REVOLUTION AT DAWN

Sometimes you watch a breaking new story develop on TV or your smartphone and although you know it’s important, it takes a respected commentator eventually to make sense of it for you. Resurrection day must have felt like this for the friends of Jesus. It was less than 48 hours since his death and they were still incapacitated with shock and grief. It is unlikely they had slept more than fitfully the previous three nights. So it is not surprising the significance of this defining event is missed by Mary when she says: ‘they have taken the Lord out of the tomb’.

 

But as she cried openly, Jesus appeared behind her. It is the understated nature of this event that is most striking. Two friends meet up in the park and hold a short conversation. Jesus could have appeared in the temple to shock the worshippers or in the market square of Tiberias to stun the traders on the first day of the working week. Instead he chose one woman and gave her a few simple instructions, as if she was just popping out to do a food top up. It was so casual you could miss the significance, and indeed, many do.

 

Within days, more people would meet Jesus: one at a time, in couples and clusters; and at one point in a gathering of over five hundred people. After his ascension to heaven, his followers were charged with sharing his news globally. And as they filtered out across the ancient world, they began to make sense of the event.

 

Today, lots of people who believe in life after death see it as a shadowy place - very holy, of course - but a bit boring if the world’s art is anything to go by and not recognisable, either.

 

This is not how the early Jewish Christians who formed the New Testament would have understood the resurrection. For them, the sight of an alive again Jesus doorstepping the disciples in Jerusalem, sharing Sunday afternoon tea with bewildered followers in Emmaus and cooking breakfast for hungry night-shift workers on the shores of Lake Galilee became part of the proof that one day all creation would be recreated and freed from the corrupting power of sin.

 

The earth is no mere backdrop to our lives to be deleted like a computer generated image when the time comes. It is the place over which Christ will reign. Every good thing we do in his name now is a signpost to this coming kingdom; a signpost that becomes a landmark in the new creation. What we do in this world matters eternally, which is a special message in this era of recklessness.

 

There is a binary, inescapable logic to the resurrection. If it didn’t happen, then neither will this new creation. If it did take place, this new creation is assured. There is no fence to sit on in the garden of that Easter Sunday. Those who are journeying on the Way will continue to pray, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Because the revolution is right here, right now.