RSS FEEDEaster Morning
On many and many an Easter morning through the years, I have opened, as I did today, a book by Dr. Peter Marshall called The First Easter to fill my being with the deep and present reality of “resurrection.” I commend the book to you on this holy day.
And I quote from it the following passage, regarding what the disciples experienced as they found the empty tomb. Dr. Marshall says that what they saw changed them forever. He writes:
“The Greek word here for ‘see’—theorei—is not to behold as one looks at a spectacle, not to see as the watch maker who peers through his magnifying glass. It means to see with the inner light that leads one to conclusion. It is perception, reflection, understanding-—more than sight…”
It is for that deeper way of seeing the meaning of Easter that I reach, year after year.
But, aside from that abstraction that satisfies my mind, my heart is fed as well by the following portion of Dr. Marshall’s rendition of the Easter morning story:
“…But Mary Magdalene, still weeping, lingered at the edge of the garden.
Along with the other women, she had come to find a dead body…
and had been shocked to find the grave empty.
She thought it had been broken open–grave-robbers perhaps.
She did not know…
She could not think clearly.
“Only one thought seems to have absorbed her soul—
the body of the Lord had been lost…she must find Him!
“She ran as never before back towards the empty tomb, with the speed and unawareness of time and distance that grief or fear or love can impart….
‘But Mary stood without at the sepulcher weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulcher…and she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
‘Jesus saith unto her: ‘Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?’
“And John tells us that she thought He was the gardener. She fell at His feet, her eyes brimming with tears—
her head down—
sobbing,
‘Sir, if thou hast taken Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away.”
“To her tortured mind there was a gleam of hope that perhaps the gardener, for some reason known only to him, had moved the body…
“She was red-eyed…
She had not slept since Friday…
There had been no taste for food…
She had been living on grief and bereaved love…
‘Jesus saith unto her… ’Mary…’
“His voice startled her…
She would have recognized it anywhere.
She lifted her head with a jerk…
blinked back the tears from her eyes and looked—right into His eyes.
She knew…her heart told her first and then her mind…
She saw the livid marks of the nails in His hands and looking up into His face, she whispered:
‘Rabboni!’
“The loveliest music of that first Easter dawn is in the sound of those words echoing in the Garden…
His gentle…’Mary….’
and her breathless…’Master!’
“Mary had come prepared to weep—
Now she could worship.
She had come expecting to see Him lying in the tomb—
She had found Him walking in the garden in the newness of resurrected life.”
Thnak you Glenda. Very nicely written and something special for this holy day. May Christs message of peace permeate this planet. And his message of eternal life instill in all of us the courage to carry on and support each other through these most trying times here on Earth.