St Martin's & St Paul's
Parish Canterbury
St Martin's & St Paul's
Parish Canterbury
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Think for a moment of the best possible surprise you could receive.
You open a letter, you click on an email, you get a telephone call - and it is the best news - and totally unexpected.
If, in the future, you were to look back on that moment, you would I think be able to remember exactly how it felt. Whatever comes after the receiving of unexpected best news - the moment of actually receiving it stands alone. And people who are asked "How did it feel?" when they heard the news will often say, "I could not believe it"! Now that it not just a cliché; it is accurate. It's a true statement of how they felt because, at the moment of hearing the news, they were still mentally in the realm of whatever was going on before that news came. The mind, the emotions, the world view all have to catch up and change; but that moment of opening the letter, receiving the email or the telephone call is a pure and naked moment of revelation.
That is why the original ending of the Gospel of St. Mark, which we have read today, is so important; because it is the moment when the wholly unexpected good news is received and it therefore carries an authenticity that needs to be recognised and respected. The women, coming to the tomb to anoint a dead body, find instead a stone rolled away and a young man robed in white who says, "He has been raised. He is not here". And how do they react? Mark tells us, "Terror and amazement had seized them and they said nothing to anybody for they were afraid". Whatever comes later let's stay with that moment as Mark preserves it for us: terror, amazement, fear. The authentic moment of receiving the news that is not only wholly unexpected, good and wonderful, but is actually also frightening. In preserving the moment, Mark also preserves the authenticity of the event, for those women were in a completely different realm: when they went to the tomb; they were in the realm that is familiar to anyone who has witnessed the passing, the funeral, and interment of someone they love. They did not expect him to be alive again and their response was exactly what it was: terror, amazement, fear… and, initially, silence. How do you put into words what they had seen and what they had not begun to understand?
There would be many experiences of the risen Christ and perhaps we all have our favourite, the one dearest to our hearts. For many it will be Mary Magdalene going to the tomb; for others the Road to Emmaus; for others, the appearance to Thomas. What had happened was experienced in different ways and in different places so that those who understood it could move from one place to another: from grief to joy; but how important it is that the Church was able to preserve that first experience in the earliest Gospel in its earliest form: the moment when the unexpected news is received.
Belief in the risen Lord is a matter of faith, not proof; and faith is the dynamic of the Christian life. Nevertheless, in a scientific age where people are less willing to commit in faith alone and want to look at evidence and proofs, Mark's account of the very first witnesses of the resurrection is very important evidence; there is no dressing up of the moment of revelation. Unsatisfactory as it might have been, why were they afraid? Why did they run away? Why did they keep silent? Would I have done anything differently - probably not - it is its very unsatisfactoriness that makes it authentic. If the moment when I receive unexpected good news is filmed my response - my authentic response - however embarrassing -is preserved forever. The response of those women to what they saw is also preserved, and therefore carries its own unique stamp of authenticity.
But it was not the only response, nor was it the only revelation that Jesus was alive. Others came too, and to them we add our own by being here today, by standing before our Easter garden and by moving from the Good Friday of our lives to the Easter Sunday he reveals to us. He is not dead, he is risen, and he goes before you today.
Amen
