Easter Day

He Is Risen!

Easter Day has come, kind of in a whisper here in the city. The churches buildings are silent, I haven't heard any bells ringing, and when the OH and I went into the back garden to sing "Thine be the our glory," this morning, our audience was just two robins who flitted from tree to tree, but did stay the distance, bless them! It is, for most of us, an Easter Day like no other.  Some things have stayed the same: there is a mountain of chocolate in the sitting room - 18 Easter eggs between the 5 of us - and we have had a lovely roast chicken dinner tonight, followed by Rhonda-Jean's self-saucing chocolate pudding (from Down-to-Earth blog) and/or apple crumble. My stepson, like a lot of 17 year old boys, is a bottomless pit at the moment and seemed to eat his weight in roast potatoes and two helpings of chocolate pud, bless him. 

That seems to be life at the moment: some things stay the same and others are just so very very different. I thought about the disciples this morning as we did an Easter egg hunt in the garden. Mary searched the place near the tomb for someone to tell her what had happened to her Lord. Easter and gardens seem to me to be inextricably linked - Nadia Bolz Weber shared a section from one of her books today on her Facebook account where she talks of Jesus being mistaken for the gardener and wonders whether he had the dirt from the tomb still under his nails, surmising that if he was indeed mistaken for a gardener, he might have looked a bit rough around the edges, so to speak!  But this was the risen Lord and yet Mary did not recognise him until he spoke her name.

I am constantly bothered by the reporting of the deaths from coronavirus at the moment and how we seem to just hear numbers, unless the person who has died was a high profile figure, like Tim Brooke-Taylor, whose death was reported today. But every single person who has died from this terrible disease was a husband, wife, sister, brother, son, daughter, cousin, or whatever - they were people who had lives, histories, families, stories, hobbies, preferences, funny habits, memorable foibles - they were individuals. They have names. Names are intimate, names are special, they identify us. And when Jesus identified Mary by her name, she knew that it was him - the one to whom she was special. The one who was special to her. 

As a lay pastor, I have often talked of having a ministry of presence, in which I listened to a great many stories, giving people my time, and holding space for them to talk and be heard. It has always felt to me that the greatest cry of the human heart is to be known, and that is one of the most precious gifts that we can give to another - to really take the time to get to know someone, to cherish their stories by actually listening to them, holding on to them and remembering them.  As I take my next steps on my journey into ministry, I fully intend to continue this work because I have heard Mary's joy in being recognised in this story and I have seen an old lady's eyes light up when I have recalled her story. 

As we go forward into the next weeks and days, and we continue to spend time with our loved ones, in person at home or via phone lines and technological wizardry, let us all take time to listen, to hear and to cherish, so that we might truly know one another well. 

I hope that you have had a blessed Easter Day today, however you have spent it, and that in the days ahead, however you spend them and however long this lockdown needs to last, you will be safe and well.