Easter Sunday
Reflection
There are really no words or images that can do justice to what resurrection entails. What happens after death is no longer open to inquiry by us whose lives are bounded by the constraints of time and space. Artistic and literary attempts to describe resurrection fail utterly, stained glass windows and Easter cards to the contrary notwithstanding. Notice that the gospels do not give any actual descriptions of Jesus rising from the dead. There were no witnesses. The texts are modest and do not luxuriate in speculation. What the disciples affirm without any imaginative embroidery is that they have had a religious experience of an encounter with Jesus alive in a new way thanks to the creating God who saves.
Elizabeth Johnson
Prayer
He is risen. Alleluia!
Action
What is your concept of the implications of the resurrection narratives? Where does that fit in with our present understandings? Reflect on resurrection as evidenced in nature as well as in scripture.
Suggested Reading
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb…When the looked they saw that the stone which was very large had been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man in a white robr sitting at the right side and they were alarmed. But he said, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him.
Mark 16:1-8
I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.
John 11:25-26
He died for the vision of God’s forgiving, inclusive, nonjudgmental, nonviolent reign, and he rises in each of us over and over again every time we proclaim it with our lives.
Barbara Fiand
Evil is a result of the finite in and around us. It says nothing about the infinite. That is the whole point of the resurrection. The infinite draws out life from death, goodness from evil, restoration from devastation. In that fundamental reality is out hope
Angie O’Gorman
Christians of today encounter the risen Christ not only in the Word of God proclaimed in the Christian community, and not only through participation in the Eucharist, but also in words, persons, and events in the world. In the light of the Word of God, they meet the risen one in the experience of grace that occurs in the midst of life.
How God Acts
The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.”
N.T. Wright
Live in the awareness that Christ lives and that He lives in His people.
Julien B. Weil
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
Martin Luther
Easter says you can put truth in the grave but it won’t stay there.
Clarence W. Hall
To believe in the resurrection is not to believe in a scientific miracle. It is to believe in God. It is an act of hope in the God who created you and everyone else and everything else, who has the love and the power still to recreate, even when death has taken away the only life that you know.
Elizabeth Johnson