Our Easter readings this year are Acts 10.34–43 and John 20.1–18.

Now obviously the resurrection stories are well known, and our central point every Easter has to be that death is not the final word; that love is stronger than hatred, and that the God of all history, abundant life, and ceaseless generosity is the one who will be there beyond, and after all.  It's a hope that has given shape and meaning to countless lives through the millennia since that incredible morning - and it's a hope that has the power to support us through dangerous, difficult, and worrying times: whatever history holds, it is still held by God - and he will bring it all to completion and blessing in and through himself.

What I love about the story as John tells it though, is his honesty around the difficulty of accepting that truth.  This is, after all, a story laced with ignorance and doubt - on Easter morning itself!

It begins with Mary Magdalene discovering the empty tomb, but not discovering a resurrection.  Instead she finds confusion, and worry - her first response being (as most of ours probably would be) to assume that someone had moved the body.  Her immediate concern becomes finding out where to. She runs to the disciples, and recruits them to her cause, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’

Her world at this moment is one of grief, of loss, and of worry. 

Peter, and another, set out at once and run to the tomb, and find it - as advertised - empty!  Then we encounter a really interesting verse (8), 'Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed;'  I've always taken that to mean he believed Jesus was risen, but today I find myself unsure.  There is, in fact, no evidence to suggest that meaning that I can see in the narrative. The proposition that he's responding to is not that Jesus is risen, but that the body has been moved.  That's why he's at the tomb, and that's what he is, I suspect, in this moment believing.  It's a sudden confrontation with an act of supposed desecration, on top of the loss of a close and dear friend.

His world at this moment is one of sudden encounter with the depravity of others, of shock, and of fear.

John, in fact, underlines it in verse 9, 'for as yet they did not understand ... that he must rise from the dead.'  This agrees with Luke's (slightly differently ordered) account of these events, 'Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.' (Luke 24:12)  And, as in Luke, the disciples go away, passive, dejected even - unable to stay in the presence of this fresh wounding.

Mary, though, stays, in tears.  And it is whilst weeping she encounters first angels, and then Christ himself.  But even with him standing in front of her, the pain of her world blinds her to his presence; the concern that she is carrying limits her understanding; the purpose she has taken upon herself prevents her seeing.  To the angels she cries, '‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’; and to Christ himself, '‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.'

Yes, Jesus is risen!  (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)  But he is risen in a world that is burdened by grief, loss, worry, shock, and fear. He is risen to a world blinded by tears, and so very often too preoccupied with its own agenda to notice him standing right there in the midst of it all.  John is not afraid to admit it, and we shouldn't be either.

So if you're feeling overwhelmed right now with the fearmongering in the media, the pictures of warfare, the collapse towards climate crisis - or by your own much more personal losses and struggles - if this Easter the claims of resurrection and victory chime a little hollow, then know this: you are not alone.  You are standing in the shoes of the disciples - and that's no bad starting point.  

Over the coming weeks we'll be walking with them as they discover their way through the confusion and the fear, becoming more and more aware of Jesus, who has been with them all along.  Maybe we too, in a world no easier than theirs, can discover that truth afresh in their company.  Here's to the journey.