March 23 2008    Easter Sunday

Text: “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God……..”

John 20.17 (NIV).

Though, as is well known, that in 1492 Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans reach the Americas, what is less well known is what a human, all too human story it was. He had begun planning the trip seven long years before, in 1485. Columbus presented his plans to John II, King of Portugal. He proposed the king equip three sturdy ships and grant Columbus one year's time to sail out into the Atlantic, search for a western route over the Atlantic and then return home. But the king, felt the whole project was too risky. Few believed that his ships could carry enough food and fresh water for such a journey. So, there was a great reluctance to provide funding for Columbus’ voyage.

Equally, the king and the court did not know that Columbus had one piece of knowledge, one thing that few others knew…. that off the coast of Africa, near the Canary Islands, there was a very strong westerly current, and westerly winds, that would carry any ship west, and beyond the horizon. Columbus’ intention was to trust himself to that westerly current and see where it would carry him. In 1492, in the service of Spain, with his three ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Santa Clara, he left the port of Palos in South Western Spain on August 3.

After five-weeks, carrying west across the ocean, at 2.00 am on October 12 1492, over the bow of the Pinta, coming out of the early morning light, was a momentous sight, land, new land. It was an island somewhere in the Bahamas, though which island this was, no one knows to this day. None of his men had ever seen before, and there was some confusion as to what it was, and where they were. But because Columbus and his men, were carried by that great current, trusting themselves to it, here on the port bow was this momentous sight. Land. We can scarcely guess at the reactions of those sailors: apprehension, joy, wonder, a range of human responses. Most of those men unable to grasp the significance of what they were seeing.

For two maybe two or three years, the gospels tell us, the disciples had seen the Lord Jesus speaking, eating, healing, sailing in the fishing boats. In the previous days, they had seen Him crucified, dead, laid in a tomb, and now this......... an empty grave. What has happened is too great a thing for these men and women to at first grasp For this is a thing infinitely greater than the sight of new land, this is a new era. In the resurrection of Jesus, a single event, has taken place, which even now is on the very edge of our understanding, almost beyond comprehension. For God’s power, that same power that created the universe – has raised Jesus from the dead. And, unsurprisingly, we see a range of responses and reactions in the gospels to what has happened.

For example, the gospel of John tells us : Both Peter and John ran to the tomb….. and John arrived there first and looked inside but did not go in, Peter, a few minutes later, arrived, and stepped into the tomb, and saw the pieces of linen cloth lying there……… In that moment of awestruck silence…….. we are told, John saw and believed - the truth of what had happened grasped hold of him. Jesus was risen.

Or Mark 16, for example, we read that the women Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the garden. They find the stone rolled back, and a young man sitting who tells them that Jesus is no longer there. Mark records their response – we read that they shook with fear, they were bewildered, and overwhelmed. What has happened, and what the young man has said to them – is at that moment incomprehensible. Beyond their grasp.

However, John chapter 20 tells of the response of Mary in the early light of dawn. As she is standing outside the tomb grieving, weeping, someone approaches, Mary thinks it is the gardener, but when He speaks, Mary recognises with great suddenness that this is Jesus……….. who speaks with her….. Jesus, who is raised from the dead. In the gospels we are confronted on the one hand with what is too great for men and women to grasp, the resurrection of Jesus…….. on the other…….. These simple, quiet moments when he meets with His disciples. In an Upper Room, in the garden, on the shore, on a road in the twilight. The risen Lord meets with His disciples.These are moments of such significance, a new era for the world, yet they take place in such quietness, and ordinariness

We see this in many ways in the meeting with Mary in the early dawn at the empty tomb. Woman, says Jesus to Mary, why are you crying ? Mary replies, They have taken my Lord away and I do not know where they have put Him. … after a moment’s conversation, Jesus says Mary….. and she recognises Him. She recognises the Risen Lord. Moments of such significance, a new era, in fact, for the world, yet they take place in such quietness, and ordinariness, particularly in these words of Jesus Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God……..

Moments of deep significance, a new era – they are here in the words of Jesus. The Lord tells May: I am returning to my Father…and your Father John’s gospel opens with the declaration of who Jesus is, and where He has come from, that He is the Word who was with the Father before the world was made. And the gospel declares to us that He has come into the world a human being. He has come into this world, the place of violence and hostility, where He was condemned to death, and died on the Cross. But all of this is in the loving purpose of God, for the whole world. A new era has opened for the world, through the life, and the death and the rising again of Jesus Christ, and having come into the world for this purpose, for us, the Lord says, I am returning to my Father. And because of all that Jesus Christ has done, we too can call God our loving Father……..

Moments of deep significance, a new era. They are here in the words of Jesus to Mary, Do not hold on to me. Jesus, who meets Mary here at the tomb, is transformed. He is now the first to have risen from the dead, and when we read of Jesus here, He is Himself the new human life as He speaks to Mary. This is the new life that He has created for us. Meeting Mary in the quietness of the garden, in the early dawn, He lives now, as the writers of old used to say – in His changed, or glorified humanity. Through all He has done at the cross and in His rising again He has renewed our human life. That new human life we see in Him in the garden as He speaks with Mary, this new human life, this new everlasting life beyond death is His gift to us.

Our Lord Jesus has been raised from the dead, by God's power. In raising Jesus from the dead, God has let us see our own future.............. the promise of God, the declaration of God is that His life is ours. We shall be like Him, as Paul says ! You and I will be raised to life to live again, raised to life in God's presence when He remakes, recreates, fully restores this world…… to have this hope of being raised to life through Jesus, is to have the deepest foundation for life, to live in the hope of being raised to life in Jesus, is to be fruitful, it is to know that nothing we do in His service is lost. Let us pray, this, that we might come to know something more of the significance of what has happened in the resurrection of Jesus. Let us pray that we might live in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord in these Easter days, and, indeed, in all, all the days that God gives us here, and then in His presence to come.

AMEN.