One of the features throughout my life has been early communion on Easter day. For many years we would go to chapel for the 8am communion service, which was followed by Easter Breakfast. My Mum was always in the kitchen and one thing that always tested her was how to boil a dozen or so eggs to perfection, she solved the problem by putting all the eggs in a stocking and lowering them into the water at the same time, the stocking was tied to a wooden spoon, which lay across the pan and she simply lifted the spoon out when the timer said so, the perfect boiled egg for everybody! My mum was delighted that she had cracked the egg problem and years later I am impressed by her ingenuity.
Towards the end of our time in Yorkshire I attended two sunrise services, the first was the perfect expression of what Easter morning ought to look like in my mind, we walked through Undercliffe cemetery and stood around the Joseph Smith Monument, with the city of Bradford down below us and worshipped until the sun rose, there was something quite spine chilling about walking through the place of death in the darkness and walking back in the light of a new day. The following year our sunrise service lacked one fundamental element, sun! We gathered in the graveyard behind Clayton Heights Methodist Chapel, one of the highest chapels in Bradford, located almost halfway between Bradford and Halifax, there was thick fog swirling around us, and it felt more like a funeral scene from a Bronte novel, than celebrating the dawning of a new day, the best we could do was imagine the sun.
I often feel that we launch far too quickly into celebrations on Easter Day, starting our worship with the proclamation “He is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!” I believe that the first Easter Day started with a group of traumatised women heading to the tomb, the day started with mourning, which quickly turned to confusion. It is understandable that when the found the tomb empty, their response wasn’t “He is risen, Alleluia!” but rather that somebody had stolen the body and in doing so had taken away from those who were grieving losing a friend a place that they could identify as his final resting place, which is still important to people today.
The dawning of the new day comes when Mary Magdalene looks into the eyes of the man, she assumes is the gardener and the penny drops. That is the moment when the revelation of the risen Christ is recognised, that is the dawning of a new life for Mary. I always find it fascinating that the first resurrection appearance is reserved not for the eleven disciples who Christ has been preparing for this, not to the Church of their day, the great leaders of the Jewish tradition, but to Mary Magdalene, who might well be named as the thirteenth disciple, Mary is important to Christian believers, because she was at the foot of the cross when Jesus died and is the first witness to the resurrection.
A Prayer for Easter Day from the Methodist Church of Great Britain:
When everything was dark and it seemed that the sun would never shine again, your love broke through.
Your love was too strong,
too wide,
too deep for death to hold.
The sparks cast by your love
dance and spread
and burst forth
with resurrection light.
Gracious God,
We praise you for the light of new life
made possible through Jesus.
We praise you for the light of new life
that shone on the first witnesses of resurrection.
We praise you for the light of new life
that continues to shine in our hearts today.
We pray that the Easter light of life, hope and joy,
will live in us each day;
and that we will be bearers of that light
into the lives of others.
Amen.