Year C / Eastertide / Easter Sunday
Readings: Acts 10.34a, 37-43/ Psalm 117.1-2, 16-17, 22-23 (R/v 24) / Colossians 3.1-4 / John 20.1-9
“While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed.”
“The disciple Jesus loved, looked into the empty tomb and saw the linen clothes on the ground. Going in after Peter, he saw and he believed.”
This is what Mary saw and John experienced that Easter morning. That in the stone rolled away and in the empty tomb, they, who had loved Jesus and lost him to death on the Cross, began to behold God’s answer to their broken hearts: “That what is loved, is resurrected.”
This is the Easter proclamation. It declares that Jesus, deeply loved and Love Himself, has been resurrected. This revelation transforms our understanding of love and resurrection. Now we see that love and resurrection are the same. We no longer need to fear that love is impermanent, nor that we need to live in fear of losing it. When we love, when we are loved, we are given a glimpse of eternity.
So today, Easter Sunday, on the other side of death, we celebrate not only the enduring truth that we are loved but also God’s promise of loving us into redemption and resurrection. For truly what is loved, will be resurrected.
This is good news. It is joyful news. It consoles us who have to struggle with the reality that those we love die. When they do, we feel as if we too die.
Death is a fact of life, part of our human condition. But when death comes, it stings, pains, and numbs us. It can kill our capacity to love and, for some, the desire to continue loving or living.
Perhaps this is the curse of original sin. Our lives are intertwined with the presence of death. To be born is to die. If we love God, family, friends, neighbours, and even faith or justice or earth, or whatever else we treasure and count precious, there comes a time when this ends. Our bodies will age, decline, get ill, grow forgetful, and finally perish. At life's end, all our bonds of love will sever. Isn’t this why we desperately want something more than a goodbye?
The gospel story assures us we will receive it if we are like Mary as she approached the tomb. She was pained and sad, because she knew she’d lost Jesus whom she watched suffer and die. But she kept faith and refused to give up on love and on loving. She came to tend to Jesus’ body, probably because no one else was able or willing to. For her, this is what love looks like, both in life and in death. I wonder if we’re keeping faith too, loving Jesus still, this Easter morning, or if we’re here because it's a religious obligation, obedient piety, or doing the right thing.
God met Mary's faith in love with His own. His faithful love for His Son, whom He raised from the dead, comforted Mary. It also transformed John's love for Jesus, making it deeper and braver for him to truly see and believe that Jesus is alive.
And so it must be for us who’ve come here this morning. The Resurrection is not a long ago story of a miracle moment. It is our Christian faith; we believe in Jesus the Christ – He is Risen, Alleluia! Might this be the answer to that something more than goodbye that we all search for when the end comes, be it death or something akin to it?
Mary and John discovered this that first Easter morning. They teach us that what we choose to love in this world, even amidst death, suffering, pain, or loss, already abounds with resurrection life.
Like when you gently hold the hand of someone dying, thankful for her in your life. Or, when you give hope to the poor, uplift the downtrodden, include the unwelcomed or reconcile after a friendship breakup not to waste this gift. Or, when you listen to another’s burdens and give him hope. Or, when you forgive like Jesus, bestowing peace. Every time you do these and similar, what or who is loved — by you, by God, and by God working through you — is resurrected.
This is Easter joy. We need to hear it, sing it like we do the Alleluias, and to make it our way of life every day.
When we live the Easter way, everyone we encounter will come to know the answer. Those who struggle to love, those who have loved and lost, and those who feel confused about love will realise that this is the answer — that in the risen Christ, what is loved is never lost. In the present, it will live in new and fruitful ways or as a memory alive and happy. In the future, it will be alive in eternity, and we can call each other by name again.
We heard this joyful Easter proclamation this morning. Mary glimpsed it in the dawning light when she saw the stone rolled aside. She then ran to tell Peter and John. They too ran to the tomb and entered it, found it, not empty, but filled with the light of the resurrection streaming in.
May we be like Mary and announce this good news to everyone. May all who hear our confession that He is alive recognise the light of the risen Christ streaming into their lives, enlightening them with this truth, this hope —that what we love, God will truly resurrect. And when the time comes, this is also how God will raise all of us to eternal life because we are loved.
A Blessed Easter, everyone!
A Blessed Easter, everyone!
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