In church on Easter Day for the first seven years of my ministry as a Presbyter I have always preached from John’s account of the Resurrection, found in John 20: 1-18. It is always the set account in the Lectionary.
This year, for reasons that I hope will become clear, I have felt strongly led to preach from Mark’s account of the Resurrection.
Mark’s is almost universally agreed by Biblical scholars to be the earliest written account of that first Easter Day. Scholars would also agree that the author of Mark originally ended his gospel at verse 8, and that the rest is a later addition: indeed there exist two separate additional endings that are both printed in some translations.
Mark’s account of the Resurrection is simple and quite stark. The women arrive at the tomb finding the heavy entrance stone rolled away, the body of Jesus gone and a young man dressed in white sitting there, apparently waiting for them. He tells them Jesus has been raised from death and they run away, afraid. That’s it! No resurrection appearances from Jesus; just mystery and wonder and fear at what is to come next.
Many have said that with the restrictions quite correctly imposed by the government it feels like Lent, with its theme of self-denial, has somehow been extended. Somebody posted on Facebook that “this is the Lentiest Lent I’ve ever Lented” and whilst the English is dodgy, we all know exactly what they mean.
In the church calendar Lent has ended, but for many of us it feels like it is still going on; especially today of all days when we must celebrate Easter Day, the day of Resurrection, at home instead of physically together in church.
I think I’ve come across a better analogy.
There is a tradition in church, only implied in Scripture, of the harrowing of hell. The tradition is that on Holy Saturday, the day Jesus body lay cold in his tomb, he himself stormed the gates of hell and rescued all the souls who were there, emptying the realm of the devil.
So, although it appeared that Jesus was inactive that day, waiting for Resurrection, he was in fact very active demonstrating the love that motivated everything he said and did.
To some in our society at the moment it may appear that the “church” is doing very little. Our buildings are closed and our regular services and activities suspended. It could appear that our churches are silent and dark and inactive, dead, cold in the grave.
And yet this is not the case. You may have seen the picture I posted on our Churches Facebook pages of the interior of an empty church with the caption “The Church isn’t empty, the Church is deployed.”
The church is indeed deployed. We are, for a time, out of our buildings. The church is deployed as we share in worship together online, whether it be through a service sheet like this or through video or livestream (which I may try at some point). The church is deployed every time one of us goes shopping for a neighbour who can’t leave their home. The church is deployed every time we phone somebody to see how they are doing or just to say “hello” so they don’t feel as lonely. The church is deployed when we pray for others. The church is deployed in all the acts of kindness and love being undertaken by Christian disciples for each other and for those in their communities.
To the casual observer the church may appear to be closed and inactive, just as on Holy Saturday Jesus appeared to be dead and inactive, but this is far from the case.
So rather than being in a very long Lent, the Lentiest Lent ever; perhaps we are instead in the midst of a prolonged Holy Saturday.
Of course, we can only take that analogy so far because two thousand years ago Jesus was raised from death to new Resurrection life! As the last verse in the hymn says:
“Death cannot keep his prey,
Jesus, my Saviour;
he tore the bars away,
Jesus, my Lord”:
Jesus is alive! That is what our Scripture from Mark’s gospel tells us. That is what all the Resurrection accounts in the four gospels tell us: that somehow by the power of God Jesus who was dead was raised from death in a new way.
Jesus is alive! Mark’s gospel leaves what that means as a mystery in many ways. The fact of the Resurrection is the point, the author of Mark doesn’t think we need to know more.
Other gospels, written after Mark, do tell us more. They tell us of a Jesus who was in some way different because people did not recognise him immediately, yet definitely still the same Jesus so that people came to a sudden awareness. Mary Magdalene recognised Jesus in the garden when he spoke her name, after initially thinking he was a gardener. The two on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognise the stranger who walked alongside them until he broke bread. Even they didn’t appreciate the full meaning of the Resurrection and what it would lead to; a worldwide sister and brotherhood of Christian disciples numbered in billions.
If we can go back to the analogy of Holy Saturday, the church is in some ways apparently still and cold, though we know this isn’t the case. That is the perception many will have, and indeed the perception some had even before the Covid-19 Coronavirus hit.
Just as Jesus rose from death, changed, renewed and restored; resurrected: so our church will be raised to new life. We will meet again for corporate worship with a renewed sense of the value of meeting together to praise our Lord. We will perhaps appreciate all the more our fellowship together.
But maybe, just as Jesus was transformed by the Resurrection so too may our worship and fellowship be transformed. We have an opportunity, whilst we are at home, separated yet connected by the same Holy Spirit, to think and pray about what God might be saying to us about how we are church together. What is God calling on us to continue doing, what is God calling on us to lay aside and what is God calling on us to take up?
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus God gave us the greatest gift of love that has ever been given: the assurance of forgiveness and the promise of resurrection life. Let us continually seek to serve God in faithfulness and gratitude, at different times and in different seasons in different ways, always open to the transforming power of Resurrection!
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