Well here we are. At last. It’s 730 days since we were last here for Easter Day. That’s a very long time and it makes it all the more a matter of rejoicing that we are able to be here today once again, following what has been done in this building and in the hearts of the people for around a thousand years.
Of course we are not yet through it and I look around and see all these masks, distancing, hand sanitiser and all the other consequences of what we have been through and are not yet at the end of.
How do we characterise this past time? How do we describe it? How much should we look back and dwell on or learn from it? How much should we be lamenting the losses in pain and death and in what we have not been able to do; and how much should we be looking forward in hope to the new things that are open to us in the future?
On Easter Day there can only be one dominant emotion, one dominant determination, one dominant acknowledgement – all captured in the one word, the one event, the event of resurrection
What is resurrection and why is it so important? Conventionally, it’s about life after life, going to heaven, being enfolded fully and completely into the love of God and meeting again those whom we have loved. So many ways of speaking about the mystery of resurrection
All that and more, is indeed our Christian understanding of what has been shown to us in the empty tomb and the encounters of Jesus with Mary Magdalene, with the disciples in the upper room, by the lake of Galilee and on the Emmaus road.
It is a matter of record that something happened which changed a frightened bunch of people into women and men with such conviction that their lives were utterly changed. They became people who travelled the world, committed to telling everyone what they had experienced, and willing to give up their lives for the truth of what had happened.
What is even more remarkable perhaps is that two thousand years later we are here in this building celebrating that same experience – and we are doing it in company with billions of people in every corner of the world
But that can’t be all that there is to it – a historical event. No, resurrection is about the continuing active presence of Christ in the world; a presence which anyone can experience day by day – in prayer, in the bread and wine, in self giving love, in the beauty of creation, in scientific inspiration, in the wonder of music, art and drama, in silence, in miracles, in the poor and disabled, in the suffering. In these and a million other ways is Jesus encountered alive in this life and in this world by those who wish to encounter him
We have in our many ways been through a time of trial, a time in which fear has stalked our lives. Many in this country and many more around the world continue to live in fear, especially those, the majority of the world’s population and most of all the poorest who have nothing of what we have – and just because we happen to have been born in this part of the world
There so many fears that we have felt, and perhaps continue to feel. The fear that sorrow and grief will come to us, as it has for many; the fear of loneliness; of the loss of employment and the identity which goes with it; the fear of suffering and above all of death
It is fear that makes us smaller, which turns us inwards, which says ‘hang on tightly to what I have’
But Jesus’ message, repeated constantly through his life and teaching, is ‘do not fear’, ‘do not be afraid’. He most certainly knows what fear feels like – he experienced all the fears that we experience; and he experienced the fear that thank God we are not likely to experience – the fear of Good Friday, of being abandoned, of being tortured and of being killed. And still he can say – ‘do not be afraid’
It is this that resurrection is all about – the rejection of the fear which makes us smaller, less than we could be. Resurrection is the antidote to fear. It is the antidote to the fear of despair because it offers hope; it is the antidote to the fear of sorrow and grief because it offers the possibility of renewal; it is the antidote to the anxiety which asks who am I, what am I worth, because resurrection says that you are so valuable that I will never let you go. And it is the antidote to the last enemy which is death. God is love and perfect love casts out fear
In the end, resurrection is about possibility, it is the key that opens the door of the prisons that fear has put us in. We all know some of those fearful prisons – depression and anxiety, loss of self worth, illness, loneliness – so many prisons. But resurrection says that the prison door can be opened – the key is being offered to us by the risen Christ and we can walk through it to a new life in his company in this life as in the next
There are, in my way of thinking, such good reasons to be glad today, the day of resurrection; it is the day of joy and of surprise – who expects resurrection? It’s as surprising as this
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