Easter Day - a service of light - on Zoom: Acts 10:34-43 and John 20:1-18
Our life has been severely disrupted by disease. For some that’s meant isolation, alone; for others, an intense proximity. Essential work continues to be done from hospitals to supermarkets. The boundaries between public and private space are being renegotiated. We’re relearning a body language of love through social distancing.
Yesterday, HMQ reminded us that Easter has not been cancelled.
Yet feels so radically different.
Easter is here, but like the light of a dawn: gradually.
Breaking in slowly; just today; but over the next 40.
There are rumours of resurrection.
Fires burn; candles are lit.
Our closed church resemble sealed tombs.
And yet.
There are whispers of Alleluia.
Light begins to break in; but there are still so many questions.
We long to break bread; and still hear the fearful cries of our city and our world.
But there is hope. Hope of something else: a glimpse of new life; a new order.
Writing in yesterday’s Guardian, Jonathan Freedland reflected on keeping Passover in lockdown. He said, ‘while Jews tell a story of emerging from enslavement to freedom, Christians move from death to resurrection. It’s starker but it offers the same message of hope - that even after the greatest pain, there is renewal’.
There is renewal; but it takes time.
Death does not have the final world; but it doesn’t always feel like it.
Yet we believe it.
Perhaps this Easter, unlike any other I can recall, we are caught up in the ambiguity and hope of the gospels themselves.
Today’s reading tells us of things that are seen; and of the struggle to make sense.
Mary had waited in agony at the cross and in sorrow at the tomb. In exhaustion and grief, she has been utterly spent in love.
She sees that the stone has been removed: she is confused and anxious, she runs away; she has to tell someone. She shares with those she loved what she sees; She tells those who also loved Jesus, her greatest fears and what she thinks she knows.
Her words unleash in Peter and John fear and confusion - they run. They run away from her; they run to the tomb.
The Disciples Peter and John - Eugene Burnand
They run and John gets their first; he sees the emptiness but does not enter. Peter enters and sees the cloth, the linen wrappings, the absence of a body. And John saw. And he believed.
There is insight and bewilderment; but they did not fully understand.
They had to go back to scripture.
They left. The went home.
As they gathered behind closed doors, did the beloved disciple share the experience of sudden realisation as he saw grave clothes piled up in a tomb? Did he describe the way in which that absence awakened in him an ever present love?
Mary stays at the tomb. She stands alone. Weeping.
She’s asked why she’s weeping. Why? Perhaps the most blunt and absurd question. Isn’t it obvious.
We can identify with Mary in a moment of heartbreak. Death wreaks havoc with our lives: the physical loss unleashes a rawness of emotion; grief silences us and yet cries out; relationships are disrupted. We cannot gather together to share stories; alone, we crave the consolation o human touch.
When questioned a second time, she repeats her conviction. This is death. This is emptiness.
Supposing her questioner to be a gardener, she meets his whys with her own ifs.
And into that space, that silence, is spoken one word:
Mary.
Named. Found. Recognised. Known.
Rabboni!
An instinct as powerful as grief overwhelms her.
In love she wants to reach out; to hold and be held.
Noli me Tangere - Graham Sutherland
It's such a human moment!
But the one she loves says: Do not cling on to me.
A stone rolled back; piled grave clothes; and now, let go.
The very person who was crucified is risen: this is love’s risen body.
Love’s risen body draws her from loss to life, sorrow to peace.
Mary cannot cling on to her risen Lord; but she continues to walk in his light.
In her grief, she is called by name; in her letting go she is sent.
Did Mary Magdalene take the risk of seeking them out, her heart pounding as she hammered at a locked door? As the bolt slides back, she rushes in; her breathless declaration ‘I have seen the Lord’ flowing from a faith which lets go and embraces new life.
Peter - the one who ran and saw and didn’t fully understand - he goes on to speak to hundreds and thousands of a message of life, hope and forgiveness for all. He declares that God shoes no partiality - God’s love if for all.
Peter preaches: he claims the power to tell a story which changes how the world is understood. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection becomes the defining moment of all history. The world will be restored to life and health. This is God. A love that continues to reach out to all creation.
Our Jewish brothers and sisters are telling a story of emerging from enslavement to freedom; we are telling a story that moves from death to resurrection. As Freedland put it, it is starker but it offers the same message of hope.
Even after the greatest pain, there is renewal. As Willie Jennings puts it we ‘now see the world as God desires Israel to see the world - as specific and particular sites of love - where the Spirit would send us to go, announcing in and through life together with people God’s desire for joining and communion’.
Yes, we are fearful and isolated; and yet we are bound together. Even in this pandemic, we are called to tell a story of life and compassion and hope. For now, sharing love and protecting others means living differently.
Yes, we long to gather and break bread; yet in fasting from this feast, may we grow in prayer and faithfulness to scripture; knowing that one day we will meet our risen Lord in bread and wine.
Easter will dawn slowly today; and over the next 40 days. May we share that the hope that is within us: that love wins.
But this love means stretching our imaginations: seeking not to return to the old normal, but a richer more equitable new normal.
May God stir up in us new gifts and callings, that we may go where we are sent with radical imagination.
© Julie Gittoes 2020
