When the
tomb of one of the Ancient Egyptian Kings was opened and the archaeologists
went in they discovered a number of sealed pots containing votive offerings.
One of these pots was full of grain, wheat grains. The pot of grain had lain
there undisturbed for 2,500 years. Among the many other things that were of
great scientific interest in the tomb, this pot of grain was particularly interesting
to agriculturalists. One of them wondered what would happen if, after 2,500
years the grain was planted. He duly planted and watered the grain. And lo and
behold after all this time it produced green shots and after the normal period
sent forth ears containing new grains of wheat.
You
couldn't call this a miracle, but to those agriculturalists it seemed like a
miracle. They were certainly full of wonder and awe. 2,500 years in the tomb
and the wheat grains were still capable of generating new life.
New life
always surprises us, it always delights us, it inevitably fills us with hope.
Jesus
Christ was in the tomb three days. Three days of desolation and fear for his
disciples. Three days of silence, three days being enough time for it to fully
sink home that he was dead and that they hadn't immagined those horrific events.
Then
reports came in from the women at the tomb, it was empty. Then word of
sightings. It gradually began to sink home that he had risen from the dead. And
then he appears to them face to face, and all their hopes are realised. A new
era has begun for the world. Nothing would ever be the same again.
We are
the spiritual sons and daughters of those disciples. We are their spiritual
heirs. We are the bearers of the Good News that Christ is risen. But, of
course, in order to be believable we need to have encountered the Risen Lord.
We need to have something to tell.
In a
real way we need to have been where the disciples have been before us. We need
to have experienced death and desolation in order to experience the power of
the resurrection. We need to have known those three days in order to fully
realise just what Christ has achieved.
You
don't need me to map out for you how this fits into your own life, you can do
that for your self. But I don't think that any of us needs to look very deeply
to find where those three days fit in. There are in all our lives times of
desolation and vulnerability. In order to rise with him we need to have been in
the tomb with him.
This is
what the Church teaches us each year when it takes us by the hand through the
events of the Pascal Mystery; the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethesemani, the
trial, the judgement, the journey to Golgotha, the death on the cross, the
laying in the tomb and the long wait for the resurrection. We do it this way
because we are human beings and we only begin to understand something when we
have experienced it.
We experience today the joy of the resurrection, the
birth of new hope for the world. We experience the certainty that death has
been destroyed once and for all and that for us death is now the gateway to
everlasting life. Because we have been led by faith to this discovery we live
differently to those who have no hope. We live a new life in Christ. We have
been baptised and inserted into this mystery and we live it out in our lives
each day.
May God
bless each and every one of you, may he fill your lives with Easter joy and
bring you in due time to his everlasting banquet in heaven.