Pastoral Letter from Chair of the District, Revd Helen Hollands

Reflection for Easter Sunday: John 20: 18 ‘I have seen the Lord’

 

There is beauty at the breaking of the dawn.

The stone has been rolled away. The disciples run to the tomb and finding only emptiness, return home.

Mary remains, weeping. This is injury upon injury, for how can this be and who could have taken Jesus?

 

Light filters into the mourning.  A familiar voice, saying her name, the One who knows her for all they have journeyed together, ‘Mary’. Here is her friend, the Lord, risen and she has seen him, recognised him. Love rising from death and present before her.

Mary Magdalene, in all our gospels, is tasked to bear witness, the apostle to the apostles, to announce, ‘I have seen the Lord’. Let those who doubt the voices of women note who is the first messenger.

In the silence of the morning, the stillness of a garden, there is the resurrection life.  True to form, there is no fanfare, no power grab, no justification for war, no brutal imposition of a different order.  Jesus appears to his friends, those who love him and those who doubt him, in the garden, in a locked room, whilst fishing and walking to Emmaus. 

Now we see him too. In breaking bread, the company of friends and the pursuit of love.

He is with us when life is overwhelming, when we seek truth or forgiveness, when we are filled with boundless joy. 

Mary said, ‘I have seen the Lord’.

Sometimes, we can’t see for looking. His presence alongside us always, that is the promise.

Alleluia. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Happy Easter to everyone.

Helen