Many of us will have had an experience of betrayal – a time when we look at the person we thought we knew and we can’t recognise them. When we lie awake at night wondering how they can be sleeping after what they have done, how they have acted or what they have said. The hurt of disappointment and betrayal can crush the spirit and leave a little, small cry of ‘I just don’t understand’. Our hearts can hold on to these ‘little’ death stories for a long time.

 

Over these past days we have been invited to once again enter into the two-thousand-year-old sacred story of the passion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. I suspect it is easier for many of us to relate to the passion and death part: this is a story with which we are familiar from our own life experience. We know only too well what it means to be bruised and beaten by life, to be let down by those around us and to experience loss and disappointment. This is the story of suffering, this is the story of life, we may think. This is the story of Good Friday as we move to venerate and recognise the cross with bowed heads, a touch, a kiss, sometimes a solemn nod. We all have our sorrows to place on the bowed shoulders of the Christ figure.

 

We identify with the disciples – the surprise of being served by one who leads; losing our nerve when put to the test; the feeling of absolute loss in the face of the death of the beloved. And yet.

  

This is a sacred story that ends with us moving on. This is a story of an empty tomb, a story that tells us not to remain with the death and darkness but to look toward life. And so, on Easter night, we lit our candles from the Paschal candle and gradually filled our darkened church with light; where we had brought our lives to the cross, we now brought our lives to the font of blessed water and we moved back into life as Easter people.

 

And yes, it does seem incredible that someone can rise from the dead. It is indeed one of the great mysteries of our faith. But is it really? We know, also from our own lives, that just as great suffering is possible, so is great joy. That from the darkest of times in life there are glimpses of light that gradually become stronger. That the broken relationship can heal, perhaps not always in the way we had imagined. That the dream we thought was lost can be brought back to life in a new way. That the seed that in the dark earth was sown can do its sacred work and bring forth life. That our cries of abandonment are answered when our eyes are open and our hearts are ready. This, too, is the lived experience upon which generations of Christians have based their lives. This is the world of resurrection thinking.

 

In April 2017, Pope Francis observed the following: "Yes, because each of us has a small tomb, some area that is a little bit dead inside the heart: a wound, an injury suffered or done (to us), a bitterness that does not let up, remorse that returns, a sin that you cannot overcome. … We identify these today, our little tombs we have inside and invite Jesus there."

 

So perhaps this is something we can take into our hearts as we once again enter into this paschal mystery – that the stone is always rolled away – that our little tombs can be opened to enable us to live in hope. That Christian thinking is Resurrection thinking. It's about rebirth, renewal, reawakening, it’s about a quiet confidence that even in the midst of the suffering times God is with us and that hope will dawn.

 

And that this is why we can proclaim, and at times just hold onto, the Good News that Jesus, who once was dead, is alive. Alleluia!

 

 

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Cathy Jenkins

Director

 

 

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