Fr. Gerard Kelly
We have arrived at Easter after six
weeks of Lent. Finally, over the last
three days we have celebrated the Last Supper on Holy Thursday and the Passion
and Death of Jesus on Good Friday. So we
should be very ready to celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Jesus.
If that is what we have been through,
imagine what the followers of Jesus had experienced as they watched him carry
his cross, saw him nailed to a tree and then stood back as he was taken down
from the cross and buried in a new tomb.
Their world was shattered; his message seemed to have been
defeated. They weren’t expecting
anything else to happen. So when Mary
Magdalene goes to the tomb early in the morning, she is probably going to
anoint the body with spices as would have been the usual practice. We are listening to St John’s gospel, and he
sets the scene by telling us that it was dark.
The darkness probably captured Mary’s mood. Then when she arrived she saw that the stone
had already been rolled back. Her first
thought is that someone has broken into the tomb and stolen the body. She runs back to tell the Peter and the other
disciple, who both run out to the tomb to see what is going on.
What happens next is also
surprising. When Peter arrives he goes
into the tomb and sees that the cloths in which the body of Jesus had been wrapped
are lying there. He must have been
puzzled, because this would hardly have seemed the way a person stealing the
body would act – why would they unwrap the body? The mystery only deepened. Then St John tells us that the other disciple
goes into the tomb and that seeing things the way they are, he believed. This is really the first indication we have
that what had happened to Jesus was something quite extraordinary. The beloved disciple believed that Jesus had
been raised from the dead.
After this experience the disciples
have to work out what this means. I
think we all have to work it out. We
need to ask what it means for us. This
was such an unexpected experience that those first disciples struggled to make
sense of it. Their early experience told
them that what happened to Jesus was something very different to what had
happened to Lazarus. A couple of weeks
ago we heard the gospel where Jesus called the dead Lazarus to come out of the
tomb. He came out still bound in the
burial cloths and Jesus had to tell some people to unbind him. There were plots to kill Lazarus, and of
course, he would die again. Jesus is
different. He hasn’t simply been
resuscitated.
In the gospel scene there are other
hints as to the meaning of resurrection.
The emphasis on darkness at the beginning of the story would have
reminded the hearers of the darkness and chaos that set the scene for the
creation of the world in the Book of Genesis.
Even the reference to the first day of the week, which of course is the
day after the seventh day – in other words an eighth day – would have reminded
the people of the days of creation. It
is as though this is the first day of the new creation. The new creation is the completion of God’s
creative action. The new creation
represents God’s victory over darkness, chaos and sin. The new creation represents the beginning of
a new way for all of creation to live in relationship with God. It means the beginning of a new type of
relationship between human beings – where the peace and justice, which are fundamental
gifts of God, will permeate the whole created order.
Just as the disciples of Jesus had to
learn the meaning of this, so too do we.
It is still unfolding! The
resurrection is still taking effect in our world, even when we might see very
few signs of it. The question for us is:
how might we live as the Easter people.
How might we live in this time of the first day of the new creation, even
while creation is still waiting to be perfected?
The beloved disciple may offer us a
clue. He saw an empty tomb and some
linen cloths, and he believed. These
became signs for him that God had raised Jesus from the dead. The signs that we have are the sacraments,
particularly baptism and the Eucharist.
St Paul reminds us that in our baptism we died with Christ so that we
might live with him. Our life is now
hidden with Christ in God. Through our
baptism the resurrection takes effect in our lives; we are part of the new
creation. Likewise, when we celebrate
the Eucharist we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. In receiving communion we are drawn into his
new life. Very shortly we will renew the
promises of our baptism and we will be sprinkled with the Easter water. We will then receive communion.
Like the first disciples of Jesus we
are called to live in such a way that the new life we have received in these
sacraments becomes a reality in our day-to-day lives. We live in a world that is still being
created anew in the resurrection. Even in
the midst of the world’s imperfections, we are witnesses to the effect of the
resurrection.
