keep the cross before me all the days of my life. Help me to stand there like Mary as if you were my son. As if you were my son." So when your kids are hurting it's hard to think about anyone else's children, isn't it? Someone has said you're only as happy as your unhappiest child. I think that's true. I really do. I really think that's true.

But come back to the cross and think about what Mary was going through. Even with a close few people around her that did belong to her, she must have felt so alone. And Jesus must have long to come down from the cross and put his arms around her, but they were pinned of course quite securely in place with a nail. Nail to my cross, nail to my shame, nail there to die in my place, nail to my tree and crowned with my thorns, dressed in my sin and disgrace. Nail to my wrongs that caused him to come into a world filled with hate, nail to my fears and nail to my tears, dying so he could relate.

Living he loved me, dying he saved me, rising he gave me new hope. Heaven above me, new life within me brings power that helps me to cope. So cause me to praise you and lead me to thank you for all that brings heaven so near. Nail to my cross you delivered my soul from lostness and all that I fear. Now Mary did have some other support. Mary the mother of James the Less. Mary the mother of James and John—her sister. Do you know, I never realized that? I think I knew it until I started studying who these women were. Mary had her sister at the cross.

And she had her nephew there, who was John, which makes complete sense of the fact that Jesus gave John the responsibility of caring for his mother when he couldn't do it anymore. Mary the mother of James the Less, let me start here before I come to Salome, was the mother of James the Less, one of the twelve disciples. You know, if I asked you, "Name me the twelve disciples," could you do it? Well, we could all name the four famous ones, couldn't we? And then we'd struggle a bit and think of two more.

Can you think of the six we don't know very much about just like that? It's very hard, I find I struggle. Well, one of the twelve was called James the Less and he had a brother called Joses and both of them were very well known in the early church. And so one of the twelve—the mother of one of the twelve, who had been with Jesus and traveling with him and caring for him and so forth was also at the cross. And it did strike me because Salome, the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus—three mothers at the cross. I mean there weren't very many women there, but three mothers at the cross! That's quite a group isn't it?

What a thing and yet who but a mother would turn up at the cross? That's what mothers are for I think. And you never stop being a mother or a grandmother. You're a grand-mother. You never stop being a mother anyway. You just go there, you just be there, and you just cry there and those are all valid things. You know, one of the things when we think of what can we do for somebody because as we do it unto some of the other people we do it unto him, if somebody is in real trouble in a sense they're carrying a cross or they're having a terrible time—life has gone out for them—just go there, just be there, and just cry there.

That's called a ministry of presence and a ministry of silence and a ministry of tears. And that's what I see these women exercising: a ministry of silence, presence, and tears. I remember years and years ago going for World Relief to Bosnia in the height of the conflict there. And I took ten women with me and we met in Zagreb and we said, "What are we going to do when we get down to the front where a thousand refugees were coming over the border every day?"

And so they told us what we would be doing: we would be working very hard with all the other relief workers and NGOs, handing out clothes, processing people as they came over the border, trying to help them in the first shock as they arrived in that processing place. And some of the women with me said, "Well, what are we going to say? I mean, what do you say to somebody that's just seen their husband's throat slit and their daughter raped? We're just women; we're not counselors, we're not clever professional Christian people. I mean, what do you say? What are we going to say?"

And the lady who was leading us, who was a veteran missionary from Vietnam actually, a good friend of mine, said, "Probably nothing. Just be there. Just have a ministry of presence, just have a ministry of silence, just have a ministry of tears." And so one of the women said, "Well, we've got to say something." And she said, "Well, just say, 'I just had to come.' And will that be enough?" She said, "Yes." Well, we get there and we enter this hellhole of a situation and we have five of the most for me traumatic times of my life.

I don't think I can ever compare anything to what I saw and what I heard at that point on that border of Croatia and Bosnia as we got involved. Well, one day after the meeting that Dr. Peter Kuzmic had in the great big church on the border every night—if anybody wanted to come he held a service in his seminary that was on the border there and he was heading up this relief effort. He said, "Where are your women?" I said, "Well, I think they're all around the refugees. We've been working all day, they just came out of the service."

And I said, "Oh yes, there's one of them and there's another one." And I looked and it was absolutely amazing because Bosnian and Croatian women and Serbian women are very tactile. They're very touchy, very demonstrative. And they were buried underneath these women—these women had hold of our women. And it suddenly dawned on me, women are ideal for situations like this because men cannot do that. But we can! The women were all talking to them—well, of course they couldn't understand a thing—but there was an interpreter with each of our women standing in that circle.

And so I said, "Let's go around find out what's happening." So I started going around these little groups of these women surrounded by these people, just hanging on to them. And I said to the interpreter because I could see our women were saying something. I said, "What are they saying?" And she said, "It's really very strange. They're all saying the same thing! They're all saying, 'We just had to come.'" I said, "Really? That's wonderful." And I said, "What are the people saying back to them?" And she said, "Well, they're just saying, 'You came! You came from America. You actually got in a plane at your own expense and you came all the way here because you just had to come.'"

To have a ministry of presence—"I just had to come." And of course a ministry of tears was very, very easy for women. And so there it is. And there were these mothers at the cross—they just had to come. And you know, sometimes I know for myself if I'm facing a very traumatic situation I don't want to go. It's very hard to walk into somebody's pain, somebody's deep pain. I'm a coward about it. It's very hard. And yet if I can just go, if I can just be there, have a ministry of presence, tears, and silence, it's all that's needed. Jesus appreciated it.

And then there's Salome, the sister of the mother of Jesus. Sometimes she's called Mary Cleopas. She followed him from Galilee. She was the mother of James and John. And so Jesus had his mother, his aunt, and his nephew at the cross. Some of the people that were closest to him. And it helps when you've got a sister by your side. And then there was Joanna whose husband was Chuza who managed Herod's household. Now, this was amazing this woman was here.

Let me tell you a little bit about her bravery to be there. She was married to the man who managed one of the most awful tetrarchs in history, managed his affairs. Herod Antipas was the king of Judea when Jesus began his ministry. Tetrarch of Galilee where Jesus began his ministry. Jesus called him "that fox" publicly. A fox meaning full of cunning but also a fox was denigrated by everybody; it was a nothing animal. And that's what Jesus called him.

When Herod sent for Jesus because he wanted to watch him do a miracle, Jesus of course shunned his request. And so his life was a mess. He had a brother called Philip who had a pretty wife. And so Herod just seduced his brother's wife and then married her. And John the Baptist who was around at the time walked into the palace one day and said, "You shouldn't have done that. It's not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. Not this way." Well, that didn't go down very well, so he shut up John in prison and eventually was having a big party when his daughter Herodias was doing her dancing stuff.

And he was so pleased and so were the men watching that he said, "What you want? Anything in my kingdom." And she said, "The head of John the Baptist on a plate." And Herod was sad because he loved to hear John preach, even though he'd shut him up in prison. And so that's what happened. And who is managing that feast? Chuza, Joanna's husband. Was she there? Maybe. Or maybe she was out helping Jesus because by Luke chapter 6, we have a group of women and she is named as one of them who are ministering out of their own means and money and helping in the campaign that has started traveling with the man.

But at least Herod must have known that his main man's wife was following this Galilean. And very soon afterwards Herod gets fed up with the popularity that Jesus is accruing to himself and so decides to kill him and that's when Jesus moves up into Judea and out of his way. Was Chuza the one that told Joanna, "You better tell that preacher of yours to get out of the area; my master's going to kill him"? Or did he appreciate his wife running all over the world following a Rabbi?

Which incidentally had never, ever been done before. Male disciples there were, but never female disciples accompanying the master as he taught and as he healed and as he helped. So here's Joanna at the cross! Was she brave or what? Where was Herod? In Jerusalem at this point. Herod had actually had Jesus dressed in this atrocious way after being played with by the soldiers in Pilate's palace, standing in front of him. And it says he was so glad to see him. Now maybe he'd get to see his miracle he'd been trying to see all this time.

And so they blindfold Jesus and somebody hits him and starts to rough him up and say, "Go on, tell us who hit you," which of course he could see right through the bandages but answered them not a word. The clock stopped ticking for Herod. Have you ever heard a clock stop? I mean, you don't realize it's ticking till it stops. And God had been speaking to Herod for a long time—tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. And here's God standing in front of him but the clock stopped. He answered him not a word. He'd had his chance.

So he sends him back to Pilate. Who's with Herod in Jerusalem? I did a bit of digging: the people that managed Herod's household would certainly have been there. Chuza. So here's the prisoner in front of Herod. Where's his wife? Where's Chuza's wife? Well, I tell you what: she's following him up the Via Dolorosa soon and she's standing at the cross. And she actually goes to the tomb. Is she brave or what? And then there's Mary Magdalene. We all know about her story don't we?

Wealthy, outrageous acts of love for Jesus, influential, everyone knew her. Had been demon-possessed—seven demons cast out of her. Seven is perfect figure in the Bible: complete possession. Not necessarily immoral—we get her mixed up with the sinner woman that anointed Jesus' feet. But certainly insane. And now a woman of influence joins Jesus. Luke chapter 8 is named as one of the people that were with him in ministry there. Poured money, help, influence into Christ's cause.

She was very dangerous to the authorities because she was a living example of a totally transformed life. And they couldn't allow those sort of people to walk around, stand at crosses, and go to tombs of the said prisoner. So she was there. And after the cross and after they'd prepared the spices and taken the Sabbath day of rest, Mary, Mary Cleopas, not Mary the mother of Jesus—John had taken her home to his home in Jerusalem—but the other Mary, the Bible says, Mary Cleopas, Mary Magdalene, Salome, Joanna, Susanna who we haven't even mentioned, took the things to the tomb.

And they kept saying, "Who will move away the stone? Who will move away the stone?" All they could think about was this big stone. Let me explain about the stone in those graves. There is a trough right in the front of the grave and there's this massive stone, round shape. And the trough runs one way and the grave mouth is here and the trough runs downwards. So they start the stone because it's too big to just manhandle by anybody at the top and the momentum helps and they push it into place. It is almost impossible to push it uphill and get it out of the way.

And so the women with the spices in their hands are running towards the tomb saying, "Who's going to move the stone? Who's going to move the stone?" Now remember, they were not going to see a resurrection. They were going to see a corpse. You have to realize they stood at the cross not expecting anything from Jesus—he was dead. They went to the tomb not expecting anything from Jesus—he was dead. But one thing they could do: they could anoint him with spices.

The Jews did not embalm, but they would anoint with spices and all the spices had wonderful meanings for their dead. And this would also help in the heat of the Middle East to stop the body decomposing and the smell being quite so bad. And so they were doing the last thing that they could do. They were not expecting a resurrection. One of the reasons I believe that we can believe that Jesus was God is that nobody was expecting him to rise again. Certainly not the women. It was as much a shock to them as it is to people that come to faith to believe it.

And they come fully expecting a corpse and here's the angels saying, "Come and see the place where he lay." Now later, when Peter and John ran in—and incidentally the angel did not roll away the stone to let Jesus out. He was long gone resurrection morning! They rolled away the stone to let us in. And so the angel said, "Come and see the place where the Lord lay." It was that that convinced John and Peter who didn't believe the women. They said, "Oh, it's idle tales, it's nonsense," they were distraught when the women first told them.

It was the clothes that convinced them because they were in the shape of a man. It was as if the body, which it had, had risen right through them. It was the clothes that convinced them. Peter saw the clothes and the napkin laid on its own because the clothes that are wrapped around the head is a little separation before you start and wrap the body. And so as Peter and John looked at the evidence, there it was: the clothes had just collapsed down in the shape of the corpse and the man, the corpse, was gone.

So this was quite some evidence. But it wasn't nearly as much of an evidence as coming around a corner of a bush in the tomb and having the risen Christ say, "Shalom, shalom." And their incredible amazement is one of the affirmations of the resurrection, one of the reasons that we believe. It took everything for Jesus to convince his own closest disciples that he was alive. He upbraided them for their unbelief: "I told you I was going to rise again! I told you I was God!"

He upbraided them for not believing the women when they came. "Why didn't you believe them? I sent them to tell you." So first of all, we've got two incredible evidences of his resurrection. First of all, who moved the stone? Who moved the stone? Of course, some people and the Jews of the day told the soldiers who ran and told the Jews who moved the stone. "This big angel came and we just dropped down like dead men and we looked up and the stone was gone and we've come here to tell you."

And they gave them a lot of money, so the Bible says, so that they would spread that around: that the disciples came and stole the body away. But if the disciples had come and stolen the body away, I want you to know they'd still be behind locked doors today. They were frightened out of their mind. They were not at the cross; it was too dangerous. They were not at the tomb; it was too dangerous. So what changed them to be thrown to lions and ripped apart by bears and made into human torches for Nero's dinner parties?

Something happened: they met the living Christ. It says at one point he appeared to 500 people at one time. He appeared to James, his own brother. He appeared to Peter. He appeared to two men on the road to Emmaus in a different form and they didn't recognize him until he broke bread and they saw his hands. He'd risen from the dead. And so as the women came to the tomb, not expecting a resurrection, they came anyway. Brave women to do the last thing they could. Not without fear; they were distressed, they were disappointed, life had gone out, but they found the miracle.

And they ran to tell—they ran to tell, one of the gospels says. Full of fear and joy. Mixed emotions. And so I don't know how you're coming to Easter. Some of you are coming and you're not expecting anything because you don't even believe. You don't even believe that Jesus was God, the Messiah that the Jews had waited for. And so you have no expectations. And maybe you're coming to Easter with a lot of disappointment and distress and problems in your family and your home.

And I would just encourage you to come to Easter with a different mindset and examine the claims of Jesus and who he was and look at what he did and the evidence that points to the fact that he was not just a good man but a god-man, and that maybe he was the Messiah—the one who came. And those of you that are believers but you are so distracted by what's happening to your son or your daughter or your husband or your mother or your father that you're going to sit right through these Easter services and you're not going to be able to think of a thing—you may as well not be here.

And I would encourage you to come as you are—disappointed, distraught, just like these women came, maybe not even with any expectation. You know, some of the greatest prayers that I have never prayed have been answered. Some of the prayers I should have been praying, and I couldn't pray, have been answered. And God doesn't mind how you come to the cross and he doesn't mind how you come to the tomb; he just wants you to come this Easter. And he wants to surprise you with joy.

He wants to give you an understanding intellectually of the reasons Christians believe that Jesus Christ was God, and then he wants you to meet him and never be the same. And not only that, he wants to involve you. Women! There's a place at his side for us. Now I'm going to tell you a favorite story to end with. Jesus said to the women, "Go and tell the disciples." And that in a culture where women were not allowed to be witnesses in court—he chose women as his first witnesses to the resurrection.

Go and tell! Tell the disciples, tell the men, tell the women, tell the children, tell the world, tell Jerusalem, tell Galilee, go back to Nazareth, go back all over the places that you've been, go back to your families, go back to your friends, go back to your enemies and tell them that I'm alive. Tell them that I'm alive. And they did. It was a new day for women. See them in the upper room waiting for Pentecost. Holy Spirit fell on men and women, enabling them to do what God had called them to do: to be witnesses to the world.

Go into all the world and tell everybody, make disciples of all nations—that was Jesus' last words. And he used women to do it. Look at them, look through the Acts of the Apostles. They're there in the upper room. They're equally lost but they're equally saved and they're equally filled and they're equally used with men. Men and women. Jesus is not only color blind; he's gender blind where his work is concerned.

I have a friend called Elizabeth Mittelstaedt. She's Croatian and Serbian. She's beautiful, she's a wonderful woman, very humble, very quiet. When she was a little girl of six, she lived behind the Iron Curtain under communism. She was in what we call an underground church, a little group of beleaguered people—if the police found them they'd be carted off to jail. That's when she grew up, how she grew up. But they had seven or eight people in their little house church in their family.

And sometimes men would come with a piece of the scriptures—just one piece—and it could be Old Testament, it could be New Testament. They would scribble out that piece of literature and they'd hide it under the carpet or behind the curtains or behind pictures so they could read it again and memorize it. And the brave men that brought it—and they were all men until one day—risked their lives literally and their families' lives to do this work. And that's what's happening in some countries even today—those little underground cells are in operation.

It's very, very dangerous work. And little Elizabeth at the age of six used to think, "Oh, wonderful, wonderful people, what wonderful men of God these are." And then one day a Bible woman, a woman came! She had never seen a woman do anything in her little tiny house church except listen. Just sit there quietly and listen. And here's this woman with two pages of the book of Philippians, I think it was. I can't remember exactly, but it was two pages.

And so this woman comes and this little girl sits there looking and then this lady explains this scripture to them and she realizes that God is using this brave lady to do this work and travel from home to home and home and do this wonderful work for God. And God has chosen her and he's pulled her by his side and he appreciates her and he's enabled her and he's made her brave and strong to stand at the cross and go to the tomb in the face of the society and their family and their whole hierarchy and everything else.

And she prays a prayer at the age of six. "Oh God, if you ever need another woman, call on me. If you ever need another woman, call on me." Well then she grew up under communism and it got worse and worse and in the end she and two friends escaped to the West, to West Germany. And some believing families, some Christian families took her in and that's where she grew up. And she ended up in Bible school, she met her husband.

And then one day she went for a procedure at the dentist and some terrible thing happened and a nerve was severed in her face. And it's the nerve that has to do with the talking and the moving of the jaw. And she has been from then till now in constant agony, pain—pain that cannot be assuaged but one way: to sever that nerve and stop her talking forever. And she's chosen not to do that. And so here this is: this woman who lives in pain. And at first it was incredible and it just got too much for her.

And one day she decided to kill herself. And she went to a bridge in Germany and she was going to throw herself over into the river. And as she was about to do this a voice she says as clear as yours or mine said to her, "Elizabeth, Elizabeth, you said, 'If I ever need another woman call on me.' I'm calling on you. I want you to do something for me." And in absolute shock she got down from that bridge, went home, told her husband Dieter what had nearly happened.

And he said, "Well, what did God say to you? What did God say to you he wanted you to do?" She said, "You're going to think I'm absolutely crazy, but this idea came into my mind at that point: start a magazine for women." And he said, "What?" And she said, "I don't understand it, Dieter." Well, in the days that followed they began to understand it. And in the basement of their little tiny apartment in West Germany Lydia Magazine was born.

And they began to smuggle this magazine for women behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War. And they had no idea what happened to it. They risked a lot and other people risked a lot to take that magazine and Bibles, smuggle them in to the people they didn't know idea what happened to them. Well of course they got the other side of the Iron Curtain and people like I've been telling you ripped them apart and took a page each and copied it out and took it to the underground church and started to get those Bibles out there.

So the little magazine disappeared at the border—they had no idea. And then years later the wall comes down! Albania and Bulgaria and all over the Eastern Bloc. And so of course guess who's some of the first people in: Elizabeth Mittelstaedt and Dieter Mittelstaedt and people that have been working and smuggling and Brother Andrew and all the people that have taken Bibles in all those years. They're in there to find out what's happened.

Well, it was four years after that that I stood in Budapest, Hungary in the stadium with Elizabeth Mittelstaedt, privileged to be her speaker that day. And I watched the women come in and fill it. On every single seat was a Lydia Magazine. And I said, "Elizabeth, they've come for you! They've come to meet the editor." And she just stood there weeping. She said, "I had absolutely no idea." But she said, "Jill, one million women take this magazine today. One million women take Lydia Magazine today."

And those women filled that place and stood and cheered and clapped, raised their hands to heaven in thankfulness for this little diminutive gorgeous woman who said, "If you ever need another woman, call on me." That's what Mary and Salome and Joanna and Hannah and all those women that are unnamed who stood at the cross and went to the tomb say to me. They said, "If you ever need another woman, whether you live I'll serve you, whether you die I'll serve you. I don't care. I'm going to serve God. I'm going to serve God."

Well, come to the cross. That's something you can do for him. Not what can he do for you only, but what can I do for him? Consider it! Come to the cross and then come to the tomb and look at the evidence. Who had the body? Who moved the stone? Why were these people totally transformed and be willing to do what they did? Why were they such joyful incredible people? Why did they spill out of that room at Pentecost all over the city saying, "He's alive, he's alive, he's alive!"? Maybe it's true. Pray with me if you will.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for these women we've met today. Real women, women like us. And yet women that never had the education that we've been privileged to have, women that never had privileges that women have that we have today, women who were so convinced of who Christ was that they risked everything, often in the face of even their families, Lord, to stand at your cross and say, "This is where I am and this is who I serve."

Lord, I thank you for their courage, I thank you for their example, and I thank you, Lord, that you honored them by giving them the first opportunity to tell the world that you indeed are alive. Forgive us for being distracted, Lord. Take those distractions and set them apart for this is so important. And help us to see you: dying for us, rising for us, sending us to a world that needs to hear that Jesus Christ is living. We ask it for Christ's sake, Amen.