Easter Day Matins 2005 |
We were here early just like the women at the first Easter, in truth a little group of believers have been here all night. When I came to join them before dawn I asked the two watchers at the door whether they had passed a quiet night – Very quiet just a few people asking whether we knew of a near-by night club.
It was just the same that first Easter. Jesus was dead and buried, media interest had moved on to Pontius Pilate’s latest statement about the Emperor’s spending plans. That first Easter Day it was the women who found the tomb empty. There was subsequently a fierce argument about why the tomb was empty but at the time no one was able to contradict the report of the women or produce the body.
Mary Magdalene stood outside the tomb weeping when she saw another figure in the garden. She thought it was the gardener and did not recognise the risen Jesus. The early appearances have this strange quality. The risen Jesus could communicate, be handled and eat food but the resurrection body did not appear to be some resuscitated corpse.
Mary asked where the body of Jesus had been taken and in reply Jesus said to her “Mary” and she turned herself around.
We all begin life being preoccupied with ourselves. Much religion develops as a preoccupation with God as one of our assets. The saints call us to love God for his own sake but beyond this lies the discovery that we can discover and love our true selves as we hear him lovingly address us. Abraham, Samuel, John, Mary.
After the discovery of the empty tomb, the friends of Jesus were gathered together behind locked doors for fear of further police action against them. Their fear was rational but immobilising.
A life built on fear is not only severely cramped but can lead to violent and disproportionate reactions to those with whom we associate our fear.
The answer is not to deny that the world is full of danger but to confront and acknowledge our fear and find another centre to our lives.
Perfect love puts fear in its place. Jesus comes and stands in the midst of his friends and gives them peace. They were glad when they saw him and a frightened and demoralised group started on the road which led some of them to death as witnesses of the resurrection and converted them all into a world transforming movement.
Unbridled fear makes the world an even more dangerous place. The peace which comes when we put the centre of our attention in the beloved is contagious.
The message of the risen Jesus to his friends was not to float off into some never-never land of wishful thinking but to return home, to go back to Galilee where they had first met. They were to re-immerse themselves in ordinary life but to live their lives in the light of Jesus’s way of dying and living.
Jesus did not show the way to dropping out into another world. Still less did he leave this world as it is now. Rather he was the way to a transformed world.
So the eleven remaining disciples went to Galilee and met with the risen Christ in a mountainous place and there as St Matthew says, they worshipped him but some doubted.
Doubt is not the opposite to faith. We should respect our honest doubts which often serve to move us forward from an immature, self serving understanding to a deeper trust in the self sacrificing love of God.
The opposite to faith is the life locked up in ourselves, the disengaged and risk averse life which is in reality a living death.
On one of the last occasions that he was seen by his friends before his return to the Godhead, Jesus was by the lakeside and Peter and the rest were fishing.
It had been a disappointing night and they had caught nothing but obedient to Jesus’s urging they tried again. The result was a net full to bursting with 153 fish, a significant number because 153 was according to Greek science the total number of fish species. The message and the hope is obvious that friendship with Jesus would eventually unite the whole world.
The story proceeds with Jesus inviting them all to “Come and Dine”. All the accounts of his resurrection appearances stress that Christ could be handled, that he communicates and shares food with his friends. Here is no disembodied spirit offering moonshine for consolation to the hungry but the risen Christ who taught that we will be judged not on the basis of correct doctrine but on whether we have fed the hungry and visited the prisoners.
Christ is still present to be touched and we are still able to share or food with him because we can see and love him in one another. After the gift of the Holy Spirit following his return to the mysterious Godhead, the whole world is full of his presence.
