An Easter Reflection

I won't be preaching on Easter Day this year, for the first time in over forty years, but here is a short reflection on the Lucan gospel for Easter morning:

An Easter Gospel: Luke, chapter 24, verses 1 to 12 :-

Very early on the first day of the week the women came to the tomb bringing the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, but when they went inside, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they stood utterly at a loss, suddenly two men in dazzling garments were at their side. They were terrified, and stood with eyes cast down, but the men said, ‘Why search among the dead for one who is alive? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be given into the power of sinful men and be crucified, and must rise again on the third day.’ Then they recalled his words and, returning from the tomb, they reported everything to the eleven and all the others. The women were Mary of Magdala, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and they, with the other women, told these things to the apostles. But the story appeared to them to be nonsense, and they would not believe them. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb, and, peering in, he saw the wrappings and nothing more; and he went home amazed at what had happened.

 

 A Short Reflection

“I suppose people found easier to believe that sort of thing back then,” said someone to me just the other day, as we discussed the Easter story. The implication being that you can’t expect modern, scientific, sceptical, cynical folk to believe that sort of thing so readily today.

Well, it certainly is hard to believe. But as today’s Gospel makes very plain, it was hard to believe back then too. The women came to tell the disciples what had happened when they visited the tomb. But, we read, “the story appeared to them to be nonsense, and they would not believe them.” The piece about Peter running to the tomb doesn’t appear in all ancient texts, and could have been added later, to harmonise with John’s version of the events of Easter Day. But even then, Peter ends up “amazed” rather than convinced; “perplexed” would probably be an equally good translation.

The disciples were in a very dark place that morning. They had followed their Lord into Jerusalem with very definite expectations. They had believed he was the Messiah, and they knew that the Messiah was going to re-found the Kingdom of David. And it hadn’t happened, and he was dead.

Remember, these guys were Jews, good and faithful Jews, looking for the restoration of their kingdom of old. They had not come to Jerusalem expecting to be founding a new religious movement. So how come that’s what happened? Part of the answer to that question has to wait until the very end of the Easter season, day fifty, the Day of Pentecost. But part of it is contained in the news the women brought and the disciples at first failed to believe. The empty tomb.

It’s fairly easy to believe things that you know are possible. But to believe something possible does not change your life, does not start new things happening in your mind and heart, does not send you off in new directions. It’s when you find yourself believing something impossible that that sort of thing happens. There would not be a Church if, on that first Easter Day, the disciples of Jesus hadn’t begun a process that would lead them to believe something impossible.

They had some work ahead - firstly they had to believe in the facts themselves, in what the women had reported: that the tomb was empty and that the body that had been laid there was no longer dead.  But then they had to believe in what that meant: in what it meant for them, in what it could mean for the world - that this wasn’t a one-off resuscitation of one amazingly good man, but the opening of a gate through which all people of faith could follow him.  And then they had to understand that this wasn’t God putting right the mistakes and disasters of Good Friday, and repairing what had gone wrong there - it was what Jesus has always intended should happen, it was what had always been planned.

In nature, endings turn into beginnings all the time. Every birth, every breaking of the shell of an egg as the chick appears, is the ending of something and a new beginning. Trees are clothed with leaves, hedgerows fill with flowers, the chrysalis is opened and a butterfly emerges, the body frame of the nymph splits to allow the adult dragonfly to crawl out and extend its wings. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised, at this time of year especially, that for this little band of defeated and downcast disciples, what had felt like the end of everything was turning into something so new and so wonderful it was beyond all their imaginings.

But it would take time, time that begins this morning, with the women telling a story the disciples could not at first believe. We shall greet today with alleluias, but they, to begin with, greeted it with amazement and perplexity.