Easter 2022

It is Easter Sunday in a world that has forgotten what that means.

Two thousand and twenty two years ago, the women went to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body with sweet-smelling unctions, to tend his fleshly being as those who love and honour their dead seek to do, and the tomb was empty.

The tomb was empty.

Most of us have listened to the words so often we have forgotten the meaning.

How convenient. So easy to dismiss, for we are all materialists now, aren’t we? Matter is matter. Dead is dead.

And yet, and yet. . .this thinking instrument with which we shape every perception, every thought and creative imagining, this consciousness attached to matter but not completely subsumed by the material process, flashes like a small indicator light in our lives, alerting us to its presence. We deny miracles, but live with this miracle every day.

“Not merely matter. Not merely matter. Not merely matter.”

Flash, flash, flash. . .there it is, the inexplicable miracle of conscious existence.

The moment of Christ’s Resurrection is a mystery. We do not know what happened. The New Testament is just that—a testament. It attests to the experiences of our first century witnesses, and there were no witnesses to what happened at Christ’s tomb. We only know what happened afterwards, the world changing, perception changing, life changing events that turned a group of frightened followers—frightened of the Romans, frightened of torture, frightened of death—into an invincible force.

Something—something overwhelming—changed this little band of nobodies into a spiritual force that changed the world, without a sword being raised, without a battle being fought, simply with spiritual presence and with word alone. The world was changed a soul at a time.

It is still being changed, over two thousand years later, blind though most of us are to the process of it.

On Easter Sunday Christians say to each other gladly: He is risen!

This happened over two thousand years ago—but it is also happening today, it is happening now, as you read these words. Somewhere, everywhere, there is an encounter with the living Christ.

There is a little light flashing in your being, just out of full awareness perhaps, but there nonetheless.

“Not merely matter. Not merely matter. Not merely matter.”

We are, as Sophia tells us, rough sleepers in this life, dreaming fevered dreams of insubstantial things.

But remember, Christ rose today, He is risen!

And you, my friends, you must wake up. . .