Revd Helen Writes …

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  Easter falls in April this year so we can hope that by then we might be enjoying some warmth in the garden and I might be able to take one of my jackets off. We can’t stop gardening whatever the weather as on the 7th and 8th June, eleven gardens in the village are opening for the charities of the National Garden Scheme and also for our own Rosemary Foundation.

 

  I mention that now so that as many people as possible can put those dates in their diaries and come and see our gardens looking their best. But before we get to June we have many other events to enjoy and in April of course we celebrate Easter; one of the most amazing, most spine-tingling days of the church’s year, when we hear again how, before dawn, a group of women went to the tomb where Jesus had been laid and found it – Empty!

 

  Where had he gone? Who could have taken him? Later in St John’s Gospel there is the most moving account of Mary Magdalen weeping in the dawn-lit garden for her lost Lord and her sheer bewildered wonder when she suddenly realises that Jesus, the man she watched die on a cross, is now standing beside her – alive.

 

  A garden is a mysterious and wonderful place. Many changes happen overnight and to walk out at that mystic moment of dawn, when light has just returned, can be a walk of wonder and of awe. And the changes that happen in a garden happen silently and invisibly. As indeed did Jesus’s resurrection. No one saw it happen. The most astonishing, unexplainable, momentous event in history happened silently and unseen. Mary and other women rushed to tell the Disciples. Blank bewilderment must have turned to disbelief. They were still grieving for the friend they had seen die. Still shocked and traumatised by the events of Good Friday it must have been impossible to take in.

 

  Some of us, or perhaps people close to us, are living through their own Good Fridays; the reality of grief and suffering and worry may be so great that the resurrection cannot seem real. If that is where someone is, although they may know when our Easter celebrations take place, it may seem that nothing has changed, except that the flowers are back in church and the shops are full of chocolate. But perhaps we might also be able to hear, along with Mary, Jesus himself asking in compassion “why are you weeping?” and to know that those words were spoken not by some spiritual apparition but by the real Jesus, who also trod the path of suffering.

 

  In his lifetime Jesus was bullied and beaten up, he was let down by his friends, he knew what it was like to lose someone close. He knew fear in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and, of course he knew what it was like to die. When we are struggling and wondering where God is and why he has allowed suffering in our lives, we can perhaps take comfort from the knowledge that, through Jesus, God has suffered with us and knows exactly what we are going through.

 

  When Jesus spoke Mary’s name, she recognised him and knew that he was her Lord, alive again. It was in that moment of encounter that the resurrection became for her not just a profound prophecy or a far-fetched idea, but a life-changing reality. Easter day is more than just the happy ending to a story. More than just a song of joy and a sigh of relief after the drama and heartache of Holy Week. Easter Day is a glorious and joyful new beginning. God’s love for us is stronger than anything else we can possibly imagine. To all who are in despair, like Mary Magdalen; to all who are caught by guilt, like Peter; the message of the Resurrection is this:

 

  God’s love is unbreakable. If even death cannot defeat God, then anything is possible. There is always hope. There is always forgiveness. There is always a future. And, ultimately, even if it can seem very far away indeed, somewhere in the distant future, there is always joy.

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  With love and prayers,

Helen Kempster