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I Saw Him

An adaptation of a very old monologue based on a piece from New Irish Arts' "I Witness" 2 decades ago, but re-written as a partner piece to the post on Friday, as part of the livestreamed service from the Agape Centre led by my colleague Emily this morning while I was conducting the service in Grosvenor Hall. You can watch Mel Lyle's delivery of it on the recording on our Circuit YouTube Channel.

I saw him… with my own eyes… although I didn’t recognize him at first… it must have been the tears… I thought he must have been the gardener, and I gave him a hard time about where they had put the body… I can’t imagine what he thought… I gabbled on until he said “Miriam”… My name… though you know me as Mary…

Whatever way he said my name cut through my distress and confusion and I saw him as clearly as I see you now… my dear teacher… “Rabboni” I said as I rushed to embrace him… But he wouldn’t let me… Something about not holding him back from returning to his father… So I didn’t… But he asked me to go and tell his friends and family that he had risen and was returning to his Father God…

So I did… to a mixed reception… I had already come to them earlier to tell them that his body was missing… A couple of them ran out to check out the tomb but they had gone by the time I had got back there and the Master appeared…

So when I said I had seen him some of them mocked me… Said I wasn’t right in the head… But they saw that I was right in the end, when they saw him themselves…

And although I was angry at the time that they wouldn’t all believe me, I realized later that it was predictable… Of course they wouldn’t believe a grief-stricken woman… Even when we’re in our right minds a woman’s testimony is only worth a fraction of a man’s in court… And that morning I probably wasn’t in my right mind… I hadn’t been since I had watched him die and be buried in that cold. stone tomb.

But again, as I thought on it later, how typical of God to allow me, a woman, to be the first person to see the Master risen from the dead… and in a garden too… So many women-hating religious teachers justify their position by pointing the finger of blame at a woman in a garden for bringing sin into the world… when Eve gave in to the serpent’s temptation…

Was this Father God being funny? Or was he bringing things strangely full circle?

I don’t know… I’ll leave the religious teachers to work that one out… But me? I just know that I have seen the risen Lord… Have you seen him?

Selah
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