- Acts 10:34-43 or Jeremiah 31:1-6 •
- Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 •
- Colossians 3:1-4 or Acts 10:34-43 •
- John 20:1-18 or Matthew 28:1-10 These are some of the readings for Easter Day
- There are probably two types of errors that you can make about the great mystery of the Resurrection
- One is to think that if we believe hard enough that Christ rose from the dead
- then death will go away
- that we will be spared negative consequences.
- The other is to imagine that it is just a metaphor
- a way of looking at life
- that is symbolic
- but doesn't really have much reality about it.
- If you like it is a sort of fairy story.
There is an element of truth in both of these views,
but they are both false
No one suggests that believing that Jesus rose from the dead
will help us to avoid death.
We would be foolish to think that death is not real
But equally well
it's a mistake to think that the language of resurrection is only symbolical.
If we pay attention to the stories contained in the Gospel
we find there is no sense in which
the early Christians believed that the stories
were only symbolical.
The stories are clear:
Jesus died
and was experienced as alive
after he had died.
It is this that is at the heart of what Christians proclaim.
Jesus is alive, even though he died.
We don't quite know how this happened
we know it did
and that Christians have come to understand
that meeting the risen Jesus
makes a difference to the way
we understand death.
Not avoiding death
not pretending death is metaphorical
but allowing ourselves to be brave enough to enter in.
There we discover
that death
does not destroy us
it does not defeat us
but rather it opens to us
the life of God
our own life
the fulness of life
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