A Eucharistic Gospel Reading for Easter Sunday: Year A
“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the feet.” (John 20:11 – 12)
All of us share with Mary in the fact that it is through Jesus that we even know who we are. We read from the Gospel according to Luke that our Lord Jesus casts out 7 demons from Mary, (Luke 8:2). It is in this way that Mary even knows who she is. She owes her very identity to her Lord Jesus. It was when she heard him call her name, “Mary” that she knew beyond any doubt that her Lord and Savior was back! Which to her means, she can remain who she is supposed to be, because “Jesus lives,” and because Jesus lives, she lives. Because Jesus lives, we live.
We, you and I, are the good we are through our risen Lord, Jesus Christ. I am sure that throughout my life I have had some demons. However, knowing and loving Jesus has enabled me to rid myself of demons and more fully become aware of who I am supposed to be. Like Mary Magdalene, we come to know fully who we are in Christ Jesus our Savior. We have a Covenant of knowing ourselves in Christ. This Covenant in Christ Jesus will never be broken.
God has had many covenants with humanity. All were broken at some point. We had a covenant with Noah symbolized by a rainbow; we had a covenant with Abraham that all nations will be blessed through him; we had covenant through Moses with the Law, whether it was the 613 Laws, or the 10 Commandments: we broke covenant with God every time.
In Jesus we again tried to break covenant by crucifixion. But God knowing we are not able to hold a covenant, became one of us and “un-broke” the attempted brake of this Covenant by Raising our Lord Jesus, the living Covenant, thus, not allowing His Covenant with us to be broken. In this move by Christ, death has died. “I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction? (Hosea 13:14). And this was reinterpreted by Paul in his 1st Letter to the Corinthians as “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15: 55). What we get from this is that death does not win. Our Lord Jesus defeats death and keeps us with him forever in Covenant.
We have so much to be thankful for. God loves us and has walked among us to experience what it is like to be us, the good and the bad. Easter is about God keeping Covenant with us in order that we may be who we are intended to be in a Covenant we are not able to break. Thank You Lord Jesus. Alleluia. Christ is risen!
As we listen to what the Spirit of God is saying to us, let us live to love and to serve, and to teach others to love and to serve, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
Let us pray: (BCP p. 222)
Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord’s resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
onewhoponders 