NO EYES FOR EASTER

Fr Jim Cogley

A common feature of the Resurrection accounts is the failure of the disciples to recognize the Risen Lord when he appears to them. Even Mary Magdalene who was his closest companion and who had always accompanied him on his travels failed to recognize him at the tomb on the Easter morning and thought he was the gardener. This seems strange since many of them had already heard reports that he was risen. Surely it couldn’t have been that their sight was bad, or that Jesus had changed beyond recognition. For to understand what is happening here we need to draw on our own experience.

There is physical seeing with the eyes but there is also emotional seeing with the heart. When our hearts are wounded it has the effect of distorting the way we see with our eyes. Like those wounded disciples we can be so focused on death that we are unable to see life; we can be so trapped in our inner darkness that the light cannot penetrate. In all the resurrection accounts, Christ led his disciples through a process of healing before their eyes were opened and they could see the reality of his resurrected self.

There is a rather sad Eastern story about a father and son who lived in a small town during a time of war. One day while the father was on his travels the town was bombed, and many buildings were burnt to the ground. The man returned to find that his home was a burnt out shell and close by lay the charred remains of his beloved son. These he had cremated properly, and the ashes were placed in an urn and given back to him. Years after rebuilding his home he still held onto his son’s ashes. Not only did he keep them close by while he slept but he took them with him wherever he travelled.

In reality his son was still alive and in the ensuing rescue operations after the bombing was transferred for treatment to a faraway town. Badly burnt and traumatized he had suffered memory loss and had no way of connecting with who he was or where he had come from. Years of therapy brought back glimmers of his past and he went in search of his roots. He found his way to where his home once stood and recognized his father through the window. With great excitement he knocked on the door and when the voice inside asked who was knocking, he replied ‘It’s me, I am your son,’ To his surprise his father was dismissive and instead of being overjoyed, he told him to get lost, that he was an imposter. His sons remains were on the mantlepiece and he had no time for such nonsense. Again, the son tried but to no avail and went away sad and questioning his new found memory.

For the father like the early disciples after Easter his gaze was so fixated on death that he was unable to recognize the life that was standing on his doorstep. Such is our story also. Resurrection doesn’t make sense to those who are still holding onto the past and caught in the memory of Good Friday.

Our memories are so much part of who we are. Some are pleasant while others are far from being so. These are the ones we try to repress and deny yet the more we do so the more they come back to haunt us. The Resurrection accounts show this happening quite clearly. After a night of fishing the disciples catch nothing. The Risen Jesus stands on the shore and tells them to try again and when they do the nets fill up. This awakens the positive memories of when they were first called to be disciples, also by the Sea of Galilee. The next memory is not so pleasant, for Peter at least. The sight of a charcoal fire was definitely going to bring him back to the night of Jesus arrest. Earlier in the day he had protested undying loyalty, but Jesus had told him that before the cock would crow he would have denied him three times. Standing beside a charcoal fire, and afraid of being found guilty by association, he swore three times on oath that he didn’t know Christ. Suddenly he was now being confronted by the memory of his betrayal but this time it was for healing.

This is how our reactions have so much to teach us. While we relate in the present we react from the past. Every time we react to a person, a situation, an event or even a place we are re-enacting an earlier trauma that has got buried somewhere years earlier in our minds. We then think that the problem is in the present while in fact it comes from the past. Our reactions so distort the present that we see it and feel it as if we were back there again. It’s never the trigger in a gun that carries the explosive, it just sets it off, and many of us are well loaded!