Sermon at All Saints’ Parish Church, Winterslown - Easter Sunday Eucharist – Sunday 31 March 2024
Isaiah
25:6-9; Acts 10:34-43; Mark 16:1-8
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Today’s readings should bring an
overwhelming sense of joy and emotion to Christians throughout the whole – a
reminder that Jesus having been executed by the cruellest of methods by the
Roman occupiers of Judea – has risen on the third day and is alive. Whenever I read or hear today’s gospel
passage it always sends a feeling of upwelling emotions and tears.
One of my favourite films, largely
because I love railways and trains (in fact my current house lies on the old
trackbed of the Salisbury to Bournemouth railway), is “The Railway Children” – the 1970 version directed by Lionel
Jeffries with Jenny Agutter, Sally Thomsett, Dinah Sheridan Bernard Cribbins
and William Mervyn (of the Church of England sitcom All Gas and Gaiters
fame). This wonderful story written by
Edith Nesbit in 1906 tells the story, I am sure you will recall, of three
children and their mother who are forced to leave fashionable London and live
in a small house near a village with a railway station because their father,
who holds an important position in the Civil Service, has been falsely accused
of being a traitor, a spy, and put in prison.
We later find out that a work colleague framed him to cover for his own
crime.
The book and film tells the story
of the adventures which the children get up to in and around the railway line
and station including preventing a train wreck after a landslide, preventing an
injured schoolboy being killed in a railway tunnel and helping a foreigner to
be re-united with his family. There is also a scene, you will recall, where the
boy Peter attempts to steal coal from the station yard in order to provide heat
for his poorly mother. During their time
away from London they have to survive much deprivation which their changed
circumstances have brought about and after an affluent life in London, their
changed circumstances and the stigma of their father’s incarceration prove to
be a great challenge.
The scene which I want to remind
you of, though, is that moment when Roberta, the elder daughter played by Jenny
Agutter, is told by the station master (Bernard Cribbins) that “today is a very
special day – I’ve seen it in the papers”.
She has no idea what he is talking about but feels that everyone and
everything seems a little odd and she wants to be alone. The passengers on the train all wave to her
and the station master seems to be so excited as he fusses around, as do the
passengers waiting for the train to arrive.
It does not matter how many times
I see the film version, or even think about that final scene, as I am doing
now, my eyes always well up with emotional tears of joy as Roberta sees her
falsely accused, but now released, father standing with his case on the
platform as the smoke from the locomotive disperses and she shouts “Daddy my Daddy”!
For me, there is a direct parallel
here with the Easter Story. Like
Roberta’s father, Jesus was falsely accused of seditious activity against the
Roman authorities and paid the price for others’ sins. Indeed he paid the ultimate penalty and
Jesus’s followers and family must have felt that his ministry and life were
firmly over. That Good Friday and Easter
Saturday must have been absolutely dreadful for them – just like the children
in the railway children – their life had been turned upside down and doubts
must have entered their heads as to what or who Jesus had been.
We have been journeying with Jesus
through Lent, Holy Week and shared his pain as we have remembered and
re-enacted the events of Good Friday; but here we are on Easter Day, standing
on the steamy platform like Roberta as Jesus Resurrected appears to us through
the narrative of Mary Magdalene and Mary mother of James. Upon realising that
Jesus was back, the feeling which they must have had must have been that same
overwhelming feeling of joy as we experience with Roberta in that film scene;
and like Roberta they are amazed and confused and we read also terrified at the
same time. For me, like watching that
scene again and again, I still get an incredible lump in my throat when I hear
and read that passage read as I explained earlier; but for me I know how the
story ends, the two Mary’s didn’t. It
was an experience so remarkable that it was difficult for them to comprehend.
At times when our Faith is tested
it is good to remember this passage. In today’s extensive secular society
Christians continue to be persecuted for their beliefs – especially surrounding
the resurrection. The early Christians
had much to put up with from non-believers; in fact even those who believed
struggled, such as those disciples on the road to Emmaus. Luke, in the reading from Acts which we also
heard read this morning, recalls Peter speaking to those surrounding
Cornelius’s House reminding them of the great sacrifice made for all mankind –
not just those of the Jewish Faith. Cornelius, you will remember was a Roman
Centurion who heard God calling him to summon Peter to his where he, his family
and his whole household were baptised as Christians following a vision which
Peter had demonstrating that it was not just those of the Jewish Faith who
obeyed the Mosaic Law who were worthy of being Christians but everyone and
everyone who accepts Jesus as their true saviour who died on the Cross for the
sins of all. That such believers and
followers will receive forgiveness through his name.
I think it is wonderful that, like
the name of a seaside town running through the length of a stick of rock from
first lick to last lick, the coming of Jesus as our Saviour permeates the Bible
from Genesis to Revelation. Our First Testament reading from Isaiah is an
example of this when it is written:
“… the Lord GOD will
wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take
away from all the Earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our
God, we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let
us be glad and rejoice in his salvation”.
There are really two important
points which Isaiah conveys – first of all, he will wipe away the tears of all,
he will take away the disgrace from all the
Earth; and secondly, here is an acknowledgement that the LORD (Yahweh) for whom
we have waited has come and that therefore Jesus is indeed GOD (Yahweh)
incarnate.
Whenever my Faith is shaken or I
feel not quite in tune with God I remember these words. I remember the fact
that in the context of the universe which God created as a whole, our little
planet is so insignificant. It is one of the smaller planets revolving around a
small yellow dwarf star, on the outer limits of a galaxy which is not the
largest of a group of galaxies a group which is one of the smaller ones
contained in a larger galactic cluster set in the infinity of a universe whose
boundaries we cannot currently discern.
Yet, despite this, the Creator God was so concerned and compassionate
about us and the way in which we were going, he sent himself, in the form of
Jesus, to save us from ourselves.
We live in an ever-increasing
secular world – in a world where most worship material things – money,
possessions, celebrities. We live in a world where untruths abound and through
social media we spread gossip and lies without stopping to examine their veracity
or the harm they do to others. We are constantly being led by false shepherds,
false prophets, people who appeal to our greed.
They spread Bad News because it appeals to us – conspiracies, and
rumours or because it fills their pockets with our hard-earned money.
As Christians, we have to stand up
against such falseness and fake news and we do so by going back to the message
of Jesus – “I am the way the truth and the life”. It is our role as Christians to spread this
Good News to all we meet in our daily lives.
It grieves me so much to see a
world which honours and follows those who appeal to our poorer nature and
instincts instead of inspiring us to follow Christ and his teachings of loving
one another as God loves us.
I am optimistic though. Just as everything worked out well in the end
for Roberta and her family in the Railway Children, justice did prevail, her
father was restored to his family and his position – no manner of falsehood or
fake accusations could destroy them in the end.
I daresay the whole family though benefited from going through the
turmoil of giving up their comfortable life in London for a harder but I think
richer life in the Yorkshire countryside.
Likewise, through Jesus’s passion,
death and resurrection we are richer in that we are now able to access God
directly through Jesus and the Holy Spirit and can be restored to the people
which God created us to be. Let us not simple proclaim this with our Alleluia’s
in church but in our daily lives as we spread this Good News to all we meet.
Amen MFB/200/27032024
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