Easter Day 2013

SERMON - Acts 10.34–43; John 20.1–18

Alleluia Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.  Alleluia

When a young minister was still single, he preached a sermon he entitled, "Rules for Raising Children." After he got married and had children of his own, he changed the title of the sermon to "Suggestions for Raising Children." When his children got to be teenagers, he stopped preaching on that subject altogether.

The Easter stories seem to be all about people making mistakes and not understanding what’s happening. 

·     Mary sees the funeral wrappings and thinks the body of Jesus has been stolen. 

·     Peter sees the wrappings and can’t understand what it’s all about.

 

·     The Disciples had no idea what Jesus wanted them to do

·     And angels then question Mary, and she still doesn’t comprehend, she thinks Jesus is the gardener. 

·     She reaches out to give him a cwtch, as we say in Wales, and he tells her not to.

I can’t remember reading more misunderstandings in a few short paragraphs.  It is as if everyone had no idea what was happening, and no one had taken time to sit and think about anything.

It’s clear that there has to be a point being made here.  The first Easter happened, the tomb was empty, space, time and world history had changed, but the people that witnessed it were the same, their minds and imaginations were the same also.  They weren’t given a cosmic understanding to comprehend the enormity of what was happening.  They seemed to just look on in bafflement.

They were trying to count the grains of sand on the beach really.  The explosive fact of the resurrection left them with a world of possibilities, and no real way of expressing that.

Reading the accounts of the Passion, from all the Gospels, and seeing the bafflement of the disciples, is a mark of the authenticity of the story for me.

A generation later when the stories were written down, if someone had been making it all up,

·     They wouldn’t have had the disciples in such bewilderment,

·     And no one would have bothered to make up the detail about how the folded grave clothes were in a place by themselves,

·     Another thing that jumps out to me is that it is hard to explain how, when the disciples saw Jesus, they didn’t recognise him, either here or on the road to Emmaus.

The first Christians weren’t prepared for what was happening, it was as if they were struggling to describe something they didn’t have the language for.

Ever since then, people have tried to explain the Easter message, with varying degrees of success.

Archbishop Barry is preaching this morning at the Holy Eucharist in Llandaff cathedral on the other side of this city, and he will liken Jesus to Fireman Sam, because they are both in the rescue business and they never let people down.

The Church in Wales Press Office tells me that he will say;

"Anyone in trouble, with no questions asked, so too God responds to everyone in need".

"As his name suggests, Sam is a fireman who rescues people from fires but he is into all kinds of rescue.

"So, whether people are stuck up a mountain, marooned at sea, have fallen off a cliff or their bus has got stuck in a bog, helped by Penny, Tom, Elvis, Station Officer Steel and Radar the dog, based at the fire service at Pontypandy, Fireman Sam comes to the rescue.

"If you wanted to sum up God's work, He is a God who is in the rescue business. That is the root meaning of the word 'salvation' - it means being saved from something or someone.”

We don’t need to be able to explain everything, we can just sit looking into the empty tomb, and be content that it happened. 

The first disciples learned something after the resurrection, and it is that the Easter message is about looking at the product of Easter morning and not fully understanding the details of the day.

Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, in his acceptance letter, wrote;

“The work of the Church of England is not done primarily on television or at Lambeth, but in over 16,000 churches, where hundreds of thousands of people get on with the job they have always done of loving neighbour, loving each other and giving more than 22 million hours of voluntary service outside the church a month.”

That is a product of Easter morning!

[He then goes on to call Parish Priests, the great unsung heroes of the church – so I think he’s great!]

The Christian church is still the largest provider of Health Care throughout the world, Christians have called for civil liberties, peace and justice for all people.  Christians founded the Red Cross, Save the Children, Action for Children and the Children’s Society.  They have called for change to legislation to protect people, to empower people and to support people. 

Baroness Warsi, coined the rather nice phrase;

People who "do God, do good"

She added to the figures quoted by Justin Welby, adding that as the economic downturn has taken hold, Christians have increased their giving by a third to social action projects, in money and also in time!

That is a product of Easter morning!

In another lovely report, we are told that  ‘Half of Anglican parishes run services such as food banks, homework clubs and even street patrols.’

This is the product of Easter morning!

I’m not suggesting that the history of the church is all light and joy, the darkness has slipped in and flourished in some places, but for me the proof of the Resurrection is the product of Easter morning, that continues to bring people together for;

·     Support

·     Social action, and

·     Spirituality

The leading Theologian N.T.Wright tells us that;

Easter is what it is because, together with Jesus’ crucifixion, it is the central event of world history, the moment towards which everything was rushing and from which everything emerges new.

The Gospel, says Paul in Colossians, has already been preached to every creature under heaven; which must mean that with the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth a shock wave has rattled through the world, so that despite appearances the world is in fact a different place, full of new possibilities, previously unimagined.

We should take these opportunities to build a new future as a product of Easter Morning.

I’m not sure whether Fireman Sam is really like Jesus, I would have thought he was more like Arnold Schwarzeneger, after all in the Terminator, he said I’ll be back.

And on that note,

Alleluia Christ is risen, He is risen indeed Alleluia!