Gospel reading for Easter Sunday April 8th 2012 John 20:1-18
A common thrust as we consider the Easter story these days, is to lament the commercial frenzy that is associated with a religious holiday that the secular world openly considers its right to preserve and celebrate with "religious" ritual - an extended long-week end, a horse racing carnival, going away camping, etc etc. We invariably bring this back to some pronouncement about the real meaning of Easter ... but let's not go there.
The resurrection account is, not surprisingly, recorded in all four gospels. Yet as different as John's gospel is in general from Matthew, Mark and Luke, with respect to the events surrounding Easter is the account that gives us the most intricate detail. For an extended study sometime, it is interesting to compare the four resurrection accounts, which are hyperlinked below for ease of access:
But for the sake of this week's reflections I'd like to briefly focus on some of the incidental detail. There is quite a bit of variation between the four accounts, but one of the things in common between all of them is the involvement of Mary Magdalene.
Fascinating isn't it that in revealing himself to the world after the resurrection, Jesus chose to do this through one of the most marginalized people of society (a woman) - but also of course one of his most fanatical and dedicated followers. As one commentator observes, it was a woman, Mary Magdalene who was the first to preach the risen Lord Jesus! (Hmmm ... what do we make of that?)
Jesus through his life, death and now resurrection, consistently raises up the plight and status of the lowly. Everyone now is placed on a perfectly laser-level playing field.
Hopefully we don't regard the resurrection story as ho-hum, pedestrian or ordinary. May we continue to regard this as exceptional, extra-ordinary and intensely exciting news (albeit mysterious).
Have a great Easter!
Nev
PS - for some further reflection on what it might have been like for Mary Magdalene on that first Easter morning, I found this "First person dialogue" from Sarah M. Foulger quite insightful.
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