| In Mark’s resurrection narrative, women-followers Mary, Mary and Salome go to anoint the dead body of Jesus. Upon entering the tomb, they find a man (Jesus, perhaps?) seated there. He instructs them to go and tell the “disciples and Peter” (yes, even that denier, Peter!) that they will meet up in Galilee. The women run away in fear and “tell nothing to anyone.”
Maybe the women thought Jesus had come back to have his revenge. “Jesus is coming back and he is mad!” … or so the saying goes. Betrayal, persecution, abandonment and execution; conventional experience dictates an equally violent response to settle the score. How can there be any other way to make things right but to balance the evil with evenness? Maybe the resurrection was terrifying because the disciples feared they would be hunted down.
One of the powerful qualities inherent in resurrection is forgiveness; the release of one’s wrongdoing and the cessation of the madness of trying to even the score, make things settle out, eye-to-eye, tooth-to-tooth.
Jesus’ re-entry into the lives of the disciples – those who apparently loved him but left him – makes them the first to hear the message of resurrection. This in itself is a generous act. Maybe they could believe all those things he said and did for others. This confusing, counter-intuitive offering could be for them too. And if the disciples could receive forgiveness, they could also offer it, witnessing to the power of resurrection expressed in the power of forgiveness.
I do not think Jesus’ resurrection suggests that the human failing that got him to the cross did not matter; rather, resurrection conveys that the brokenness of humanity does not matter most. In the eyes of God, our failing is never more powerful than God’s forgiveness. We are invited to live from there, making up the resurrected body of Christ, a witness to the power of the practice of forgiveness.
We tend to stop reflecting on the power of resurrection after Easter Day. I invite you to reflect on forgiveness in the whole season of Easter. Where do you need to be forgiven? To forgive? What difference does it make to your experience of life? How does it strengthen your spiritual identity as a Christian? How does it bring healing? The Gospel of Jesus Christ offers the concept that forgiveness provides a strategic way to heal the world. How might we live strategically this core concept of our faith?
May we be a living witness to the power of the resurrection.
The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!
+Mary |
