Welcome to our Easter Service for 2024

Welcome to our 2024 Easter Service 

The live stream for this service is on our YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxBzxjBb3xU8ra2NHwvD_9A

You can watch at 10 am on Sunday - or anytime afterwards.

The reading and reflection notes are below:

Reading

16When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. ²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. ³They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” ⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 

⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. ⁶But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” ⁸So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

If you were to think for a moment about the most amazing things you have ever seen in your life – what would be some of those things? 

Or perhaps what would be the most overwhelming things you have seen? Or even the most troubling things?

In October last year, my wife Sandy and I walked the Old Ghost Road. It goes from near Murchison to Seddonville on the West Coast.

And on the second day of the tramp, we reached the Old Ghost Road Hut.

And the view from there is just beautiful.

And it’s a beauty that can almost leave you in tears.

Or maybe just the relief of getting there.

I was alone on my little inflatable boat and saw a Mako shark clear the water just a hundred meters away.

Seeing my children for the first time.

I can tell you what these events are, the time and place.

But they are of a nature, so overwhelming, that even if I try to describe the detail to you it goes no way to describe what happened.

A city crushed by missiles, the destruction in Gaza. We see pictures and hear descriptions, but for those involved, these too are indescribable events. Not in their beauty but in their terror.

There has been a lot of weeping too over these last days. Sadness, frustration finally cries of joy.

When Mary and Martha lost their brother, Jesus came to their home, and at that point, we are given the shortest, sharpest, and most moving sentence in Scripture. "Jesus wept"

And a little later we are told:

⁴¹ As Jesus came near and saw the city of Jerusalem, he wept over it, ⁴² saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.

After his execution, we are told about Peter, perhaps Jesus’ closest friend:

“Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: ‘Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.”

And finally, we are told of Mary weeping outside the tomb.

There is a phrase, which first appeared in the writings of the Roman poet Virgil - but has been picked up since then by countless poets and writers.

Those too reflecting on the tears and weeping of this last week.

 "Lacrimae rerum." As Virgil wrote in Latin.  It means "the tears of things." It’s a complex phrase in Latin.

It means three things:

That universal sense that human beings must bear, ever-present frailty and suffering, and that’s what defines the essence of human experience. 

It can mean that another, for us, that God, feels sorrow for the sufferings of humanity. I have a God who weeps for me, weeps with me.

And finally, it can mean tears of relief - that we find ourselves in a place where we can expect compassion and safety.

"Come to me," Jesus says to the burdened and heavy laden, "and you will find rest for your soul."

We hear tears of frustration, tears of lament, and for so many who have been cruelly bereaved, tears of grief. It’s hard to see through tears, but sometimes it’s the only way to see. Tears may be the turning point, the springs of renewal, and to know you have been wept for is to know that you are loved.

Our Easter stories express some overwhelming sense of encounter.  The things that bring us, bring Jesus, to tears.

You cried when you saw that painting, heard that music when she told you she loved you. You cried when you saw that suffering.

We can name the time and place that happened, we can speak about the weather conditions, who the prime minister was, and what you had for breakfast. Just another baby. All the facts in the world. But they will be inadequate to describe that moment.

In our faith, the most true and real things are the hardest things to describe.

You encounter the risen Christ, and you might say that can’t happen, and yet the Gospel is telling us that it is the most real and truthful and transforming thing that has ever happened.

1 After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.

We as science-age people, ask: “I wonder how big the earthquake. How big was the stone? What does an appearance like lightning look like? And clothing white as snow. Let me just think how that would look for a moment.

These women were overwhelmed with the grief and the fear and the horror of Jesus' execution three days before. What we hear about today was the last thing they were expecting.   

The first words given by these stone-rolling-descending-from-heaven, lightning-appearing snow-clothes-wearing angels. The first words these mighty beings from heaven speak, the first thing they say, is ‘’Do not be afraid’’. ‘’Do not be afraid.’’ 

And now their encounter with a reality that changed their lives - what words do you use. What do you say?

If we go back in the story:

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. We have already been told that they have witnessed his crucifixion and burial.

Now they come to see the tomb. The word ‘see’ can mean ‘look at’, ‘consider,’ or ‘contemplate.’  Some of those things we might do when we go to visit a grave or a memorial.

Matthew tells us that guards were guarding the tomb.

There is a sort of ironic twist here.  Even though Jesus was dead and buried and his disciples scattered, the chief priests and Pharisees were still a little nervous.

If we go back a few verses from today, they had asked Pilate to make the tomb “secure,” so that Jesus’ disciples would not steal the body and try to claim that Jesus had risen - Pilate tells them, “You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can”. Make it as secure as you can.

Perhaps Pilate says more than he realises.

And again, we are being told a lot more than just the details and facts.

The guards seal the tomb with a stone and stand watch to keep death in its place. Yet when the earth shakes and the angel appears, the guards are so frightened that they shake and become “like dead men.”

So, all these details in the Easter story? The earth-shaking news of the resurrection is unsettling, even frightening; it shatters all our human attempts at security and jolts us into the unfamiliar territory of God’s new creation.

In Jesus, the reign of God breaks open everything that seemed fixed and immovable -- even death and stone-cold tombs.

Some stories stay with us.  Some experiences we look back on, maybe through the tears of things, and know that from that time our life took a different direction.  We might own the stories but also the stories own us as well. They are bigger than us.

Today we are being told things that are ultimately important.

The tears of things. These life-changing claims.  No wall of stone is large enough to keep Jesus in the tomb. So, it is with the life-giving power and love of God. No show of force, no contingent of guards or security police can stop it.

The resurrection is an earth-shaking, unsettling event.   The One who shakes the earth with the resurrection is the One who holds our future, who promises to meet us and to be with us, even to the end of the age.

AMEN