Easter Day 2013

Just occasionally we get a fleeting glimpse of what real life truly is: the birth of a child, a piece of haunting music beautifully performed or a mathematical uncovering of infinity perfectly explained.

One can rarely relay what it is in such fleeting moments that show us life as it is designed to be, but we know it to be the case. Often, we are not even aware of it ourselves until a good way into the experience.

We can look at a scan of an unborn child, but that does not begin to express the excitement for the parents of the apparently limitless possibilities and potential that has began to develop. Likewise, we can learn music, read the score and even hum the tune, but that cannot begin to replace for us that moment when the live orchestra plays the haunting notes and we feel the shiver ripple over us as we listen to something truly enchanting, mysterious – in some way familiar and yet completely strange.

It is exactly this that we hear about in all of the resurrection narratives. All of the stories of the risen Jesus suggest that those who meet him, even though they were old friends, do not instantly recognise him.

Mary Magdalene is in a complete mess at tomb. Tears in her eyes; visions of dead bodies: haunting memories of the viscous death of one of her dear friends. All she has left to cling to at this moment is the remains of that friend.

Even as she sees that same friend standing in front of her, the ordeal is so great that she does not, at first, recognise Him. But then that is not just because of what she has been through. Actually, it is more about what he has been through.

By ourselves we are not able to fully comprehend God’s vivacity: His all encompassing healing magnificence. We plod on in our daily lives trying to make the most of what we convince ourselves is real life, struggling with the disappointment, separation and ultimately death. But this is not ‘real’ life, just a twisted version of it. When we see life cleansed of all its imperfection, life the way God intends it to be, it looks and feels strangely familiar and yet mysteriously anomalous.

For Mary, it took for Jesus to open her eyes with his invite. At the sound of her name she suddenly recognises her Lord and in a flash the truth of God’s miraculous grace is revealed to her. Although it is not yet hers to touch, she understands that in the risen Jesus standing before her is the love of God in undiluted purity and life in all its fullness - life that would surely be hers too and anyone else’s who has the faith to believe. And so she runs to tell the rest of the disciples.

Rumour has it that in the years following, Mary’s response to experiencing the real life of the risen Jesus was to go from congregation to congregation proclaiming the Gospel. The experience of seeing life as it is truly meant to be was so brilliant to her eyes that the remainder of her days were spent travelling to foreign lands to build up the faith. The same is true for many of those who witnessed such miraculous events.

Such examples stand before us as a beacon of inspiration, but our callings are no less significant. Whatever we feel Jesus may be calling us to do for the good of his kingdom, they are a response to his resurrected life – a life void of the misrepresentations of this earthly existence. Like Mary in today’s reading, all we have to do is respond with courage to the call.  

 Amen

R.T.Parker-McGee 2013