Rev Natalie Dixon-Monu

My faith came alive as I discovered that the most powerful story was not that of an unblemished resurrected Christ but of a crucified Christ who could be found sitting beside me in the dark hole I had found myself in.

When I found God there, only then was a path to transformative resurrection possible.

‘In the tomb’ I can’t see anything. It’s so dark in here.

But yesterday I saw too much. Too much violence.

Too much betrayal.

Too much suffering.

Now I see NOTHING. I am in nothingness. Am I dead? Or alive?

I feel nothing, I see nothing. Am I nothing?

What happens next? I honestly don’t know.

So, I wait ….

Then I remember there is something in the nothingness. It comes backs to me now.

A promise. Yes, a promise. ‘Emmanuel, God with us”

“I came to bring light into the darkness”

So, I will wait and hold fast to promises not yet realised.

I will hold fast onto these fragile whispers that this nothingness may pass.

I wait in the darkness, but I am now no longer alone.

‘Resurrection’

Touch my hands. Believe.

Believe not that everything can be fixed, recovered, made well.

Believe rather what my scarred hands show. That in suffering God is present.

My scars tell a story. They bear witness to my love, my willingness to meet you in your most difficult spaces, and be present, and that presence breathes life into death.

Resurrection is not leaving your suffering behind, covering your scars, striving to be whole.

Resurrection is about giving space to allow the seed of a new life to take hold in the fertile soil of our broken souls.

There is no resurrection apart from brokenness and they should never be separated.

Resurrection must bear the scars of suffering for it to be authentic.

I can remember 1950s smoked cod, Easter eggs, Easter daisies, the Dawn Service on Springmount, and Paul’s three missionary journeys in Asia Minor.

I can remember my first Easter camp in 1964, and a strong camper carrying the cross up the steep hill at Burnside, Tolstoy’s Shoemaker, and a camper’s sermon Easter Day from Matthew 24 (I married him in 1967).

‘Jesus said to them, remember, I am with you’: ego meta humon eimi.

Matthew’s Jesus saying to us: you are within the very life of God: ego eimi is the Greek version of YHWH.

I can remember leaving camp and the camp president saying, ‘remember this mountain top experience’.

I know that crucifixion was a crude, degrading, humiliating death, like rape or torture, and Jesus was killed because he was a radical critic of the way Rome and temple authorities ran the known world and he was getting a following, and they didn’t want a riot.