Misprints can be very embarrassing. The Central Balkan Herald was famous for keeping ‘the British flag frying’; also for its nostalgic portraits of London and the ‘drooping of the colour’ against the background chiming of ‘Big Bun’; and its review of a film about Florence Nightingale, called ‘The Laddy with the Lump’ was no less memorable.* Our parish magazine is less prone to such mistakes. But this month the vigilant eye of the editor failed to correct an interesting error in the vicar’s letter. I was quoting the words we used near the beginning of this service. ‘Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.’ Except that what you will read is not ‘He is risen indeed,’ but ‘He is reason indeed.’ That is what I had typed and I have no idea why I put ‘reason’ for ‘risen’. It is hardly a Freudian error, but it provides food for thought.
For some preachers, the resurrection of Jesus is the best-attested fact in history. It is the reason for faith; it proves the validity of faith. That may be so, but the resurrection is, nevertheless, hard to grasp as a historical fact. For a start the stories of the resurrection are very diverse, sometimes contradictory, and hard to put in chronological order. Just what you might expect of the strangest historical fact of all, it might be said. But it is even harder to establish what kind of fact the resurrection is.
Some facts can be identified because we know what we are looking for. I have been told what ‘Big Ben’ is; I have had it described for me, and pictures shown to me. So when I cross Westminster Bridge, I can see Big Ben for myself. I recognise Big Ben. The stories of Big Ben are all true because there it is, an undeniable fact. Jesus had told his disciples that he would rise again, but they had questioned what this rising again might mean. Some Jews believed in life after death; others didn’t. There were various accounts of what it might be like, but no-one knew for certain. So in Jesus’ day, if you saw someone you thought was dead, you might think it was a ghost, you might think it was a mistake, you might think the person hadn’t really died, or you might think you were imagining it. And all those explanations were given to cast doubt on the resurrection, because no-one knew what ‘resurrectedness’ would be like.
So it all comes down to how you actually recognize the risen Jesus. There are of course various stages of recognition. The most obvious one is sight. I know who you are because I have seen you lots of times before and I recognise the colour of your hair, the shape of your face, the different expressions in your eyes. The oddest thing about some of the resurrection stories is that that is precisely not the way some of the disciples recognise Jesus. He is a stranger to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He is a ghost to doubting Thomas. He is a gardener to Mary Magdalen. They do not recognise him in the external ways in which we would normally recognise someone we know well
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What convinces them that death has had no dominion over Jesus is something other than sight. The moment of recognition is a moment of connection, a seeing with the eyes of the heart. The connection is established in a different way for each individual. Mary hears her name spoken. The disciples at Emmaus are offered the broken bread, though their hearts have already been warmed by a voice explaining Scripture to them in a new way. Thomas is allowed to touch. Each in his or her own way finds themselves reconnected to Jesus, through forgiveness, consolation, encouragement, or a task to be done for Jesus. At the end of John’s gospel the disciples are invited by Jesus to have breakfast with him on the shore of the lake. And it says, ‘None of them dared ask him “Who are you?”‘ This recognition of the risen Christ is a daring to believe a moment of deep intimacy where hearts are too full for words. They do not ask what Jesus is. They are not curious about whether this is an apparition or a collective delusion. They know that this is an experience of someone they had known before but now, transformed. It isn’t the kind of encounter that might be accompanied by the words, ‘Oh so you are Jesus, I wasn’t sure.’ It is the kind of recognition expressed in the words of doubting Thomas, ‘My Lord and my God.’ I do not know what the disciples experienced on the first Easter, day but I believe that what happened to them resulted in a deep certainty that their connection with Jesus was a connection with God. In Jesus we are offered the truth of God. And that recognition changed their lives and ours for ever. Jesus has indeed become our reason for living, our reason for not fearing pain or death, our reason for hope. That was their experience and it can through grace be ours also. And that is indeed a reason to be glad, for Jesus Christ is risen today, our triumphant holy day. Alleluia.
* The Central Balkan Herald was invented by Lawrence Durrell in his ‘Esprit de Corps sketches from diplomatic life’ ch. 3
Stephen Tucker