Fr. Jacob's April Newsletter Message

And can it be

It was afternoon. There was drizzle and a rainbow swatch of oil on the street. I was with two people. It was just near that old joke shop. Or perhaps it was morning and I was in a crowd of pedestrians and the sky was overcast but dry, and we were near that Pitman shorthand college.

I'm not sure now. I knew once, but twenty-five years have passed and not it's mostly forgotten.

I saw a man on the sidewalk step into the road. He was hit by a motorbike or perhaps it was a car. I think he stepped out between parked cars but perhaps not. I do know that he died. For the only time in my life I had to give evidence in court.

The eyewitnesses all agreed on the central details - time, weather, place, that a man was knocked down. To my surprise we disagreed over important details. How fast was the motorbike moving? It was a key fact. It was all so quick, so unexpected. We'd seen it but our estimates varied dramatically. In the end, the police estimated it from skid marks if I remember rightly.

No wrong was done - the bike wasn't speeding, the pedestrian made a tragic mistake. It was an accident For years it was vivid to my memory but not now.

It turns out that exactly such differences of recollection are a mark of eyewitness testimony. Indeed testimony from more than one person in which details don't differ is indicative of fabrication.

It is just such differences of detail that we find in the stories of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Day. Wrapped in the narration of the Gospels, the Easter stories bear characteristic indications of eyewitness testimony. There were angels, it was amazing, fearful, wondrous, they were there, but precisely how many? The Marys were there, and Peter and the Beloved Disciples too, but in what order? The Risen One spoke. It was the first day of the week, so early in the morning.

The details are the signs of the shocked, astonished reports of eyewitnesses. Perhaps more obviously than any other tale in the Gospels - when we hear the great tales of that Easter morning in the four Gospels, we overhear the amazed conversation of the first disciples, we listen to the astonished eyewitnesses.

But the core is always the same - Jesus is Alive!

Every Christian text we have from the first century is united in this conviction - Jesus who was crucified is Alive. No Christian texts we have say the sort of thing that I often overhear at funerals and that first century Jews were as familiar with as us. None say that he just lived on in the memories of his broken hearted friends. None that they just saw visions or heard the voice, of a man they knew to be dead. Instead we overhear the first disciples as they tell us the wondrous truth - the Lord is Risen! He is Alive!

The mighty story of Easter was then, and is now, that Christ is Alive. He is Risen from the tomb, and has trampled down the death that tried to contain him, trampled down the murderous flight from Love that hammered the nails into his broken body, trampled down the whole disastrous story of sin and betrayal.

He is Alive that we might live in Him. The tomb could not contain Him, and it cannot contain us if we let Him take our hand.

Its the tale that was recounted by the first, astonished, fearful eyewitnesses and it is the same tale we re-tell and rejoice at this Easter. We praise and worship the same Lord, Risen at the right hand of the Father, and sending his Spirit that we might have life in its fullness - a Life that not death, not the world, not sin, not Satan,can defeat for Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed!

A blessed Holy Week and Easter to you and all those you love,

Fr. Jacob