Ep 84 - Faithful to the End

In this Easter Sunday reflection, Fr. Isaac focuses on a powerful and often overlooked detail in the Resurrection story: the first witnesses were women.

In a time when women were not even considered reliable witnesses, the Gospels boldly present them as the first to encounter the risen Christ. Their quiet, faithful presence — when others had fled — becomes the very reason they are entrusted with the greatest news in history.

This homily explores how God consistently works through the lowly and the overlooked, echoing the message of the Magnificat: lifting up the humble and choosing the faithful.

But the reflection goes further — asking what the Resurrection means in a world still marked by suffering, conflict, and uncertainty.

Rather than a distant event, the Resurrection is revealed as something that unfolds in everyday acts of faith, love, and perseverance — often in ways that are quiet, hidden, and easily missed.

This episode is an invitation to remain faithful, especially in the small things — trusting that even there, new life is already breaking through.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to episode 84 of Brother from Another Father as we celebrate Easter Sunday. Dear friends, our gospel today is all about women. And I think often we don't make enough of that as a church. What we need to realize is that in first century Palestine, women were considered second-class citizens. In fact, women were considered so fickle, so unreliable, that they were not even allowed to be witnesses in a court of law in first century Palestine. But these women who were not allowed to be witnesses in a court of law, these are the very same people who God chooses to be witnesses to the resurrection. And not just any witnesses to the resurrection, the very first witnesses to the resurrection. And so we see the same logic that is extolled in Mary's Magnificat. He has chosen the weak and the lowly to shame the proud and the mighty. We see it here fulfilled once again. Jesus, God, choosing women, the weak, those who were considered lowly, those who were considered as nothing in the eyes of the world, this is who God chooses. In a similar way, Jesus chooses us, weak and lowly people, to be the witnesses to his resurrection. And the fact that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection proves something else. It proves that this story was not a fabricated story. If the early church, the early Christian community, wanted to create a story about the resurrection, they certainly wouldn't have decided to make women the first witnesses. This is an illustration that it was really God at work. And we must ask ourselves, why is it that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection? Well, if we look at it, we know that these women, the two Marys, who we are told went to the tomb on that early on that Sunday morning, we are told that they are the same ones who accompanied Jesus and his disciples during their public ministry. These were the same women who were providing for Jesus out of their own means, serving Jesus, probably cooking for Jesus and for his disciples. They were the ones who had faithfully accompanied Jesus through every stage of his ministry. And they are the ones who faithfully accompanied Jesus along the way of Calvary to the cross. Where were his male disciples? They had all split, they had all run for it to hide in fear. Where were his disciples on this day? They were locked in despair. But the women, the women decided to be faithful, and that is why they were witnesses to the resurrection. They decided to be faithful in their service right till the very end. In the Gospel of Mark, we are told that it was the women who went to go and anoint Jesus, to go and anoint his body. But they don't get to do that. They don't get to perform this very last action of love and service for their master. Why? Well, because of instead of ministering to Jesus, it is the risen Christ who comes and ministers to them in their despair, in their weakness, in their sadness. In Shona there is a saying, Sangori no pawaneta, literally, the forest gives when you are tired. Meaning to say that when you are a hunter and you've been hunting after game, and the forest just hasn't been giving you anything, it's just not your day. Don't give up. Because it is when you are tired, it's when you're on your last gram of energy that the forest will suddenly reward you with some animal that you can finally hunt and then take home to feed your family. Sangorinopawa Neta, don't give up when you're tired. It would have been easy for these women to just simply throw in the towel and say, oh well, we thought Jesus was the Messiah, but I guess not. He's dead, so let's just leave it. But they went faithfully. They went faithfully to go to the tomb and anoint his body. And this is why they were witnesses to the resurrection. We too are called to be faithful in the small things, so that God may choose us to be God's witnesses, God's witnesses of hope in the world. But if we ask ourselves today, well, surely Jesus has risen, surely Jesus has conquered death, surely Jesus has conquered all evil, why is there still so much war going on in the world? Why is Trump attacking Iran and sending us all into chaos and affecting us even here in Little Zambia where the fuel prices are not going up? What do we have to do with all this? Where is the power of the resurrection? Well, I think Matthew gives us a clue to how we must answer this question. When he tells us that there was an earthquake. Now, an earthquake in ancient Jewish law was an apocalyptic symbol. It was a sign that we were entering the end times. And so it's very clear that for the early Christian community, when there was this earthquake, when Jesus had risen from the dead, remember anyone who living in the time of Jesus, any Jew who expected a resurrection, expected not just one single resurrection of one person. But the resurrection was supposed to be something that happened for all people at the end of time. And so if God had raised Jesus, this was not just a special privilege for Jesus because he happened to be the Son of God. No, if God had raised Jesus from the dead, this was now the beginning of the end times. The end times had begun. And so, in some sense, 2,000 years later, we are still in the end times. We are still in the final times. What is God waiting for? Well, God is not waiting to say, hmm, okay, let me give it another 3,000 years and then I'll intervene and then I'll make the world end. No. What God is waiting for is for us to appropriate this grace of the resurrection in our own lives. God is waiting for us to be transformed through this grace of the resurrection. Because we know that we live in a world where unfortunately there's still people like Trump who believe that the way to get what you want is through violence and war. And as long as there's still people like Trump who don't seem to understand Jesus' message, we'll go on waiting. But we are people of hope. The resurrection happens when we are faithful in the small things and when we are able to hope. The resurrection happens when a mother continues supporting and praying for her child who is locked in addiction. The resurrection happens when you are waiting for reconciliation with a friend or a relative. And no matter how hard you've tried, maybe you're the one in the wrong and you've apologized, but there's just nothing, nothing doing. And then out of nowhere, somewhere, somehow, it happens. Reconciliation comes about. But we must be careful because the resurrection is not something we can directly see. The resurrection is something subtle that comes, that almost steals into our lives. Because nowhere in the Gospels is the resurrection actually described. We do not have an account anywhere in the Gospels of the resurrection actually happening, of the resuscitation of a corpse. Because that is simply not an adequate description of God's new life at work in us. And I want to end with a story that I recently heard of a fellow parishioner here who had gone to visit her brother at Levi Monawasa Hospital, and noticed in the next bed, lying to next to her brother, was a man who seemed to be in great suffering. She suspected that he had been the victim of a hit and run. And she noticed from talking to certain people around that he had no relatives, that no relatives or friends had been able to be contacted. And so he was all alone, and he had not eaten for three days since he had come out of surgery. She decided to take it upon herself to look for someone, a caretaker, to take care of that man and pay for that person's taking care of him, decided to look for food for him. She then reached out to me and asked, Father, what can we do? How can we help further as a Christian community? And as I was thinking about who I should contact and what sort of things we should do together as a Christian community to help this poor man, I got told by her subsequently that he passed away a few hours later. We think it's very sad, and yes, it is sad. It is sad that people still have to suffer in this way, that people are still forgotten. But by doing what she did, she was a light. In her own small way, she did not let that man die alone. That man died knowing that he was loved and knowing that he was cared for. She shined her light. And because of her brightness, the resurrection, this finality of God bringing the world to its end in Christ's resurrected life, is that much closer to us. If only all of us could be like him, if only all of us could let our light shine. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.