This Week On State Of Belief
The Women Of Easter And The Church

Easter Morning

Easter Day
April 16, 2006
Mark 16:1-8

RESURRECTION MORNING

According to the Gospel of John, the dawn of the first Easter was anything but promising. Jesus had been humiliated, crucified, and buried three days earlier. It is hardly surprising that the men who were his disciples were nowhere to be seen. After all the wonder and excitement, it came to this–Cross Jesus was dead! And they were terrified. Separated from their dreams they experienced the radical absence of hope, and the absence of hope, for them, signaled the absence of God, what St. John of the Cross called the “dark night of the soul,” and they had gone into hiding behind locked doors. Only the faithful Mary Magdalene stood by the tomb. Then Jesus came to them–first to Mary at the tomb and then to the locked room. Just how he did that we do not know, but Jesus moved through their closed doors and their secure walls. Shocked and full of doubt and fear, they could not trust their own eyes. Still Jesus persisted. He said, “Do not be afraid of what you see.” With these words, the peace of God drove out fear, doubt, and hopelessness and the disciples recognized him and rejoiced. So the beauty of the story of the first Easter morning is this: Faith is not certainty of belief. It is trust and the perseverance of hope, and God will not let the disciples or us remain in doubt and despair. God’s spirit just keeps coming to us again and again–sometimes in the concrete personal experiences that we share; sometimes in the sheer wonder of our world. “Do not be afraid of what you see,” said Jesus. “Do not fear what you see before you.” Beyond despair and fear, resurrection is the sign of the renewal of divinely given hope and courage. We know this, and like Thomas, the most doubtful of all the disciples, the outcome is our confession–confession of the overwhelming power of trust in God’s love ever seeking us to offer us new hope and new ways of believing.

Rev. Joseph C. Hough, Jr., President
Union Theological Seminary
New York, New York

(Reprinted from UCC's Worship Ways)

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