Easter Day

A reading from the Gospel according to St John, chapter 20. 

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” 

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying. 

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” 

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. 

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” 

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” 

Jesus said to her, “Mary.” 

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). 

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her. 

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb  

She came, in the dark, living in the story she knew, the story that keeps turning out the same. So, she came looking for a dead body.   

The tomb was empty. What followed was like something from a silent movie, people rushing about bumping into things. The gospel adds a lot of clever word play about seeing and not seeing. Easter is disorientating and unsettling – it is meant to be. Then, there is a heart-breaking moment when Mary wants to cling to Jesus, holding on to what she had. She has to be told that the Resurrection isn’t just more of the same.   

Oddly, it may be that our difficulty with Easter is that we make it too miraculous. Jesus as superhuman, unlike us, achieving the impossible. That is a mistake. Jesus, living, dying, rising, is not superhuman, he is perfectly human, really human. He is what we should be. You see, the more like God we become the more human we are. Put another way, saints are more human than sinners and Jesus is the only person who was completely, perfectly human. Easter shows us the human story we need to learn. 

This story starts in the dark, still clinging to the old assumptions that strength and wickedness will get their way. In the perfectly human story though, Jesus, who lived our life and died our death, now lives. Grace and glory triumph.   

Easter day is a new creation. It is not the story as we keep telling it, ending in death, but a story where human life redeemed is lifted into God’s glory. Life not death, light not darkness, grace not betrayal, glory not shame. This is real human life – the true story.