What have you witnessed?
Easter Sunday
Year A
John 20:1-18
What have you witnessed?
It's the sort of question a police officer or a judge
might someday require you to answer - that you describe, audibly or in writing, the
details of what you have seen or heard at a particular time and place. Memories play tricks and entropy takes its
toll even on recall.
Sometimes it takes the collected memories of a series of
witnesses before the real story can be reconstructed or the reliable core of
the story can be established.
Know this, though:
a small number of disillusioned and failed followers of an itinerant
prophet from Nazareth were transformed, in a very short time, into agents of
hope. They transformed their world and went on to refashion ours. Resurrection not only "was"
something - with reference to God's raising of Christ on the third day - but it
"meant" something. We know
its reality not only in the collecting of testimonies from the four Evangelists
but by the history of what followed.
When you throw a stone into the centre of a pond the
ripples travel out to the edges. Truth is spoken to the powerful by humble
people who, seemingly, have no fear. The
great persecutor of the early church becomes one of its chief apostles and
advocates. The boundaries which separate
the wealthy from the poor, the Jew from the Gentile,
fade away. God has
not only raised Christ from the dead, he has raised us as well. This power over death and meaninglessness is
extended to the lives which we lead.
The ripples of Easter do not stop with the list of events that occurred on the third day surrounding the man Jesus. The power of Easter is what folks across the
ages since have seen as the agent of transformation in their current
world. The power of Easter is something
you would rejoice in seeing at work in your lives. It would be something you would mourn the
absence of, should that be the case.
What the disciples saw, and heard and touched with their
own hands will be the subject at hand this Sunday. But that is only the beginning. The Sunday readings between now and the day
of Pentecost move into what this unique event means for his followers. Christ in his resurrection is "the first
fruits" of a harvest to come.
"Christ is risen....and therefore.....".
What has happened now to you (and what will happen in the
future) is part of the story.
The invitation to live abundantly has been extended to us
as well.
