Easter

Preparation

    Please begin by reading John 20:1-18 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided that text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--Mystery!
  
   We get accustomed to living our day-in, day-out lives in the ordinary. We expect things to run their "normal" course. We accumulate experiences over our lifetimes that tell us that this action will have that effect. If we drop something heavier than air into the air, we expect it to fall. Every heavier-than-air object we have ever dropped into the air in the past has followed the law of gravity and fallen.

    Of course those of us who live in these times know there are exceptions. While we probably haven't personally experienced it, we have seen images of things being dropped inside space craft in orbit, beyond gravity's pull, that just hang where they were dropped instead of falling. Most of our ancestors would have scoffed at such a notion, but we have had our awareness expanded to take in new levels of reality.

    While we now accept as commonplace technological marvels like space travel that would have astonished Mary Magdalene, some expectations have not changed in the past 2,000 years. Dead bodies don't move by themselves. If they are not where we last saw them, then someone has moved them. Mary's reaction when confronted by the empty tomb on the first Easter morning was entirely logical. She did not yet know that she had stumbled into new realities beyond her ordinary experience.

    And other realities there surely are! No less a mind than that of Albert Einstein expressed it this way.

    The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. [The one] to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; [with] eyes closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

    Einstein, despite this appreciation of wonder beyond what we know, did not believe that the individual survives his or her body. I do.

    I do, because now and then, like Mary, I have allowed myself to be still enough to "hear" Jesus call my name. Now and then, if we can shut out other things, God lifts the corner of the curtain between us and the reality that lies beyond our common experience. It is then that I know that what Paul saw was true. "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died." (1 Corinthians 15:20)

    This life is not it! There is more!
   
    Easter is about more than colorful eggs, a wonderful dinner with family and friends, and the joy of springtime. Easter changed everything! It demonstrated how much more there is that is beyond our grasp.

    Take time this Easter to be open to mystery. Take time to hear Jesus call your name.

revclay

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John 20:1-18

    Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."

    Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.

    Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.

    Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

    Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"

    She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

    Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?"

    Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!"

    She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher).

    Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

    Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.  [NRSV]