I really identify with these women. I often think about them on Easter Saturday. The men (well Joseph) had done their bit, ensuring Jesus’ body was safely taken down and buried, but they couldn’t get to him. They had spices prepared, but it was Sabbath, and all they could do was wait. They couldn’t get their grim job out of the way, they just had to wait it out, to watch for the sunrise.
When they got there and the sorrow began to be replaced by the miraculous, I wonder whether they chatted as they ran, reassuring each other and spurring each other on, or whether each one was silent, in their own thoughts, and in the breathlessness of their physical exertion.
And then … He was there. The pain and the puzzle quickly fitting into their proper places as the jagged edges of prophecies and promises, of history and memory, fitted into place in the light of the resurrection.
And they worshipped. Of course they worshipped. They were created to worship. And they remind me that I too will be able to throw myself at His feet and worship, in revelation and relief and in physical reality.
Jesus gives them two instructions – “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” As we remembered in our previous reflection, as promised in Isaiah 43 – ‘Do not fear, I will be with You.’
Over 2000 years later, Jesus still says the same, ‘Don’t fear and tell others not to fear, You will see me.’ Our worship, our listening at the feet of Jesus not only removed our anxiety, but sends out into the World, as the Anglican liturgy says ‘to live and work to His praise and glory.’
Our worship leads to revelation and to our being sent to help others have their own ‘miraculous encounters’ with the Living Lord.
