The writer of John’s Gospel reports the risen Jesus
saying, when they all met in the upper room:
Have you believed because you have
seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe
[John 20:29].
And we read at the start of the First Letter of
Peter: Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do
not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice… [I Peter 1:8].
But I think the translators of the King James Version
got this part best – they knew the uses of the English relative pronoun – Whom having not seen, you love; in whom,
though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice… It is the quiet, faithful, unfussy
appropriation of Easter and all its lovely truth.
Each year we come to Easter sight unseen. More importantly, every time we are
challenged in life, faced with either hope or despair… each time we have to
decide what our hope is, whether to face the light, whether to take the next
step in faith, to leave baggage behind, to move on… it is as those who trust
that Jesus lives.
Whom
having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing,
you rejoice… And
so the church prays in one of its loveliest collects:
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light…: By the effectual working
of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation. Let the whole world see and know that things
which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are
being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by
him through whom all things were made, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
As I wrote this, the United States President was
videoed expressing a clear personal and aesthetic delight in having dropped
something called the Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB) on an underground base in
Afghanistan. It was the biggest
non-nuclear bomb ever detonated. Just
one of them costs US$16 million, and it is too heavy for a conventional bomber
– it has to be carried and released by a military cargo plane. The President is one of many who think high
explosive solves things.
The symbolism of the women at the empty tomb on
Easter morning is much more powerful, it seems to me, than all the hatred and
fear which in Jesus’s day and in ours is fuelling violence and death. It is better than the truth of those who make
war, with sanctimonious regret, on children.
In the mighty B minor Mass, J S Bach gives us two shattering
surprises. The first is right at the
beginning, when we might have been waiting for some nice elegant introduction, the
choir and orchestra suddenly cry Kyrie
eleison…! Lord, have mercy. Abruptly, as it were caught in the
headlights, we are confronted with our guilt and violence, and there is nowhere
to hide. The second comes in the Credo when, again without warning, all
Bach’s genius is poured into Et
Resurrexit… and he rose.
Yes, I am a believer. Words have been my life, yet for me, the
Easter truth is best expressed in silence and stillness and simplicity, as with
most of love. Whom having not seen, you love;
in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice…
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