Brothers and Sisters,

 

We began our Journey through the Season of Lent with a cross traced in ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday. We heard God’s call to repent and believe and “Come Home…wherever you may have been and whatever you may have been doing…Come Home.” We met Jesus in different situations during our journey through lent. We heard his word and saw the way he interacted with various kinds and types of people in all kinds of situations. We saw him facing temptations in the dessert, transfigured on the mountain, offering life-giving water to a woman in a Samaritan town, healing a man born blind, raising Lazarus from the dead, riding on an Ass into Jerusalem, celebrating Passover with his disciples and being judged, condemned, crucified and buried.

 

Our Lenten journey brings us now to Easter - to new life, to new beginnings and to a new presence. We celebrate our call to be an Easter People, a people transformed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, a people who must continue to journey in faith, in hope and in love. We must move on and meet Jesus, alive, where we are, now, at this point in our history.

 

The Gospel of Mark (Mark 16:1-9) tells us the story of the women of Jerusalem racing to the tomb of Jesus and finding the tomb empty. A young man in white robe told them to go and tell Peter and the other disciples that Jesus was going ahead of them into Galilee. The women raced from the tomb, bewildered and fearful, to tell the disciples what they found. They brought great news to the disciples: The risen Jesus was going to meet them in Galilee. It is great news for us as well. He is going to meet us in our own Galilee. So we must move with confidence in his presence on our journey.

 

After hearing from the women who visited the tomb, Peter and John raced to the tomb because they wanted to see that it was empty for themselves. They had just spent three dark days in pain and grief. They had helplessly watched their beloved Master being taken away from them, beaten, judged, publicly tortured, mocked, and crucified. He died, and His lifeless body had been put into a tomb. He had told them he would rise again, but as was true about many other things that he told them, they couldn’t really grasp yet what that meant.

 

Nothing like this had happened since the world began, that a man would rise from the dead. Jesus had resurrected others, but it was hardly comprehensible that He could resurrect Himself. Even though they had seen His Transfiguration not long before, the reality of His passion and death had intervened and obscured the promise of that vision. These were practical men, who not long ago had been fishermen. Everybody knows that when you are dead, you are gone from this earth for good. Hope seemed dead.

 

To read more of this Sunday’s reflection, please click on the links below….