Tuesday, 14 April 2020

SERMON 148 - SUNDAY 12 APRIL 2020 - EASTER SUNDAY


Sermon on Easter Sunday  -  Clarendon Team Easter Eucharist during Coronvirus Lockdown   – Sunday 12th  March 2020

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord.  Amen

Today, of course, is the most important day for us in the year.  It is the celebration of the rising of Jesus from the dead.  It is the beginning of a whole new way of looking at life and we, as Christians, look upon life no longer through our eyes, but through the eyes of the One who broke through the terror of death and into a new way of being.

Perhaps, in the present situation in which we find ourselves this has never been so applicable as we have been grappling with seeing our world in a new light, having to adapt our usual ways of doing things during this period of lockdown in order to deal with our changed circumstance. Easter seems so strange this year as we have no longer been able to celebrate it in our churches and in physical communion  with one another – yet the messages remain the same and we can take heart from them.

The first one, of course, is that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, and His Son so loved his Father and the world that he suffered such a grievous and terrible ordeal as he passed through death into new life.

And we must remember this :  that nowhere in the world can we say of God that He is short of love. For Jesus, on the cross, at the moment when his whole world collapsed, when everything that he believed in and trusted seemed to fall about his ears, when he said to his Father, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” he turned to the screaming mob in front of him and he said, “Father, forgive them.”

This is when he became our Messiah, not when he does all the miracles all the healing, all the things that he said and preached, it only comes when everything is taken away from him and he is on the edges of despair, and he turns to his Father and says, “I do this for you. I have only one request: that you hold back your arm of justice and, from now on, only forgiveness.”  As the Bishop said in his homily on Maundy Thursday – God through Jesus therefore expects only three things of us – to love justly, to act kindly to others and to walk humbly with him.

And that’s the first great lesson of today, because he is asking us to do this. We, who are followers of Jesus, must hold back justice and offer forgiveness. And, in this way, the world turns around. It is no longer an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, what is right and what is wrong. There is only love, forgiveness, caring. And this is how we enter into the new life, following in the footsteps of Jesus, our Lord. We all need to remember this as the times ahead during this current crisis possibly worsen.

When the disciples went to the tomb, they didn’t find anything. The tomb was empty, completely gone, an empty tomb. And what are we to think of that?

We are to think, “Where is Jesus?” They didn’t take him away. We know that that was impossible. Did his disciples hide him? They were there. They were amazed. They saw the cloth neatly folded. Where did he go? Did he hide?

And, of course, we know the answer. He passed from death into new life. And he did not do it for himself, for Jesus never did anything for himself, he did it for us.

And so when he faces the ordeals of his life, with all its difficulties, he accepts them, forgiving those who have made such an outrage possible.  He passes through death and gives us a share in the new life that he himself now lives.

The question then, of course, is, if we enter into the tomb, have we really died? For now we are in another way of being.

When we pass through the death of Jesus, we pass through and turn our backs on selfishness, on hurting others, on judging, on making the place that God has created to be a place of great wonder and joy and happiness into a place where many people do not have enough to eat, where many people feel their hopes are dashed each day by the injustices that they have to confront, where many people forget that they were created to walk in this life as children, children free and full of joy.

And so it is when we enter into the tomb, we, as Christians, are asked to leave all these things behind and, in the process, we are learning how to love, the way Jesus loved: to forgive, to care, to reach out to all those around us, perhaps as never before. And then we, too, experience what Jesus says. He has given us new life. The new life is his life. In his life, there is only forgiveness. And so we must take that with us on our journey.

As we reflect upon these words I would like to end with reading a poem by D H Lawrence, entitled “Be Still”:

BE STILL

The only thing to be done, now,
now that the waves of our undoing have begun to strike on us,
is to contain ourselves.
To keep still, and let the wreckage of ourselves go,
let everything go, as the wave smashes us
yet keep still, and hold
the tiny grain of something that no wave can wash away,
not even the most massive wave of destiny.
Among all the smashed debris of myself
keep quiet, and wait.
For the word is Resurrection.
And even the sea of seas will have to give up its dead.

D H Lawrence



Amen
148/10042020



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