What is most peculiar about
Easter is that although the followers of Jesus had heard him say he would break
the bonds of death, when he actually did, no-one believed it …. The followers
were not expecting a Resurrection and, therefore, did not imagine they saw
something of which they were ardently hoping. Even Mary Magdalene, who within
that very week had seen been told about the Resurrection when she saw her own
brother raised to life from the grave, did not believe it. She came on Sunday
morning to the tomb with spices to anoint the body—not to greet a Risen
Saviour. On the way, the question of the women was: ‘Who will roll back the
stone?’ Their problem was how they could get in; not whether the Saviour would
get out.
Fulton
Sheen The Way to Inner Peace
Early in the morning on that first Easter Day, Mary Magdalene, Peter,
and John come to the tomb. They have seen their Lord and Saviour betrayed by a
close friend, falsely accused, flogged, and killed. We can scarcely imagine
what’s going through their minds: grief, anguish, bitterness, Peter’s regret at
having denied Jesus, of not being brave enough to say that he was a follower of
Jesus, Mary and John who stood by the Cross, just want to be close to him in
death as in life. They can’t quite take in what has happened: a week ago he was
hailed as the Messiah, God’s anointed, the successor of David, now he has been
cast aside: all his words of God’s love have fallen on deaf ears, he has been
cast aside, ignored, a failure, a madman who wanted to change the world.
Mary sees the stone rolled away, in
the darkness, she doesn’t understand but says to Simon Peter ‘they have taken
away the Lord out of the sepulchre and we know not where they have laid him’
her concern is for the dead body of Jesus. She does not know, she does not yet believe.
As Mary has run away from the tomb, John and Simon Peter run towards it. John
sees the cloths but does not go in. Peter goes in first and sees everything.
Then John sees and believes: God has raised Jesus from the dead. It is John’s
love for Our Lord and Saviour which allows him to see with the eyes of faith,
to make sense of the impossible, the incomprehensible.
As Christians we need to be like the
Beloved Disciple: to love Our Lord and Saviour above all else, to see and
believe like him, and through this to let God work in our lives. For what
happened on that hillside nearly two thousand years ago, early in the morning,
on the first day of the week is either nothing at all: a delusion of foolish
people, a non-event of no consequence or interest, something the world can
safely ignore or laugh at, mocking our credulity in the impossible, poor childish
fools that we are, or it is something else: an event of such
importance that the world can and will never be the same again.
In dying and rising again, Jesus has
changed history; he has changed our relationship with God, and our relationship
with one another. He has broken down the gates of Hell to lead souls to Heaven,
restoring humanity to the loving embrace of God, to open the way to heaven for
all humanity, where we may share in the outpouring of God’s love, which is the
life of the Trinity. His death means that our death is not the end, that we
have an eternal destiny, a joy and bliss beyond our experience or understanding:
to share in the life and love of God forever – this is what God does for us,
for love of us, who nailed him to a tree, and still do with our dismissals or
half-hearted grudging acceptance, done for propriety’s sake.
There can be no luke-warm responses to
this; there is no place for a polite smile and blithely to carry on regardless
as though nothing much has happened. Otherwise, we can ask ourselves: why are
we here? Why do Christians come together on the first day of the week to listen
to the Scriptures, to pray to God, to ask forgiveness for our manifold sins, to
be fed by Christ, with Christ: His true body and His blood, and for Christ: to
be his mystical body, the Church in the world?
We are to be something different,
something out of this world, living by different standards and in different
ways, living lives of love not selfishness, self-satisfaction and sin. In
baptism we died with Christ and were raised to new life with him, we are to
live this life, and to share it with others: ours is a gift far too precious to
be kept to ourselves, it is to be shared with the whole world, every last human
soul, that they too may believe, perfecting creation, and bringing all of
prodigal humanity into the embrace of a loving Father, filled with His Spirit,
conformed to the pattern of His Son. This is our life, our calling, to have
that same singularity of purpose of those first disciples, who saw and believed,
who let God in Christ change their lives and share this great free gift of
God’s love with all the world.
So let our hearts be filled with joy, having died with Christ and
raised to new life with him. Let us take that new life, and live it, in our
thoughts, our words, and deeds, and share that life with others that the world
may believe, that what happened outside a city two thousand years ago has
changed all of human history and is still changing lives today. Christ died and
is alive so that we and all the earth may have life and have it to the full,
sharing in the life and love of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty,
glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
1 comment:
I was on the Turkish/Syrian border last year. The Turks look after their (tiny) Orthodox community.
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