Easter Day: Christ is Risen

‘Who are you looking for?’

She is standing in the entrance to the tomb. She replies with exasperation, with tears running from her eyes: ‘Where have you taken him?’

I suspect a few minutes of silence followed. Then Jesus, who Mary had recognised as the gardener, says to her ‘Mary’, and according to John’s Gospel, she turned to him and said ‘Rabboni’, which means teacher. I am sure this was a moment of surprise, an intimate and very personal moment. It was a moment that changed history.

On Easter Day we gather and begin our celebrations. It requires effort and commitment. We kindle fire and light. We listen to the stories of God’s engagement with humankind. We renew our baptismal vows and in many places children and adults are baptized. We ring bells. We shout ‘Christ is Risen Alleluia, Alleluia!’ and we gather around the table like the first disciples at Emmaus and are offered the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread.

Easter Day is not about the normal. It is an inconvenient truth for many who cannot accept the Easter story as authentic and confuse the resurrected Jesus with a resuscitated corpse. Jesus asks many questions in the accounts in the Gospels of his resurrection:

‘Why are you weeping?’
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘What are you discussing?’

These questions continue to be asked today. They are questions that cannot be easily answered but provide us with the opportunity to go deeper into the mystery of his resurrected life and his ongoing presence in the world. Easter invites us to recognize a new level of being, embracing relationships with those near and dear to us but also the unlovable and the outcast. Easter invites us to live in a new world, one that has at its centre love and grace in their fullest.

‘Christ is Risen. He is Risen indeed Alleluia Alleluia’

Blessings to you all this Eastertide,

Ray