It is Easter day, and the new dawn has broken.
For 2000 years, every Easter we celebrate this world changing event… Jesus, the hope that we have, comes alive – overcoming death. He is to be seen by many people, clearly in a new dimension. Yet still with his scars – he shows them to Thomas. I wonder if the only scars in heaven (we are promised new bodies) are the scars on the hands and feet of the Son of God… Scars that tell of God’s saving plan since from before the beginning of our world.
Music - tries to capture this. There’s JS Bach’s mighty Mass in B Minor – “et Resurrexit” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM03MgoHfJs or
Stuart Townend’s - In Christ Alone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouGuG97l2RY
From the start we see a new order – a new hope, and then of course the promise of the Holy Spirit. He calls Mary by her first name. Imagine the impact of that in the culture of the time - male dominated - women alone had no status. Jesus did not first appear to the Sanhedrin, or to Pilate, or the Roman soldiers; or even his mum and dad. He calls a woman he had cured earlier by her first name… “Mary…”
Later this day he would play the fool to explain to two disciples what had happened. “What things?” he asks, when the say “haven’t you heard what has happened in Jerusalem in recent days”. They tell him. He then talks to them, to open up the scriptures, and then reveals himself by the breaking of bread. He disappears. The disciples then reflect on the experience, looking back, exclaiming “were not our heart burning within us, when he talked with us on the road”.
Before going to heaven he would have one more task – to reinstate Peter – but that’s a later conversation.
Since then, for 2000 years, millions of people have put their trust in Jesus. And experienced the joy of the Holy Spirit, their lives transformed, seen the miraculous and known the “certainty of hope in the mystery of God". So today – He is risen – let us pause, and imagine the feeling of the Holy Spirit, as the disciples did on the road to Emmaus.
Nigel
Respond
