Easter Day

John 20: 1-9 

Rev Andy Braunston

Christ has risen!  Alleluia!  

We start our service today and all throughout Eastertide with these powerful words.  We are used to the story, we travel through the awfulness of Holy Week knowing the end of the story.  Those who gathered here on Tuesday to pray through the journey to Calvary know how awful the crucifixion was; Mel Gibson’s film doesn’t pull any punches.  We know of the piquancy of Maundy Thursday, the intimacy of a Passover Meal shared with friends, the transformation of that freedom meal turned into an everlasting memorial of Jesus and a way of making him present amongst us as we remember him, eat his body and drink his blood.  We recall the starkness of Good Friday represented by the emptiness of the church shorn of all decoration as we marked the death on the cross of our Lord and Saviour.  We wait on Holy Saturday, a sort of limbo time, not quite Easter, but no longer Good Friday.  A time for the disciples to start to process their grief.  And then comes Easter.

The first disciples would have had such different emotions.  Surprise that one who was dead is now risen.  Awe at the power of God who could do such a thing, shock, profound shock, at the reality of the resurrection and the ways of God letting himself be crucified.  Disbelief would have been a large part of the emotional mix too; Thomas one of the disciples wouldn’t let himself believe and who can blame him?  The disbelief gives way to a sense of wonder and trying to work out what it all means and then comes the realisation that all things are made new.  That life starts again in a new and fuller way.

These were some of the emotions the first disciples had, our own emotions are not too different, but perhaps a little blunted as we have known the story for a long time; it’s not new to us.

Surprise

We still feel surprised that God would do such a thing!  We feel surprised that Jesus allowed himself to die – after all those miracles it would have been easy to avoid arrest and torture.  We are surprised that he allowed himself to go through these things so that we could live a different life in the power of forgiveness.  We don’t understand that which we believe.  There is still a sense of surprise at the resurrection when we read or hear the Gospel accounts.  A sense of mystery about it all. 

Awe 

We are in awe at the power of God who can do such things.  To raise someone from the dead, to have all those post-resurrection experiences, to have concern for the physical and emotional needs of the disciples is awe inspiring.  We can do little more than stand with the disciples at the empty tomb and stare in awe as words fail us. 
 
Shock

We are shocked; this whole thing goes against the laws of nature.  This is a big issue for us modern people who are used to science explaining everything.  We like to have our answers, we like to see the laws of the universe working away quietly, we don’t like to have things we can’t explain – like love and resurrection.  It leaves us shocked.

Disbelief

And often the shock turns to disbelief.  Well the writers must have got it wrong mustn’t they?  They were trying to write of the specialness of Jesus, of an experience of Jesus they had, but these things didn’t really happen did they?  When our minds can’t comprehend we start to doubt, to say that these things didn’t happen.  We know that one of Jesus’ disciples, Thomas, did this and refused to believe what the others were telling him.  Many today refuse to belief; some religious people think that Jesus was taken down from the cross before he died and then was revived.  I think this shows more faith in first century medicine than is entirely rational!  Yet the testimony of the gospel writers is that Jesus rose from the dead.  Sometimes this is difficult to believe, but it is our faith, and Paul writes that without belief in the resurrection of the dead we are to be pitied.  

Wonder

Then we feel wonder.  Wonder at the power of God to do this and wonder as Jesus is, St Paul tells us, the first fruits of the great harvest of resurrection that will follow at the end of time.  We will all be raised: Jesus teaches that those who eat of his body and drink of his blood will be raised to life on the last day.  He teaches, in his sermon on the end, of the Last Judgement when we are all gathered before him.  St Paul teaches that we shall be raised and changed.  Jesus is the first sign of all that is to come.  We stand in wonder because Jesus is showing us the way.     

New 

This is the dawn of the new age, an age of the Kingdom of God, where all shall be made new and the crazy values of our own age will be turned on their head.  The hungry will be fed, the naked clothed, those with nothing will have plenty, the powerless will be lifted up.  It is as if a fuse has been lit, the explosion has started – as the bomb has gone off, but it’s like an explosion of light in slow motion.  We take the explosion further we are part of this explosion of newness through which our world is being transformed.

Christ has risen!  Alleluia! 

(Rev Andy Braunston)