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Bulletin 129 Date : 25th Mar 2008
Nothing happened?

If you ever go to Lee Abbey, the retreat centre in Devon, you may see this sign in an adjacent field. I’ve no idea who put the sign there and no idea what they were expecting should happen – but whatever it was, it didn’t!

Have you been watching the BBC Drama, ‘The Passion’? It’s just come to an end on Easter Day with the portrayal of the resurrection of Christ. I thought the whole series was stunningly brilliant. Yes, there was a little license in terms of its use of scripture but in no way did it subvert the message and, in some respects, it only served to create a more realistic impression of what actually happened.

I thought the portrayal of the key characters was excellent and gave a much deeper insight into the tensions experienced by people like Pilate, Caiaphas, Judas and the other disciples. The portrayal of Mary Magdalene was most imaginative with not a hint of the ‘Da Vinci Code’ nonsense. The crucifixion was immensely realistic without the gore of Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’.

And then came the finale – the resurrection. Everyone had been waiting to see just how the dramatists would depict this. We know that the gospel accounts are confusing and often contradictory but the way this was dramatised was quite extraordinary. It did compress the first Easter weekend into a very short scene, skipping the Saturday altogether but it laid to rest, once and for all, the myth that on Easter Sunday, 30AD (or thereabouts), nothing happened.

We know that several attempts were made by the opponents of Jesus to disprove the claim that Jesus had risen from the dead but all proved futile. The only lasting legacy of the first Easter Sunday is the claim that a man who was tortured to death a couple of days earlier, who had been placed in a tomb guarded by soldiers and a heavy stone, had not only come back to life but had escaped from the tomb seemingly unscathed.

Sometimes, when I read the gospels and the miraculous events in Jesus’ ministry, I wonder what I would have seen if we had a video recording of the event. Take the wedding in Cana in Galilee – where did they get the water to fill the jars (over 100 gallons) and how long did it take them? Can you imagine them grumbling as they trudged back and forth to the well while the party was in full swing? And what about the poor herd of pigs who became recipients of the demons cast out of ‘Legion’? Can you picture them cascading lemming-like into the lake? The ‘walking on the water’, the ‘feeding of the 5,000’ and the raising of Lazarus are similar contenders for a block-buster movie.

Well thanks to the BBC, we have what many may consider to be the nearest thing to a video clip of the events surrounding Easter, especially the resurrection. All credit to them for making the ‘incredible, incredible’. And if you missed it, why not use BBC iPlayer to make the ‘unmissable, unmissable’.