Skip to main content

The Easter that didn't happen

Now on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, and saw that the stone had been rolled away.  She ran to Simon Peter and John, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"

So Peter and John ran to the tomb; and in the growing light they could see the body of Jesus, exactly where it had been laid.  "Foolish woman," they said.  "Were you not there when they took him down from the cross?  Did you not see the blood and water come from his side?  Tend to the dead with your ointments and spices, and trouble us no longer with stories of missing bodies."

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look in, and saw that Jesus' body was indeed still there.  Then she washed it, and anointed it with perfume and precious spices, and returned home.

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the disciples were together with the doors shut, for fear of the Jews.  And they said to one another, "The Rabbi has been crucified, and if we are not careful we shall die next.  Let us therefore return to Galilee, and decide how best to preserve his teachings and honour his memory."  And this seemed good to them all.

So they returned home and lived quietly, gathering once a year to remember their Teacher, and mourning that he died before he could bring in the Kingdom of God, of which he had so eloquently spoken.

If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
1 Corinthians 15:14

Comments

Helen Paynter said…
Very good, thank you Martha. I'm preaching from this text on Sunday, and might just pinch this, if it's OK with you? Makes you look at things from a different perspective.
Martha said…
Go ahead Helen - I'm always happy when people pinch my blog! I might do some kind of follow-up post, but can't promise it before Sunday - and this seemed to stand up on its own anyway.

Popular posts from this blog

A Place at the Table: Spiritual Formation Book 12

"God has ordained in his great wisdom and goodness that eating, and especially eating in company, should be one of the most profound and pleasurable aspects of being human." Miranda Harris had been intending to write a book for years. She'd got as far as a folder full of notes when she died suddenly in a car accident in 2019. When her daughter, Jo Swinney, found the notes, she decided to bring her mum's dream to fruition. A Place at the Table was the result. I thought this was going to be a nice friendly book about having people over for dinner. In one sense it is, but it's pretty hard-hitting as well. Miranda and her husband Peter co-founded the environmental charity A Rocha, so the book doesn't shy away from considering the environmental aspects of what we eat and how we live. They also travelled widely and encountered hunger at close quarters; the tension between seeing such poverty and believing in a generous God comes out clearly in A Place at the Table.

Flexitarianism

Hey folks!  I learnt a new word today!  I can now proudly proclaim myself to be a flexitarian .  Yes, I wish that meant I'm in training to be a trapeze artist.  Or that I'm a leading world expert on the chemical properties of stretchy materials.  All it actually means is that I don't eat meat that much. Well, big deal.  That lumps me in with a majority of the world's population, many of whom have no choice about the matter.  So why the need for a fancy new word?  Because, it seems, that we in the prosperous West have come to regard having bacon for breakfast, chicken sandwiches for lunch and a steak for dinner as entirely normal.  But also because we in the prosperous West are starting to realise that might not be an entirely good idea. You know about factory farming, of course.  The images of chickens crammed into tiny cages and pigs which never see the sunlight, which we push out of our minds when we reach for our plastic-wrapped package of sausages in t

Thirsting

When the poor and needy seek water,      and there is none,      and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them;      I the God of Israel will not forsake them.   I will open rivers on the bare heights,      and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water,      and the dry land springs of water. Isaiah 41:17-18