He is risen! Mark 16: 1-8
What has God done? Everything. What have we done in return? Nothing.
Easter morning is the defining place and moment of Christian space and time. It is the Christian Genesis: male and female in a garden, darkness becoming light. The first day. It is the Christian nemesis: death and despair displaced by life and hope. The last day.
As Christians we come to church on Easter Day to celebrate the greatest day of the year, to sing for joy at the central moment of our faith and to experience again the wonder, relief and excitement of the first Easter morning. We read the story of how the women went to the tomb at daybreak. And we hear these words: “You seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here.”
Is this good news or bad? Initially, it sounds like insult added to injury. Look at it from the women’s point of view. To lose the man who had turned the world upside down, to lose the person who showed them the Father, to watch goodness and truth personified being nailed to two planks of wood—this was more than they could bear. But then not to be able to minister to his dead body: this took grief and despair beyond all reason.
