As we reach Easter Sunday, our hearts are filled with awe and gladness that we can indeed proclaim that Christ is risen. I often think of what it was like to reach that first day of the week without the benefit of hindsight, however: to view Easter as it must have seemed to the first disciples without the knowledge that appearances do not necessarily tell the whole story, without the knowledge that God is working all things together for good.
Anyone who has lived through any kind of emotional turmoil knows how draining and debilitating it is to see-saw from hope to despair through every range of emotion in between. The disciples had entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on the exhilarating high of acclamation. (Matt 21:1-11) The Gospels tell us so much of this last week of the life of Christ: the teachings, the miracles, the plots. Then came the talk of betrayal and sorrow, the Last Supper, feet being washed, teachings of the last days. We struggle to take in all this teaching even now, so it must have been exhausting for the disciples: no wonder they fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. (Matt 26:36-46)
The dread and fear they felt at the arrest of Jesus, the sickening realisation that one of them had betrayed Jesus, the hurt and terror that this must have engendered in them cannot simply be ignored by us, for we so often are in that place of dread, fear, hurt and pain. Their differing reactions – blustering violence (Matt 26:51), a desperate need to know what was going on (why else did Peter and John follow into the courtyards?), quiet solidarity in watching the Crucifixion – remind us of how we react to the unknown.
Then there came the quiet obedience of waiting: ‘The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.’ (Luke 23:55-56) How hard it is to wait, to feel impotent, to be able to do nothing at all to change a situation. How long that Sabbath must have seemed. As they remembered God’s deliverance of His people from Egypt, did they have any inkling of the greater deliverance taking place in the world?
Then we have the next stage of the story. ‘When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.’ (Mk 16:1) They knew their duty. They were determined to be faithful to the end. They were still trying to work things out: ‘they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”‘ (Mk 16:3)
So often, that is where we are. Hurt, confused, afraid, we ask questions to which there are no answers. We try to work things out as best we can; we try to answer our prayers ourselves at times, all too often unaware that God is working things out in ways we cannot ever even imagine. When the women arrived at the tomb, the stone had already been rolled away. Their immediate problem had been solved. They had done nothing to solve this, despite their questions and anxiety. Greater things awaited them: the revelation that death was not the end of the story, that God had planned a solution beyond their wildest dreams.
Easter Sunday reminds us very firmly that God is in control, sovereign over all, ruling and reigning in majesty, even though He chooses to work in hidden, invisible ways that to us remain mysterious and unfathomable. We hold on to hope in the midst of darkness; we remind ourselves that the God who delivered Israel from Egypt and raised Christ from the dead is our God: ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Rom 8:31)