Well friends, another week has passed in lockdown and we have experienced the strangest Easter of our lives. Across the globe, churches and cathedrals normally packed with people celebrating the resurrection of our Lord lie empty. But the Church of Jesus Christ has been packed with celebration, in homes, large and small across the globe, on screen and online the truth that shifts history and destroys death has been proclaimed and celebrated. Jesus is alive!
We sing, “even when we don’t see it you’re working”.
Words which could have been written for the dawn of that first Easter Sunday. John, in his gospel, loves to paint his story with shades of light and dark to make his point. Mary arrived, he says, “while it was still dark”. Dark in every way: numb with grief, locked down in despair and fear, her future bleak and unknown.
But even as she slept the world was turned upside down. Before she could do anything, God did everything to destroy death and conquer evil. She, however, was unaware.
Most of us stumble in the dark through life failing to see that the light has dawned, that Jesus is alive and there is life for us now and hope for our future. Mary stumbled over Jesus in the garden. It was this encounter with the risen Jesus that turned her despair to joy, her darkness to light. Straight away she turns on her heals and rushes of to tell the whole world the news. What a message of hope, encountering the risen Jesus gives us in these uncertain days.
Talk has turned in our media to questions about flattening curves, easing restrictions and exit strategies. Our Easter hope is based on something infinitely more solid than the desire for a shift in our circumstances,
As we recalled on Sunday Easter tells us that God is telling us:
“I did everything I promised, what I have started I will finish, and the best is yet to come!”
So, may you know and share this defiant hope that is stronger than death, fiercer than corona virus and surer than the sunrise. Think about how this hope will shape your living this week.