Sunday 9th April
Read John 20:11-18
“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13 They asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’
‘They have taken my Lord away,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know where they have put him.’ 14 At this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realise that it was Jesus.
15 He asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.’
16 Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’
She turned towards him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means ‘Teacher’).
17 Jesus said, ‘Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’
18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them that he had said these things to her.” (NIVUK)
Simply a poem today, as a woman returns to a garden and finds the Lord…
“The loved one gone, deep love knows only grief;
And griefs compounded when the sepulchre
Is robbed, emotion’s deepest wellsprings stirred
At love’s last memories taken by a thief-
Sick jest, or cruelty beyond belief:
Her bitter tears and sobs unstaunched, unheard
Except by angels-and a gardener. Sir,
Return his corpse to me. I crave relief.
Beyond all praise his quiet gentleness,
Transmuting expectations far too small,
Relieving every possible distress:
His whispered “Mary!” banished death’s gray pall.
Her name came wafting to her, light and free;
She turned toward him and cried out, “Rabboni!”” (D Carson, Sonnet XXVII)
