Canon Robin Gibbons: Our Great and Glorious Holy Pascha - Easter Sunday

Anastasis

April 9th 2023

We are here again, no doubt wondering just how best to celebrate this glorious day, for me at least Great Lent and this Holy Week has been an immersion into the very disturbing habit of human people, who when afraid or wanting to hide from the consequences of their actions, lie or create diversions. It has been part of a personal issue in family life, a terrible division caused by bad people doing bad things, but also found in those examples of oppression and venality we see in public life. I have always supposed this must be how it shall be at this time, for if we journey with Christ-we enter into the never ending story and it lives in us! Here in this moment we are perhaps so like Mary, or Peter or the other Women, Jesus' Mother and the disciples, all rather lost at the seeming capacity of those in power to tell lies, distort the truth, condemn the innocent, and see their bad behaviour played out in innocent lives.

This is very much how our journey pans out, for we are really there with the crowd and children of Palm Sunday! It is us in the watching groups listening to those who denounce the man of sorrows, the arguments of the High Priest and Pontius Pilate's cunning response! I find myself there in the utter sadness of Judas-realising that what he sought in Jesus was not to be-yes, I too have sought the wrong kind of Jesus many times, and understand all too well why Judas did what he did,I align myself with him. We are there too with those who jeer, but also those who pick up each other's cross like Simon of Cyrene. All of our wounded, proud, wicked, Spirit blessed, loved by Christ, forgiven always-human nature is in this greatest of stories. Not one of us is excluded. And, we are there always with him in our brothers the thieves on either side of his death cross. This is our story, but it is not one that ends in a hanging on a tree or a nailing to a cross beam, this ends in our reconciliation with the greatest love than we shall ever know and it is ours even now!

In the Gospel of Easter Night, Matthew tells us what happens to those who went to the tomb, seeking to make sense of this death: 'Then the angel said to the women in reply, "Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has been raised from the dead, and he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.' Behold, I have told you."(Mt 28: 6,7) To really understand the resurrection of Jesus we have to leave all we know behind. Yes, our faith might be explored intellectually, be formed in doctrine and right living, but before all else it is an encounter, relationship, love with something living, it is as we see and hear in the accounts of the NT, a living personal encounter with the real risen Lord. The women having been told to go and proclaim the empty tomb as a sign of presence not absence, then meet Jesus on the way: 'And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them. They approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me."(Mt 28: 9,10)

At every turn we see something, then stirred up by it we find that it is in a meeting, in a presence of real self, that we then understand the limitations of death have somehow been smashed. In the Gospel of Easter Day, John tells us of that empty tomb, but of such a type of emptiness that it can only be because the one who lay in death has risen. Mary of Magdala, Apostle to the `Apostles, first to proclaim the Risen Lord, runs to Peter and the others who verify the fact that the two cloths are intact by entering the tomb. There is an event of change, and then but only then He comes to Peter and the others in truth. Jesus reaches out to them in open-all-embracing-loving friendship, this in fulfilment of that commandment of greater love that lays down its life for ones friends.

As he said to Mary, he says now to each and every one of us: '…why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?' And when we realise this is what is asked of us, to look, to seek, Jesus comes. How does he come?

I cannot answer that for you, each of us meets Him in so many different ways, but it is not in lies, or mendacity or cruelty towards anybody or any living thing, it is is in being the best we can, standing up for others, much as those three `Tennessean Representatives have done over the Nashville gun shootings, or as brave ones have done in public, tell the truth to powerful peoples faces.

Yet it is also in the gentler loving things of life, in a grief well observed where the memory of those whom we lose becomes a song of heaven, where death has no dominion. It is in the faces of the old near to God, or the baby just born, in the many friends we love and in the stranger we welcome, it is in the Liturgies we celebrate, the Eucharist we eat and drink. Christ is present in you and in me. May we find Him not only on that glorious day, but today, this Easter Day.

Christ is risen: He is truly risen!

Lectio

From Psalm 118

R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
Let the house of Israel say,
"His mercy endures forever."
R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
"The right hand of the LORD has struck with power;
the right hand of the LORD is exalted.
I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the LORD."
R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
R. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.

Easter Gospel (Jn 20:1-9)

On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
"They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don't know where they put him."
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.

A Dog's Easter Morn
Fr Robert Gibbons

I too was at the tomb

And saw that whitened being shining bright!
I was not noticed,
for I am only a scavenger dog,
rooting amongst the olive groves
for funeral scraps left by mourners.

Yet I saw Him,
I smelt the new smell,
The bitterness of the spices
burning into fragrant incense.
I saw the winding sheet
And the head-band
become as flags of victory
waving, triumphant
by the angels there.

Then finally lying flat
to wait the incredulous ones,
Peter especially.

The woman saw me and smiled
But I saw more, for He came to me
Bent down and stroked my back.
'Good Dog' he said,
'Your family recognised me at my birth,
Welcome now to Paradise,
With them, and me'.
And dropping the bone I had
I too
followed Him home.