Easter Sunday

"On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, 'Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!'"

Luke 24:1-6

"It is very important to be clear about what these people meant. When modern writers talk of the Resurrection they usually mean one particular moment--the discovery of the Empty Tomb and the appearance of Jesus a few yards away from it. The story of that moment is what Christian apologists now chiefly try to support and sceptics chiefly try to impugn. But this almost exclusive concentration on the first five minutes or so of the Resurrection would have astonished the earliest Christian teachers. In claiming to have seen the Resurrection they were not necessarily claiming to have seen that. Some of them had, some of them had not. It had no more importance than any of the other appearances of the risen Jesus--apart from the poetic and dramatic importance which the beginnings of things must always have. What they were claiming was that they had all, at one time or another, met Jesus during the six or seven weeks that followed His death. Sometimes they seem to have been alone when they did so, but on one occasion twelve of them saw Him together, and on another occasion about five hundred of them. St. Paul says that the majority of the five hundred were still alive when he wrote the First Letter to the Corinthians, i. e. in about 55 A.D."

C. S. Lewis, Miracles, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1947, pp. 172-173.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, we come with the women in the pre-dawn dark of the third day, to the tomb of Jesus. We crest the hill and suddenly see the unbelievable: the stone is rolled away! Like children set free we rush to the empty tomb and encounter the clear authority of the angel: "Why do you seek the Living One among the dead? He is not here; no, He would not be here. He is risen from the dead!"

O Father, we feel again the excited ecstasy of the women that morning in Jerusalem so long ago. We rejoice in the triumph of this Easter morning as Jesus, the Light of the World, rises again inside us. O Jesus, fill our waiting hearts, calm our fearful minds, and gentle our restless souls. Soften our hearts and send the rivers of Your joy bubbling up again from the wells of our thirsty spirits.

O Jesus, like Mary Magdalene we just want to cling to You this morning after the dark night of sorrow. We want to be with You and never let You go! Release Your Spirit in us, that we might sing unashamedly the ancient Alleluia, and proclaim Your victory to all our brothers and sisters throughout the world, that You have broken the power of evil and death, and hold out to all people the gift of eternal life. Amen! Alleluia!"

(An Easter Prayer from Living Grace)

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