It is in following Jesus that we find him, says the Revd John Proctor, General Secretary for the United Reformed Church, in his Easter Day reflection.

The ending of Mark’s Gospel is abrupt. It stops too soon. Of course, that depends on how the Gospel does end. But if you stop at verse eight, this does seem too early. Jesus is off stage. He has vanished.

Certainly, the scenery speaks. The grave is empty. The stone is rolled back. The place where he lay is vacant. The silence of morning shouts loud for life. But Jesus is in the wings, on the edge, out of the picture, ‘not here’. 

So where will you find him? This missing Messiah. The real absence. A wounded body that has walked away. Where can you bring the spices of your faith, of your prayers and tears and hopes, the emptiness and fullness of your living, if he is not here?

‘He is going,’ says a voice from the tomb. ‘Ahead of you, to Galilee.’ This is a mobile Jesus, back on the road of compassion and service. Here is a directing Jesus, showing his people the way through life. He is a homing Jesus, taking his friends back to places where they met him, back to base, back to their beginning and belonging. There, in the going and in the scenes and settings of home, they will discover him.

In serving they will see. In journeying they will grasp. In living and loving as his people, in the places where they are known best and have most to give, they will find that he is there. Easter is waiting for us, every day. In following Jesus, we shall find him. And we shall know that death cannot destroy him, nor silence swallow him up. He is alive, and we are invited to live with him.