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Easter Day

John 20:1-18, Acts 10:34-43

Having heard the Easter stories year after year it may be hard to find something fresh and vital to say. Yet it is important. Resurrection will always be a mystery and that may make it hard for us moderns, or even post-moderns, to grasp the deep significance of something which is really beyond words and cannot be proved in the normal understanding of the term. But the significance is not really in a long time ago event.

It is in the power of transformation today. The John reading is to be preferred to the alternative lectionary reading of Luke 24:1-12 from this point of view. The use too of the Acts 10 reading is valuable as it gives an insight into Peter’s preaching later to a foreign but interested audience.

"What is the use of the resurrection to us?" asks the Heidelberg catechism and many might echo that question. It is possible in this passage from the 4th Gospel to enter into the experience through a person like us in many respects. Mary Magdalene, healed by Jesus, a companion of his in Galilee, a follower to Jerusalem, an observer of the crucifixion and of the place of burial, coming as we often do to the last place with associations with the one who is mourned, coming with no expectations of any change in the sad events.

First, she does not recognise the resurrection event. She takes the figure to be the gardener. Then the risen one addresses her by name and everything is changed she thinks. But no, she doesn’t understand. She thinks things are back to what they were. She calls him "Rabboni" which means Teacher. She misunderstands the resurrection event (as we so often do, expecting Jesus to be restored to the same physical life as before). She begins to come to a new understanding as Jesus speaks to her. "Don’t hold on to me", meaning not - ‘don’t touch me’ but ‘don’t cling to me’. I am different. ‘You don’t need to hold on to me. You can stand on your own feet’. She is no longer dependent on his physical presence. What she has learned from being with him has now made her an independent person, a person in her own right, a person with her own message which she takes to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord" – no longer just teacher, he is Lord. Whatever she means by the title she has recognised a change, a difference. It has made a difference to her. She is a person, a person with a message which she immediately shares. She is a transformed person. She goes on to become an apostle, "the apostle to the apostles" – a title not recorded in the Bible but we gain that knowledge from other ancient references.

The Resurrection of Jesus makes a difference to people, disciples (learners) become apostles (people with a message). The timid are given courage. Dependent people become independent, able to make their own decisions, able to take new roles, able to dream new dreams, able to turn visions into action.

A NZ poet, Joy Cowley, has written of resurrection as the transformation of the "empty tombs of our lives", a less usual concept but one that bears thinking about.

Acts 10:34-43

As background to this passage you may need to refer to the whole chapter.

Peter has been invited to come to Cornelius’ house. Peter, a strict Jew (but with more to learn if he is to continue to follow Jesus) obeys the vision that has come to him and goes with his guides into unknown territory. He goes, knowingly, into a Roman captain’s house. He, a Jew, goes into a Gentile home. It is hard for us to realise what a step of faith that was. (It bears some resemblance to Mary Magdalene going to the men disciples as a woman with her tremendous news.) You might think of comparable modern examples of prejudice, people or places that we would not associate with.

Cornelius is a God-fearer, a seeker, attracted to the God of the Jewish faith, learning something of the background to the story of Jesus. It seems to be a receptive audience to Peter’s story, as we have a receptive audience of church worshippers. The difference is that our audience may not be expecting to learn anything new!

Try to read these verses entering into Peter’s experience. Jesus’ ministry had been primarily to Jews but there had been some contact with Gentiles. Peter has yet to learn this for himself - how to make the transforming experience of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection alive and real to this audience. He begins, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality" (is not biased). Consider the depth of that affirmation. Peter’s eyes had been opened. I consider we haven’t learnt the depth of that message ourselves yet. One wonders, though, how Peter can assume that the message God ‘sent to the people of Israel, (the Jews), peaching peace by Jesus Christ - he is Lord of all’, that it had in fact permeated the Jewish communities in various places and had reached Cornelius and his companions through some Jewish community. However, Peter makes this statement of his faith and shares his understanding of Jesus’ ministry, death, raising to new life and commissioning of himself and others as witnesses of all this. Here is a transformed Peter, a Peter who had to learn new lessons and take new action.

What is this Easter to us?

PRAYER

Living Lord Jesus Christ you have been raised from death. Love reigns. You are life.

You offer us your fullness of life, abundant life. Raise our eyes to recognise you as the new day dawns. Open our ears to hear you call us by name. Help us, like Mary, to move beyond the empty tombs of our lives to accept the hope, the new life and fulfilment you offer.

Prayers could include opening our eyes to areas of prejudice, in our own lives and in our communities - - - - .

And what a transforming life of Christian witness might include - - -

Forgive us, O God, for the partiality we often show:

• thinking poverty means lesser capabilities or inability to lead
• associating riches, the "haves", with power and ideas and leadership
• unconsciously, even, putting down people of different colour skin
• choosing to associate only with those most "like us"

God calls us to build bridges of understanding across the barriers that divide us.