IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE - The First Mass of Easter 2026 - Sarah Cooper

May I speak in the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit

In the blink of an eye everything changed

There was before and now there is after

Before it was dark

After it is light

Before there was grief

After there is joy

Before there was despair

After there is hope

But to be in the after you have to have walked through the before

And the before ended in fear and confusion

The followers of Jesus of Nazareth were in total shock from the events of Thursday and Friday. They had not seen this coming…they had followed him, yes, and they had listened to him, but they had not always understood or believed, certainly the important things.

There had been talk of a Messiah, but who?…what would he look like? when would he come? The Jews had been waiting for the promised Messiah for generations.

Was this him?

Could this be him?

But he is just  a man.

Some of them got it

Some of them recognised him…the woman at the well, the Canaanite woman…..a few of the disciples, eventually

But then he was crucified

They fled, terrified, for fear the same might be done to them

They had let him down

They must have been feeling weighed down by guilt, regret, shame…..feeling unforgivable

The disbelief, the numbness of grief, the void stretching before them...it was all over… All their hopes dashed

And then there is after

In the blink of an eye everything changed

And when the third day dawned… with a brightness you or I could not bear…they saw a wonder ahead words from the Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis

He has been raised, as he said the angel reassures Mary Magdalene and the other Mary

The disciples are in hiding but the women were there…they had been throughout…throughout his  ministry, his arrest, his crucifixion, his burial and now, to see him risen…and every account of the resurrection includes the women….with Mary Magdalene in all the gospels.

They are the first…and they ran to tell

Throughout his ministry Jesus had sought out the marginalised, and many of them were women. Women were second class citizens. They did not count. Under the law of their time their evidence was even considered inadmissible.

How perfect.. that it was to the women that the risen Christ revealed himself.

They ran to tell

He has been raised, as he said

The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann wrote

Without women preachers, we would have no knowledge of the resurrection

This handful of people, the women and the disciples did see and believe….

Jesus is risen from the dead.

This statement is what took a small group of broken people in 1st-century Palestine and grew their movement into the largest religion in the world that has shaped society for 21 centuries across the entire world.

They ran and told, they heard, and they too ran and told

The Christian faith does not make any sense at all without this statement. The existence of the church makes no sense without this statement.

The Resurrection is the very core of our Christian faith, which looks back with conviction to what God has done, and of hope, which looks forward with confidence to what God will do.

The resurrection liberates  us from the prison of the past through the forgiveness of sins; and brings us freedom from the fear of the future, through the gift of life everlasting with God

Jesus is risen from the dead.

And death shall be  no more…John Donne

It is the fulfilment of God’s promise

Through creation through covenant

Through disaster through salvation

Through exile through liberation

Through  prophecy through angels

Through incarnation

Through miracles

Through teaching

Through recognition

Through revelation

Through betrayal

Through death

Through resurrection to salvation

And death shall be  no more

The Archbishop of Jerusalem talked this morning of celebrating the resurrection from within a reality weighed down by the tomb: open wars, daily death and destruction, violence that shatters trust and fear that threatens hope.

But he also reminds us of the words of St Paul

Where death is your victory?

O death where is your sting?

The church does not live in a world free from suffering, but in a world pierced by death…yet within it she bears a life that the world cannot contain.

The message of the resurrection today is not a quick promise to the end of suffering but a call to steadfast hope.

The resurrection says, the cross, with its shame, betrayal, death, and grief, does not have the last word….the tomb is not the final word

God has the last word. And God’s last word is

You will be with me always. Nothing can separate us.

In a  blink of an eye everything changed

Before it was dark

After it is light

The resurrection is a "shaft of sunlight" from heaven that gives us a glimpse of a new way of being, and we are called to be part of that new, "startling" creation.

Rowan Williams suggests that the church is called to be the living evidence of the resurrection.

It is not just about believing a story, but about "living a life in which Jesus is the never-failing source of affirmation, challenge, enrichment and enlargement".

We are now that light

Let us run to tell

He has been raised from the dead, as he said

Alleluia