Resurrection Morn. I have pictures in my head of how Jesus’ disciples might have gone about the process of dealing with the previous two days, as well as what was about to unfold on this momentous day, and how they would later come to relate the events to their own families and friends as they looked back on what became a week like no other.
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The madness of two days ago has gone. How could something so horrendous be turned on its head again so quickly? In the space of six days we’d gone from thinking we were on the brink of a whole new order, where our master was greeted with cheers and adulation, to witnessing the utter devastation of his death. Things unravelled so quickly we couldn’t keep track of it all. As everyone turned on him, the hope we had clung to all came to naught, swallowed by the mob that drove him onwards to his death. How did that happen? How can people cheer one day and jeer the next, what’s that about? Are people so unsure of themselves they’ll bend whichever way the wind is blowing, or do they change course out of fear for their own lives? Thinking about it does my head in, but the crazy thing is, what felt like utter defeat has now come full circle.
He'd tried to tell us, but I guess we simply weren’t listening. We couldn’t stop the momentum, and in the end we didn’t have to. We thought the women were mad when they said they’d seen him. Was their grief so intense they were seeing things, hoping against all hope for some miracle. We’d seen him perform miracles, that’s true enough, but this was expecting too much. No one could have survived what he went through, he was well and truly dead and buried, but somehow it’s true. Reports started filtering back, and then just like that, there he was, in the room, as large as life. This makes no sense, no sense at all.
Our heads are spinning, our hearts fit to burst. He’s alive.
What happens now?
Resurrection morn
the cross and grave both empty
promise of new life
I looked at life
on Sunday
and saw love
I followed love
and I met danger.
I held out a trembling hand
and fear subsided.
I followed love
and met need.
My heart sank,
overwhelmed with inadequacy.
I held out a weak hand
and fear subsided,
as love revealed to me
the abundance
of a completely open
and available heart.
I followed love
and I met ugliness,
brutality,
depravity.
The pain revulsed me.
I held out a reluctant hand
and nausea subsided
as love revealed to me
the beauty of my brother.
- Philip Andrews from The Three Days of Easter 1971
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