When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. (Mark 16:1)

Jerusalem. Above the city the sky is dark, near jet black save for the starlight and the first touches of purple to the East. The Sabbath day - the seventh day - is coming to an end and folk will rise and leave their homes and, perhaps, talk of that strange other darkness that had covered the land two days before. The day is coming and nothing will stop it. The first day. 

In the upper room of an unknown house the first touches of scarlet are colouring the sky beyond the window and a group of fearful frightened followers of a man put to death in the most barbaric of fashions are waking from fitful slumber as the Passover comes to a close. The day is coming and nothing will stop it. The First Day.

As the sky begins to brighten out here among the silent metamorphic rocks that surround the city we can now make out the shapes of women walking slowly, uncertainly as the sun begins to show itself on the horizon. Forbidden yesterday, by the laws of the Sabbath, to come to tend the body of their their fallen friend, they come bearing spices. The day is coming and nothing can stop it. The First Day.

In the Church we’ve got into the way of calling Sunday the Sabbath because we’ve traditionally thought of it as the day set aside for worship and fellowship in the presence of God and sometimes we’ve tried to superimpose the edicts of the Sabbath onto Sunday by making sure shops were closed and that ferries didn’t sail. When I first moved to Lockerbie in 1985 the shops were shut on a Sunday; if you wanted a Sunday paper there was a kind of shed you went to. In some parts of Scotland they chained up the swings because, apparently, God hates kids playing on the Sabbath. 

Sunday is not the Sabbath; it’s not the seventh day. Especially not this Sunday, this Easter Sunday, this Sunday when we celebrate the raising of Christ from the dead. This is the First Day. The earliest followers of Jesus were Jews who observed the Sabbath as they always had done but, because Christ had been raised on the day following the Sabbath they took to gathering to worship and for fellowship on what we call Sunday - the first day of the week.

Sabbath in the Bible comes from the idea, right the way back in Genesis 1, that God created the world in six days and on the seventh he rested. On the First Day, though, on that First Day when he raised Christ from death he began a new creation - he set humanity on a new course and offered us new hope and a new beginning: he offered a new hope of new and eternal life - a hope that would spread from that simple rock-cut tomb outside Jerusalem until it reached around the world; until, this morning, people in every nation on Earth will respond to the ancient traditional cry - even if it is made over Zoom or Facebook or Teams - “The Lord is risen!” As sunlight spreads, hour by hour, across the globe, longitude by longitude, nation by nation, they will respond: “He is risen indeed!”

All that is yet to come, though. As Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary the mother of James make their way to the tomb they know nothing of what is to come. How many names do we know of women from this time who aren’t queens or empresses. Here we have three They are women in a world where women wield little power or authority but will be the  first people to witness what God has done in the raising of Christ. They’re not even sure how they’re going to get into the tomb, but they will find, though, that God has been at work and, in the years to come, Mary Magdalene will be a massively significant figure in the early Church.

They have come with spices to anoint the body of Christ; a last gesture of love. So simple. So humdrum and ordinary in the great scheme of things but Mark makes a point of mentioning it and Mark doesn’t waste words. This is the First Day and it begins with a simple gesture of love and kindness and thoughtfulness by some of the least important, least significant people in the world. Such things don’t change the world, do they?

Or do they? If God can raise Christ from death, then what can’t he do? If God began a new creation with the rising of Christ then why should he not work through ordinary apparently unimportant folk doing simple things? Isn’t that what the life of Christ was pointing to all along? Isn’t that the point of God coming into the world in the life of the son of a carpenter; of him calling ordinary folk like fishermen and, even, a tax-collector? Isn’t that the point of his enduring the Cross - a form of execution designed to proclaim, “This man was nobody”?

We live in a world where there are those who will tell you that we are no more than biological machines - that our consciousness, our free-will, our souls are nothing more than illusions. There are others who will tell you that we are no more consumers - that our purpose, such as it is, in this world is to make and spend money. There are others who will tell you that human beings are inherently selfish and tribal - that greed and war and poverty are inevitable.

But today is the first day; a day of hope for new life - for you, for me and for humanity - and you and only you can decide what you will do with it. You can choose to be cruel or you can choose to be kind. You can choose to be selfish or you can choose to be generous. You can choose to be bound by the hatreds of tribe or nation or you can choose to reach beyond the barricades to those the world teaches you to mistrust as ‘different’. And it doesn’t matter what choices you’ve made in the past, it doesn’t matter what your regrets are. The days before are gone and this is the First Day.

Only you can choose what to do with it. You can choose to believe the lies the world tells about the poor, the asylum seeker, the outcast or you can challenge them. You can insist that you are not your brother’s keeper or you can forgive the people who’ve hurt you. You can stand aside when folk are treated unjustly, or you can stand beside them. And it doesn’t matter what choices you’ve made in the past. It doesn’t matter how weak you feel you’ve been. The days before are gone and this is the First Day.

It’s the day to wonder. If God can raise Christ from the dead, what can he not do? What can he not do with what you choose today? What can he not do with a word of kindness to those who are hurting? What can he not do with a donation to those in need? What can he not do with a single word that challenges lies that promote hatred and greed? And what can he not do with the faithful love of billions of ordinary men and women?

What might God do with the choices you and I make in the light of this Easter Morning. What new creation might he weave with countless words of love and kindness, with numberless acts of kindness and generosity? Who knows? This is the First Day.