Have you met the risen Jesus?​​

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I once watched a mime artist called Steve Murray perform a piece called ‘My father’s chair’. As I watched, the tears poured down my face. 

I think I was moved because it grew out of an experience that was not dissimilar to my own and I found myself thinking back to my childhood, which was not easy. My father was an alcoholic whose frustrations were often taken out on his family with long periods of silence and outbursts of temper. At best, my dad seemed to be indifferent towards me. I don’t remember ever being called by name or having him hold me other than on one occasion when I was lost. I was a very sensitive child and I loved him very much, and I think I hurt more because of that. I did what most of us do when we hurt inside: I put the barriers up and I eventually became both an argumentative and sullen teenager. I trusted very few people and God was an irrelevance, if God existed at all.

I had stopped going to church when I was about 13. Mum had encouraged me to go to Mass in the evening at our local church. It was the so-called youth Mass and after a couple of weeks hanging around the porch, I drifted away to the local park to play football. It was only discovered that I wasn’t attending Mass about 18 months later, when I came home one Sunday evening and my mum asked me, “Who said Mass?”. My response was quick: “Father Bonner,” I said. “Really?” replied my mum with one eyebrow raised. “How strange – he died this afternoon.” After that, I went back to the porch just so I wouldn’t be caught again.

When I was about 15, my mum asked me to go out with her for the day and I went. We had an old car, so we went to pick up another couple who I decided, within seconds, were crazy. Their conversation was punctuated with ‘Praise God’ and ‘Alleluia’. What on earth had I let myself in for? I had been taken to what was called a day of renewal. This was 1975 and renewal was sweeping across this country. I hardly knew what church was, let alone what was happening here. However, a man got up and began to talk about Jesus in a way I’d never heard before. 

I knew that I wanted to know Jesus the way he did. All I can say to you is that the risen Lord walked into the cold dark recesses of my soul and filled me with love. I encountered a God who was present with me. Nothing I had done and nothing I was going to do in the future would change that. It was as though the scales had been taken off my eyes and I could see. Any real encounter with Jesus changes the way people see things and do things. It turns the world upside down constantly. So some questions to reflect on: have I really met the risen Jesus? Do I see things in a totally different way? Is the power of God’s love alive in me?

To meet the risen Lord is to be turned upside down. Please God, his presence will invade our lives