Dear People of God in Southern Ohio,
Every year, I am struck by how chaotic and complicated the Easter gospel is. There is Mary Magdalene, a woman too often held in suspicion. There is a lot of running back and forth between the empty tomb and where the disciples are staying, and for some reason, the gospel writer needs us to know who ran fastest. There are angels—there are always angels. And finally, as Mary stands weeping with frustration and sorrow, there is Jesus, risen from the dead.
If I made the rules, the Easter gospel would probably be a little bit more orderly and approachable. But it’s a good thing that I don’t, because the central mystery of our faith is too big for order and reason. It requires a mysterious, and even outrageous, story.
The Easter story asks us to follow those disciples running in the dark to an empty grave. It asks us to notice and to care about who got there first, about the linen wrappings that covered Jesus’ body, and the fact that the one from his head is lying off to the side. It asks us to care about a woman who wasn’t believed, even by her friends, who had to go see it for themselves. It asks us to care about a woman who people at the time, and in the thousands of years since, have sought to discredit and dismiss. Ours is a faith that asks us to care about that woman, the one who stood weeping, the one who would be the first witness to the resurrection.
We follow a chaotic story and believe an outrageous truth: Christ Jesus has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life. On this holy day, like Mary Magdalene, we proclaim to the world that we have seen the Lord, and nothing will ever be the same again.
May you and all those you love find joy in the promise of Easter, now and always.
image: Miller, Mary Jane. First Apostle to the Apostles, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59688
