Today is Easter Day, that joyful day of resurrection, of new life and hope.
But in truth, for years, I have often felt as though I were living somewhere between the pain of Good Friday and the emptiness and loss and silence of Holy Saturday. The resurrection of Easter never seems to come.
And yet, I know that it has. I believe that it has. There is hope.
Alleluia! Christ has risen!
That first Easter morning must have been terrifying and confusing for the apostles: moving between fear, loss, emptiness and confusion, with glimmers of hope and joy.
The full message of Easter was not experienced by everyone immediately – there is a reason the season of Easter lasts for 50 days.
Sometimes it is enough to hold on to the hope of what the morning light will bring, while still in the shadows of the dawn.
During this Lent I have reflected a lot on one word: ‘abandonment’.
My own feelings of abandonment through the years have come from experiences of childhood bullying, my father’s brain haemorrhages, relationships and friendships that did not last, and my difficult experiences of parish ministry and divorce.
The word ‘abandoned’ holds a lot in it. Not just hurt, but being left without protection, without care, without the people and structures that should have held me.
It is a grief word.
It is also a truth word.
And, very gently, it may be that this is why this Easter feels hard too. The resurrection is proclaimed, but part of me is still standing in Holy Saturday, with loss and silence and absence.
So today, I stand in front of the empty tomb with a sense of quiet wonder, a sense of fragile hope, a sense of ‘what next?’
That too is part of the Easter experience.
