A roller-coaster of an Easter

It was a roller-coaster of an Easter for us, waiting to hear whether a fine Christian leader we know would recover from a sudden, very serious heart attack. We attended a meeting about his condition on Maundy Thursday which was deeply sombre. For believers, there is "resurrection"- either resurrection to eternal life, or to a kind of restoration of his body (resuscitation) but this does not mean that Christians avoid suffering.

Easter is about resurrection. No one saw the actual resurrection of Jesus in a dark tomb in the outskirts of Jerusalem. Augustus was Emperor in Rome which had theatres, drainage, underfloor heating, and even tourists. This was the era of recorded history. This unseen event was the most important happening of the Roman world, and of our world. It occurred at the first light of dawn in a little known Province, in an insignificant garden. No one knew that it was the world's most important moment. It was only as a result of previously fearful disciples witnessing to something unique and being transformed from cowards into heroes that some of us recognise it as such today.

At first light, the lifeless body of Jesus of Nazareth was touched and changed by divine power. His new body could rise, pass through grave clothes, appear and disappear, walk through doors, eat and defy gravity. It still had wounds, but they were bloodless wounds.  This second body of Jesus did not appear quite the same as the first, but when people's vision adjusted, it was clearly the same
Person.

Jesus never had to say, "I am getting older".  His are the wounds of love and youth, signs of eternal Love. His rising means he overcame human hatred and the worst that we and nature could do to Him.

The Christian leader seems to be in the process of being restored and no longer on life support system but able to breathe again, unaided.

It was on Easter Sunday that we heard this good news. It was a very potent symbol indeed of "rising from the dead".