Sermonettes for Easter

Maundy Thursday : 24th March 2005

Good Friday : 25th March 2005

Easter Midnight : 26th March 2005

Maundy Thursday : 24th March 2005

Holy week now steps up a gear... throughout this week we’ve been following the beginnings of the Passion story - we’ve considered how Jesus raised Lazarus as a kind of pre-curser of his own resurrection; we’ve thought about how healing was won for us at Calvary, about how Mary, sister of Lazarus reflected on Jesus’ declaration about his death, and about how Peter thought about Judas’ betrayal.. and now we come to the Last Supper itself.

Jesus knows that his time is coming - his hour of glorification - as St John’s gospel refers to it. And we’ve also been thinking this Lent how for Jesus glory is bound up with the cross. We’ve thought about how it makes no sense to the outsider - the apparent disaster of dying, the putting to death of an individual, the suppressing of the idea - and yet the cross marks a glorious event in our story of salvation.

Re-membering...

The cross shows us the topsy turvey nature of the world we live in. In God’s way of living life comes out of death, material things are of second importance, the leaders are servants, enemies are loved, evil is overcome by love, we are rescued from despair, from hopelessness, from our own worse traits...

So tonight - knowing the cross is near - Jesus gathers with his friends in a very ordinary way to celebrate the Passover in a very ordinary way, he take very ordinary bread and very ordinary wine and says and does something quite extraordinary... bread and wine are to become the way in which his friends will re-member him. Just as the Passover re-members the Exodus salvation story from slavery in Egypt: events are “called into the present” - so that people say “We were saves in Egypt...”. So too with the Last Supper - Jesus is re-membered, brought into the very moment - so he promises to meet his friends in bread and wine.

Our service tonight - our start of the Triduum - is part of walking the last few steps with Jesus.

Tonight we recall the Upper Room, the giving of the Eucharist (the Lord’s Supper); the washing of the disciples’ feet and the command to love one another; then Jesus withdrawal to pray in Gethsemane, from where he is arrested.

So tonight

• We hear the command to love - which is where tonight gets its name from: the latin is mandatum (a commandment); hence Maundy...;

• We re-enact the washing of feet as Jesus proved that he had indeed come as one who served, not to be served;

• We break bread and share wine, re-membering and meeting Jesus;

• We will strip the church of its furnishing and items of devotion as we recall Jesus’ abandonment;

• Then we take our Lord in the form of bread and wine, to “Gethsemane” - the St Peter’s chapel, and we obey his call to watch and pray with him.

Tonight we walk a few steps with Jesus.

Tonight we remember that his friends weren’t always very good at putting their money where their mouth was - one betrayed him, one denied knowing him and the rest fled...

Tonight we say sorry for the times we betray, deny and abandon Jesus, and we pledge to follow him through these three days, walking in his footstep as the shadow of the cross looms closer...

Good Friday : 25th March 2005  

A few weeks ago a man called John McCartney was in the news. He had been murdered by the IRA, and pressure from his family had caused a lot of movement from within the IRA. In the end the IRA came out with a remarkable offer which chilled and shocked people: they offered to murder the people who had murdered John McCartney.

There was a chilling logic to it: a life for a life. The punishment for murder was to be death. No leniency would be shown to his executors as they showed none to him. The IRA would say sorry for murdering John McCartney by murdering others.

When you look at it in those cold clinical terms it seems barbaric and not in the spirit of saying sorry, or putting things right. Rather than satisfy the demands for justice, it stokes the fires of retribution: the spiral continues, violence is met with violence, the cycle continues and is not broken.

When we look at the cross of Christ, what do we see there? How do we understand what was going on? Was God somehow punishing Jesus in our place? Should it have been you and I nailed to that cross to pay for our sins? Is that a satisfactory way of thinking about the cross?

Retribution or forgiveness?

Maybe John McCartney & the IRA offer us a model which shows in stark contrast how we are to understand the cross. Is God like the IRA? Is God hell bent on satisfying the demand for retribution? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life?

There are several problems with thinking about God like this: one is that the resurrection actually become redundant. If Jesus was punished in place of us to put things right with God, what was the point of the resurrection?

Although we might concentrate our thoughts of salvation on the cross, it is actually the whole “Jesus event” which liberates us: as the litany reminds us: birth, childhood, obedience, ministry, preaching, death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit...

Another problem is that this way of thinking doesn’t square with Jesus teaching about forgiveness, about breaking violent cycles by loving enemies, about turning the other cheek, about release for the captives, freedom for the prisoners, the year of Jubilee, the cancelling of debts. The obligation Jesus does lay on us is that in order to receive this forgiveness, this release from the load of debt - we must forgive others.

As we look to the cross this season we have an opportunity to marvel at the lengths God went to. Not content with becoming human like us, sharing our woes and sorrows; not content with washing his disciples’ feet like a slave; he submitted to dying a death considered to be accursed - the OT makes it plain that being hung on a tree is a disgraceful death.

What a disgrace!

We sometimes loose sight of just how shocking Jesus was:

• His birth was a disgrace - unmarried parents, in a shed, visited by outcasts and foreigners;

• His ministry was a disgrace - he hadn’t been the right Rabbi school, his followers were a real mixed bag - including women;

• His teaching was a disgrace - about forgiveness, the scandal of how God favoured those who were up against it, the poor, the vulnerable, the weak....;

So is it any surprise that his death as a disgrace?

Yet out of that disgrace - or what we think of as disgrace - comes: grace! Unmerited favour! God’s smile on us...

So as we look upon the cross let us not loose sight of what it cost God to rescue us. Let us kneel in adoration and thanksgiving as we bless the restraining nails which won our liberation; the wounds which won our healing; the tears and pain which won our joy; the death which won our life...

By venerating the cross we are looking through the physical representation here before us: we are looking through it to the crucified Christ and honouring him. How can we say no?

Easter Midnight : 26th March 2005 

John 20.1-18

There are many things to note about the way St John tells us about the resurrection:

1. Women first!

2. the empty tomb wasn’t enough to convince anybody

3. resurrection was unexpected

4. nothing will ever be the same again because of the resurrection

1. Mary Magdalene is the first witness of the resurrection - women were the first witnesses to the resurrection. Mary Mag becomes “the apostle to the Apostles.”

You might expect this from Luke’s gospel, where he constantly favours the underdog, the weak, the vulnerable - where women and children and foreigners are given a special place - where much of the gospel story is told through their eyes. But all the gospels agree that the first witnesses to the resurrection were women.

What does that tell us?

• Does it go some way to explaining why our churches seem to over represent women?

• Does it go some way towards explaining why, by ordaining women to the priesthood a mere 12 yeas or so ago we in the Church of England are simply catching up with what has been in scripture from the beginning?

• Does it tell us something about how, in a male dominated society, God chose to work in partnership with the marginalised and the undervalued?

2. The proof of the resurrection is actually only partly in scripture... the scripture tells us that over 500 people saw Jesus after the resurrection; but, for St Paul, for example, the proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is found in the transformation of Paul’s life from persecutor to apostle... and in the passage from John’s gospel Mary is confused and sorrowful at the empty tomb, it’s only when she meets the risen Christ that she begins to understand, her life is turned around ad she rushes off with great joy to tell the others...

Amongst the first Christians it was not necessary seeing Jesus with your physical eyes which enabled you to be a Christian - it was the experience of a transformed life - a life of resurrection, in which sins were forgiven, life was turned around, the fruit of the Spirit begin to be developed... it was not in a factual or academic assent to a written story: it was a personal experience of Christ risen in the lives of those who trust in him.

It was only later that the evangelists began to write down the stories which had been retold and reshaped by the different Christian communities. The accounts in the gospels we have today show us more about how the first Christian communities came to understand the resurrection and its significance, than they necessarily tell us about the factual accuracy of what happened.

What would convince you?

The apostles were convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead and at least 4 aspects of the experience of the risen Christ convinced them;

• This resurrection was bodily - there was continuity (they recognised Jesus), but also difference (he could come into locked rooms, he wasn’t always recognizable);

• This resurrection was “proved” by their transformed lives ;

• The resurrection came with a task - risen Jesus commissioned them to tell others and spread the good news;

• The sending of the Holy Spirit and the foundation of the church all stem from the resurrection.

There was no doubt in the first Christians' thinking that Jesus had risen from the dead - and there can be no doubt in our minds, and our experiences that Jesus has risen from the dead.

It was not the empty tomb, but the appearances which convinced the disciples that Jesus was alive: Personal experience rather than relying on second hand reports... The accounts of others were all part of the picture, but the picture was confused and bewildering until their own experience of the risen Christ made sense of it all.

3. Unexpected nature of resurrection

Despite the teaching, despite all the signs, despite the raising of Lazarus, the parables of the grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying... the disciples clearly were not actually expecting Jesus to come back form the dead. Maybe they were expecting a general resurrection at the end of time; maybe they thought Jesus was referring to a distant event, but Easter morning took them by surprise...

If they had been expecting it they wouldn’t have been so gutted by the crucifixion, they would have mounted a vigil at the tomb to be there when it happened, and they would have immediately believed the women who told them the news... The banners would have been out, the champagne on ice, the party just about to be launched...

Whatever we might think today, it seems that the first disciples were taken by surprise...

God had confounded their expectation again... God had acted in a way which had shown his greatness, his sovereignty, his power, his triumph...

4. Because of the resurrection, nothing will ever be the same again! Death is no longer the end... the dead are not snuffed out and forgotten... our pattern will follow that of Christ - we too will be part of his resurrection. Evil has been overcome by good... we know what the end of the story will be...! The resurrection is the final seal of God’s smile on us - of course we couldn’t kill God - what were we thinking when we nailed him to a piece of wood...?

CONCLUSION

Resurrection make sense to us in that it affirms that God is self-giving love; life is truly attained through death - it cannot be “proved” by finding an empty tomb; any more than it can be “disproved” by finding bones belonging to Jesus: the “proof” of the resurrection is to be found in the continued existence of the Church - the continued transformation of the lives of people and communities who, in faith, ask God to empower and change them; who come in repentance and receive the gift of new life, who are “born again”, who become part of the reconciliation and healing - the move towards wholeness - that God is affecting through the whole “Jesus event”.

The cross speaks of God standing with his creation in the pain and sorrow of life, in the midst of the powerful movement of events and things around us; the resurrection speaks of God being ahead of those events, of God always drawing life out of death, hope out of despair, new things out of the old stale and decayed...

The resurrection is indeed just the beginning....!

Fr Andrew J Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea

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