Easter Morn Year A
You have nothing to fear
The two Mary’s had gone to the tomb of Jesus to prepare his body as required by Jewish funereal rites. The whole thing that Good Friday had been too quick (because of Jewish Sabbath & religious rules) and they had not had the time to prepare his body properly. They had expected to find the tomb sealed, & no doubt within it the body of the man they had loved & who had been for them a source of hope & inspiration. Instead there is a shuddering of the ground, & a messenger of God tells them they have nothing to fear. The very same thing the angel said to the shepherds at the birth. Fear not, for he has been raised.
What did they expect? They could never have thought this was to be the case, he had died, he was very, very dead & if the other Mary was his mother she had wept for her son who had died before her very eyes. The last thing they expected was this turn of events. This death had not been their hoped for outcome but it had a very definite conclusion to it. They could get on with their lives after the death & instead this thing called resurrection occurs. They were awestruck & filled with enormous joy. They must have been desperate to tell the other followers.
The gospels all differ in the what happened as indeed they should because there would be a confusion as people try to remember what exactly happened & when & who was there but this gospel states these two women, Mary who had been the harlot & the other Mary, who could have been any one of three or four candidates including Jesus’ mother met with him & he told them not to be afraid.
Fear is one of the greatest barriers to new life for humanity. We are afraid so we don’t trust the other side to keep their part of the deal. Fear never allows us to grow because we might be damaged by something else out there, some bug some plague & so we hide ourselves behind that which we know. The scare over the millennium bug was just a case in point when fear gripped us but we did not know what really we were meant to expect. We never see the horizon because we aren’t looking.
Fear keeps us imprisoned because we do not want to be hurt or disappointed. Fear in the face of personal pain within our families thru’ illness or some form of insecurity such as unemployment cripples us from enjoying life. We are frightened to make plans for the future because we might not have the health, the person we love might not last, we could have no money. There are a whole pile of ways fear stops us from going out into life & tasting the joy of Christ again.
He met them. He met them in their pain. He knew them, he knew their pain, he loved them & he cared for them & he reassured them that they might not be afraid. Resurrection is about the dramatic as all the gospels point to in their stories but it is about resurrection on a small scale also. It is about you & me in the midst of our pain & having no right to hope because we are afraid the pain will be too great & suddenly in the midst of all our anguish hearing our name heard. It is about when life has collapsed & the disasters cannot come any greater because there is no more agony that can be heaped upon you & you discover there is a light - that the darkness is dispelled just a little by a light which refuses to allow you to be dumped. It is about giving up & the voice, not in a roar or even with confidence tells you, you are loved, you can go out into the world again & you need not fear it because I am with you. The opposite of fear in this case is confidence. They had to have confidence, not in themselves, but in God who would not allow the darkness to destroy them; confidence in the God who had not abandoned them but was indeed with them even in the darkness; confidence that they could still live & know life in all its beauty & wonder & joy.
To have that confidence is an act of faith, we call resurrection.
If we have the confidence that the men of war will not overwhelm us with their hatred & so make us into their armies nurturing hatred alongside them then resurrection will have won.
If we have that confidence & go out into the world having experienced the pain of illness & tragedy knowing that we can overcome it, not because we ignore it, but rather because of it & despite it we will be stronger, then resurrection will have won.
If we challenge the ailments of the world such as poverty disease & exploitation in the name of Christ & for the sake of him because these are his brothers then resurrection will win for the afflicted & the oppressed. This story is no less than a challenge to us to claim resurrection for our own living & in the confidence of Christ to make his resurrection a reality for others.
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