Easter 2 Reflection
YRA Easter 2
Zoom 19th April 2020
Few Christians living in this country and across the world can ever have experienced an Easter like this one. At the same time, however, this Easter gives us an opportunity to identify a little more closely with the doubts and fears felt by the first disciples, and with their experience of resurrection which we have just heard about in this week’s Gospel reading.
Like the disciples, we are behind locked doors for fear of the potential danger posed by the people outside. As for them, so for us, the everyday interactions, which we too easily take for granted, are currently denied us, and the mundane but reliable routines of work and school, appointments and activities, shopping and being with our friends are no longer available. For the disciples, contact with the people outside carries the risk of injury or even death by mob violence; for us, such contact may lead to severe or even fatal illness.
Many of us have had to cancel plans and projects, or at the very least put them on hold. Eagerly awaited parties and holidays, matches and performances have been postponed at best, abandoned at worst. We may justifiably feel disappointed, depressed, devastated; and these emotions are pretty much what the disciples were feeling, too. We should not feel guilty about them.
But Easter comes anyway…
We can’t cancel it or put it on hold. We can’t postpone it or ask for a refund. There it is, fixed in our calendar: 12 April 2020 last week. Like it or not, whether we were in the mood for it or not, Easter comes anyway.
Just like Jesus…
We may be locked in our homes for fear of the people outside, or having to do jobs that potentially could be a risk to our health but that doesn’t stop the risen Jesus from coming among us. We may find it hard to believe that he’s with us, especially in times like these; but so did the disciples – especially Thomas! And yet Thomas was able to declare ‘My Lord and my God’ and we are told then that Jesus breathed on them and they were given the power to get on with Jesus’ mission.
Living out God’s love in the world and trying to make it a reality – is difficult - and especially difficult at the moment but we are reminded that God offers hope because of what Jesus showed in his suffering and death and resurrection.
So the message for today is about taking the reality of God’s hope and love through into the full reality of life, when things are flat, dull, difficult or even disastrous. It shows that God’s rising-again can help transform the lowest moments, the most difficult situations into a new beginning and a new dawn. Amen
