Easter Day
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Readings: Acts 10: 34-43 and John 20: 1-18
In my last two parishes I had the happy experience of acting as Chaplain to the Air Training Cadets, which entailed fortnightly visits to their ‘Squadrons’ and conducting ‘Chaplain’s Hour’. On one occasion, just before Easter, the Officer Commanding was giving his notices at the start of the evening. “Now Sunday is Easter, and we all know what that means.” I thought ‘This sounds encouraging’, but then he answered his own question. “Chocolate. Easter means chocolate.” It’s not quite what I would have said. But there again, he did tell me that he was a complete atheist.
But when it came to Chaplain’s Hour – which usually turned out to be about 45 minutes, I went through the events of Holy Week with the cadets, most of whom knew the gist of the story. When I asked what happened on Easter Day, one of the cadets replied, “They discovered he was rosen!” Yes, Jesus was rosen on Easter Day! Not exactly the King’s English, but I thought what a difficult concept for young people it is, and not just for young people, that somebody should come back from the dead. What words do you use? How often would today’s young people come across the word ‘resurrection’ in everyday conversations? Say it how you will – he rose from the dead, he was raised from the dead, he is risen, or even – ‘he was rosen’. It’s out of our common experience; it just doesn’t happen.
The first disciples were stunned, bewildered by the raising of Jesus on the third day. True, it seems Jesus had predicted that he would rise again. But when you have witnessed the brutal execution of your beloved friend, and seen him taken down from the cross and buried, you are not likely to be thinking that he would be back among you in three days’ time.
One of the features of the resurrection encounters in the gospel is that Jesus is not immediately recognized in his post-resurrection state. And, in the most well-known story, that we heard, Mary Magdalene comes across Jesus in the garden on Easter morning, and assumes he must be the gardener, only recognising him when he addresses her – ‘Mary’ – and what a wonderful moment that must have been.
‘Mary!’ That was all that was needed for Mary to fully recognise Jesus – by hearing her voice spoken. How great it is sometimes to hear people use one’s name; I think it shows a degree of personal interest – a desire for real connection. How disappointing it is sometimes when people don’t use your Christian name – that can indicate an unwillingness to get too close. Jesus and Mary Magdalene had forged a close relationship; he had saved her from a sad way of life, and so she devoted her life to him thereafter.
I guess all Jesus’ closest disciples had their own way of coming to terms with this tremendous turnaround in their lives. When the women ran from the tomb to the disciples, the men didn’t believe the story they were told. We know that Thomas doubted the word of the others until he could see Jesus for himself. But Jesus made many resurrection appearances, covered not just in the gospels, but also in 1 Corinthians, where Paul lists those to whom Jesus appeared.
One of the most convincing pieces of evidence for the resurrection – if you’re looking for evidence – is that the story didn’t die out when that first generation of disciples passed on. Rather, the good news of Jesus grew, empowered by the Spirit of Jesus, and from a small group of disciples who had been utterly crushed by Good Friday, came a strong and vibrant body of believers excited by the new life they found in Christ.
We heard from Peter’s speech to believers in Caesarea in the reading from Acts. He spells out the important facts on which our Christian faith is based. “We are witnesses to all that Jesus did both in Judea and Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”
So – from that small group of Jesus’ closest friends shut away on Easter evening in a locked room, frightened and trying to piece together the puzzling happenings of the day, that movement moved out of the locked room and confidently began to proclaim their message. Within 400 years it was the official religion of the empire. A thousand years later it spanned the globe.
It may seem that the Christian message is being shut out more and more nowadays, and it is easy to get disheartened about the state of the Church, or about society’s response to Christianity in general. We get the usual clutch of stories at this time of year about how politically-correct or woke authorities pull the plug on acts of Christian witness in schools or town centres, for fear of offending those of other religions or none. But perhaps more disheartening is the overall world situation, as conflicts rage on without any sign that peace can be achieved while determined and all-powerful leaders remain in place. And most of us despair that the nation that we thought of as a bastion of freedom and a champion of democracy and co-operation in the world seems to have changed overnight. Hope is in short supply. But that isn’t the whole story, and not even the most important story. The last annual church attendance survey for the country showed a 5% rise for the Church of England, and 10% for Roman Catholics, and a very considerable rise in the number of under-25s attending church.
Well, here are two examples of hope. One, you might think is trivial compared to the second, but both concern small churches. As you will have seen, the A449 is closed from the top of our road here to the hotel at the top. So my journey from home in Colwall to LMP has taken me over the Wyche Cutting and along the Wells Road, a route I don’t normally take when heading for services here. Last Sunday morning, I thought – ‘what a lot of cars there are outside St. Wulstan’s’. On Wednesday evening there was a goodly line of cars outside St. Wulstan’s. On Thursday evening there were even more cars, parked so far back that they were the Malvern side of King’s Road. On Good Friday morning, there they were again, and, of course, this morning, large numbers of vehicles. I’ve never thought of motor cars as being good Christian witnesses before, but this ever-present line of worshipping cars became a sort of parable in my mind. We have a gospel to proclaim, and we will; here we are faithfully observing the passion and resurrection of our Lord; not despite everything that is going on in the world, but because we have something to tell the world.
The second small church is in Northern Iraq. It was the destination of Sarah Hills, an Anglican priest who took part in a peace walk several years ago now, with a group of European Christians and Iraqi Christians, Muslims and Yazidis. This is her story: “On Good Friday we visited a village about 30 km from Mosul, a village that had been destroyed by ISIS – completely devoid of life. Houses were rubble, and the church, though still standing, had been desecrated, the altar broken up. We could hear Mosul being shelled.
We held a Good Friday service in that desecrated church, laid candles in the shape of a cross, and prayed for healing and an end to the conflict that raged outside. On Easter Day we returned to that deserted village and desecrated church. But this time, the bleakness in the church was transformed. The same rubble was there, the same bullet holes in the walls. But there were people from surrounding villages, flowers on the altar, children dressed in white and a packed church, there to proclaim the hope of the resurrection, the hope of peace and the hope of rebuilding. The local soldiers, the Peshmerga, came to receive their Easter Communion. The foundation of a rebuilt community was born that day. It was, in many ways, an extraordinary walk. Risky at times and truly dangerous at others; but in that journey we met the face of Christ in the other.
Mary Magdalene met Jesus at the tomb in the garden. She returned to the others – “I have seen the Lord.” Isn’t that what the resurrection is? The acknowledgement that grief and astonishment can be transformed into belief and the ultimate understanding that love overcomes everything.
Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, writing in The Times yesterday, noted that Christians in all kinds of situation will be waiting in what he calls stubborn hope. “In the battle zones of Ukraine, the barren fields of Sudan’s famine, the rubble of homes in the Middle East, tears and darkness are among the very few things not in short supply. The suffering in these places is incomprehensible. Yet many people there will greet the dawn of Easter Day with Mary Magdalene’s mixture of lament for their situation and stubborn hope. Her example can help us address the uncertainties and darkness we face with stubborn hope.
We used this ancient prayer at the end of the Good Friday service, which struck me afresh as to what it’s all about:
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light, look favourably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery, and by the tranquil operation of your perpetual providence carry out the work of our salvation: and let the whole world feel and see that things that were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are returning to perfection through him from whom they took their origin, even Jesus Christ our Lord, and who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.