EASTER AS A CHANGED AGENDA

There was a second niggle. That large stone that had been rolled across his tomb. All very well to use a bit of gravity to get it into place, but now gravity would work against them as they tried to open the grave. What would they do? Some concerns you can’t resolve, and they decided that they would figure something out when they got there.

That little group of women had an agenda with two items that Easter Sunday morning. First open the tomb of Jesus and then add their spices to his body. Having done that, they would perhaps have been able to look at the obvious third item on their agenda – grieve the death of Jesus. Hard to sum that one up quickly. After all, it meant grieve the loss of every hope and dream. It meant say hello to cynicism and defeat. It meant that they, the last, would never be first – and how foolish of them for having believed it. There would be much to mourn, and they would take years to get over this – but first things first. Top of the agenda was to give Jesus a respectable burial. 

Well that certainly changed! Don’t know what they did with their spices (did they leave them in their panic, or frugally store them away for a more regular corpse?), but they became the first witnesses to the resurrection. They tell the doubt filled disciples that Jesus has risen.

That news didn’t just change their short-term agenda – it changed their forever. 

Though they wouldn’t have admitted it, when they set off to anoint the body of Jesus that Easter Sunday morning, they were taking their first step towards getting over Jesus and returning to a BC life. No doubt they told each other that they would never forget him and perhaps talked about how much his teaching meant to them – but deep inside they knew that to survive, their first task was to get over him and to work out what an “after Jesus” lifestyle would look like. After all, beautiful though his teaching was, it clearly didn’t work – nothing like a crucifixion to drum that point home. 

But when they saw the empty tomb (stone already rolled away) – well, that was different. Clearly another journey was about to begin. Though they wouldn’t have fully grasped it immediately, together with the disciples, they were about to change the world – not figuratively, literally, for their message of resurrection has literally changed the fortunes of this planet. 

Easter and private agendas have never sat comfortably together. Easter is not primarily a comfort (don’t be afraid of death) but a challenge – live in the light of Easter.

Before the resurrection the disciples often wondered who Jesus really was. Most days they thought he was a great teacher – the best sort of rabbi. On other days they wondered if he was also a prophet. Every now and then they wondered if he might be the Messiah. After the resurrection, they stopped speculating, and called him Lord.

Easter is an invitation to call Jesus Lord – and if Jesus is Lord, then his agenda trumps our own. There is no loss in that, for his agenda is so much more interesting…