Dear Friends,
We do not often read Mark’s account of Easter morning on Easter day. The last verse leaves us with the women fleeing from the tomb terrified and amazed. They have just encountered a young man in the tomb, dressed in white who has given them a message to deliver to the disciples – that Jesus is risen and has gone ahead of them to Galilee!
It is not surprising that we don’t read this version on the day that is full of joy and hope and gladness. Surely fear has no part in our Easter story – what are they afraid of?
Are they afraid of the ridicule that such an utterly unlikely story will bring?
Are they afraid because Jesus’ body has gone and they have found a stranger in his tomb? Or are they afraid that all the old certainties have been blown away – death is no longer the end, God’s power is no longer contained within the temple but has broken loose into the world? Now that is a fearful, amazing, terrifying possibility.
Perhaps we constrain God’s power; assume we know how God thinks about things; keep God in a little box of prejudices of our own making.
Easter is the day above all other days when we realise that God has broken through all our old certainties; challenged our ideas that God is made in our image rather than the other way round; amazed us with the realisation of a power that conquers even death. Now that kind of power is enough to make us afraid and amazed.
Consider this – Jesus, God in human form, has broken free from the worst that human beings can do to him. The shackles of death have been broken and he strides ahead of us to a new future, invincible, magnificent, calling us into new life with him. O – I think we might be a little afraid on Easter morning but who can resist such an invitation?
This Easter let us stride out boldly again to follow the one who calls us to new life in Him.
Joy and Love and High Adventure with Him this Easter.
Diana