Fr David Hope
‘Do not be afraid….I was dead, and see, I am alive for evermore’ (Rev.1. 17)
Easter is, I would suggest, the celebration of the impossible become possible. The unthinkable, the unimaginable has become a reality. For then, as now, to witness a human person dead and buried once again alive would have been simply incomprehensible. Yet this is the truth which is at the very heart of the Christian faith that in the words of the Creed we profess Sunday by Sunday - ‘he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again...’. The fact of the resurrection is at the very heart of the New Testament – the only reason why it exists at all – the only reason why you and I and so many millions of Christians throughout the world and down the ages have gathered together from the very beginning until now to celebrate the Lord’s death and resurrection until he comes again.
Of course and understandably, the Gospels record a whole range of emotions among the women and the disciples on discovering that their Lord – the one whom they had believed to be Messiah, their Saviour, having been ‘crucified, dead and buried’ is now alive. He is once again walking, talking, eating with them. No wonder on first hearing about this impossibility become possible they were perplexed, afraid, terrified and in the case of Thomas as this morning’s gospel reading recounts - totally unbelieving - ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’. And the writers of the New Testament were themselves obviously perplexed given that their accounts display an inconsistency in the telling of this momentous event - as indeed we might have expected. After all, even today following any major happening, reports in the media often differ with each other, even contradict each other, as in the accounts of the resurrection and the appearances following. To my mind this actually strengthens and affirms what is the central fact of the event – the resurrection of the one who was dead but is now alive. Attempts to smooth out the differences and the inconsistencies which some have attempted would surely not ring true to our experience. No room here either for ‘a conjuring trick with bones’ by way of an explanation as the somewhat provocative Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, is once reported to have remarked!
Furthermore, the whole of the New Testament, not least those major journeys undertaken by Paul himself – once a violent opposer and persecutor of those early Christian believers, has that simple yet profound truth at its heart – Christ is risen: Jesus is Lord. Consider the disenchanted disciples after the crucifixion – huddled together behind closed doors, utterly confused and fearful – yet these are the very ones now strengthened, reinvigorated, emboldened who go out to the ends of the known world, as the Acts of the Apostles puts it, to live and tell the good news of Jesus. It’s exactly as Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and writer puts it - ‘The resurrection liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.
So what then are we to make of the resurrection of Jesus for you and for me, for the church and the world today? Well you could well conclude, given the state of things, that it’s all pretty hopeless – it will take a miracle to bring any lasting peace in the Middle East, peace between the warring tribes and factions in central Africa and elsewhere not to mention the increasing tensions, divisions, polarisations, antagonisms in the political and religious sphere here in our own nation and beyond. And the church is no better either, our church which the more it seeks to make itself relevant seems to me to become ever more irrelevant.
So what is to be done? Well, in the first place, certainly not simply to give way to despondency and despair. We may not be able to do very much internationally or even nationally, but we can surely influence by our words and our actions the way things are more locally and personally – in the light of the resurrection of Jesus. For this day gives us hope, hope both for the present and for the future. And it’s not simply a vague, baseless and unfounded hope. It’s a hope based on what God has done in the past in turning seemingly hopeless situations – recall God’s action among his people in that great salvation event of the Exodus – into moments of triumph and victory. And if nothing else Easter is the moment – the defining moment of triumph and victory. The victory of good over evil, the victory of light over darkness, the victory of hope over despair.
For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, it must be clear that in spite of what may seem to be to the contrary, there remains much which is good and positive and hopeful both in the church and in the world. Even in the deepest darkness of the hostilities for example in Ukraine, in Palestine and in other theatres of conflict there still shines a glimmer of hope – of those individuals and groups and organisations which, nothing daunted, are working in and among the ruins of lives and livelihoods of so many to alleviate their suffering, their hunger, their trauma, working to effect their resurrection to a new and better life. They put themselves and their lives at risk for the sake of their fellow human beings. And whilst the appalling devastation and loss of life can in no way be underestimated or minimised we nevertheless can be encouraged in the knowledge that ‘the light still shines in the darkness’ and that the darkness can never and will never overcome it.
And in the church, in spite of all the clutter of committees, the burgeoning bureaucracy, the sheer irrelevance of so many initiatives supposedly to promote growth yet decline and diminishment continues apace, nevertheless we should not lose heart. For the church, Christian communities continue to flourish, as well evidenced here at St Margaret’s (a good priest and a good and supportive parish), even grow, albeit in small and seemingly insignificant ways and places without the panoply of strategic planning and directions from above. Rather just getting on with it! The ‘above’ needs to be listening and paying much more attention to the ‘below’ - in other words to the priorities of the grass roots where indeed the light and life of the risen Jesus enlivens and brings renewal and joyful hope. And surely one of the features of the resurrection of Jesus, celebrated in so many of the hymns we sing at this season – must be joy – the joy of Jesus who is risen – a joy that has no end.
And ourselves – Easter must surely be a time of thanksgiving and celebration for who and what we are, in Jesus Christ who is risen. Whatever our situation or circumstance, we have the promise of the risen Jesus that he is with us always, even when we are in the thick of it, in the good times and the bad, in those times of trial and testing and unbelief, and not least when the time comes for you and me to experience our exodus from this world to the next. But then in this and every celebration of the Eucharist it is the risen Jesus who stands before us, who is present with us.
This morning, here and now he speaks to you and to me – he speaks your name and he greets you – Shalom – peace be with you. He feeds you with the Bread of Life. He gives you fresh confidence and renewed hope – for here in this Holy Communion, here in this moment of heaven on earth, already you are a sharer in his risen life. So yes, even given the way things are, we cannot surely help but be confident, joyful and full of hope. After all, we are an Easter People – Alleluia is our song! For, as in the Revelation to John the risen Jesus tells us - ‘Do not be afraid: I am the first and the last and the living one. I was dead, but see I am alive for evermore’.