Easter Sunday

We consider the first day of the week to be Monday. In the Jewish world of Jesus, the first day of the week was Sunday. It was the day after the Jewish Sabbath, which was the seventh day, our Saturday. Today’s gospel reading begins with Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb of Jesus very early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark. This was our Sunday, the first Easter Sunday. Ever since that first Easter Sunday, the church has been celebrating Easter every Sunday, which is why we gather on Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist. However, once a year, on Easter Sunday, we celebrate that first Easter Sunday in a special way.

The other gospels suggest that other women came with Mary Magdalene very early on the first day of the week to visit the tomb of Jesus. However, the fourth evangelist has chosen to place the focus on Mary Magdalene alone. She was one of the women who stood near the cross as Jesus was dying. What did she expect to see early that Sunday morning? She expected to see Jesus’ tomb with a stone rolled across the opening. She went there to be close to the body of Jesus, as people today often visit the grave of a loved one. What she saw was not what she expected to see. She saw that the stone had been moved from the opening and that the tomb was empty. When we see something that is totally at odds with what we expect to see, it can be difficult to interpret it at first. Initially, Mary Magdalene thought that somebody had stolen the body of Jesus. Her running to Peter and to the disciple Jesus loved suggests her anxiety, her perplexity.

The running of these two disciples to the tomb on hearing what Mary said also suggests anxiety and concern. Jesus had died in the most undignified way imaginable. Was his body now suffering a further indignity? When the two disciples reached the tomb, they saw more than Mary Magdalene saw. They saw the linen wrappings that had been around the body of Jesus lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ face rolled up in a place by itself. This would suggest that Jesus’ body had not been stolen. Robbers would hardly go to the trouble of placing the linen clothing in one place and leaving the cloth on Jesus’ face folded up in another place. How were they to interpret what they saw? According to the gospel reading, it was only the beloved disciple who ‘saw and believed’. He saw the true significance of what was before his eyes. He saw more deeply than Mary or Peter. He saw that Jesus’ body had not been stolen, but that he had been raised to new life. He saw with the eyes of faith.

We are all invited this Easter Sunday to see with the eyes of the beloved disciple. We are all beloved disciples. What Jesus said to his disciples as a group at the last supper in this fourth gospel he says to us all. ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Remain in my love’. As disciples whom the Lord loves and who seek to love the Lord in return, we try to see with the eyes of beloved disciples. We see that the Lord is alive, not dead. We believe, in the words of Peter in the first reading, that after Jesus was crucified, ‘God raised him to life, and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses’. Peter goes on to say, ‘Now we are those witnesses’. It was really only when God allowed Jesus to be seen, when Jesus appeared to his disciples, that they came to believe he was alive with a glorious life over which death had no power. The beloved disciple, however, believed Jesus had been raised from the dead by God before Jesus appeared to his disciples. He saw more deeply than others. This fourth gospel suggests that it was the depth of his loving relationship with Jesus that allowed him to see Jesus more clearly than the other disciples.

To see others clearly we need to love them. We really only see or know those we love. The more we love someone the more clearly we see them. As we grow in our relationship with the risen Lord, we will see him more clearly. The more we open ourselves up to his love for us and love him in return, the more clearly we will see him. Like the beloved disciple, we will come to see him even in the most unpromising of places, in places normally associated with death. The beloved disciple looked into the darkness of the tomb and saw what no one else could see. He saw the one who said of himself, ‘I am the light of the world’. ‘I am the resurrection and the life’. Easter invites us to allow the risen Lord more fully into our lives so that we can see every situation in the light of Easter, recognizing the light of the Lord’s presence even in our various valleys of darkness. No matter where we find ourselves on our life journey, the risen Lord is there, coming towards us, walking alongside us, calling out to us to recognize him.