Between the happy ever afters

Memorial Service

Sermon preached at St Mary's Church, Whitkirk, Leeds

11^th March 2007

The story of Robin Hood is almost timeless, even though it is set in medieval England.  Robin goes on the crusades and on returning home finds everything has been turned upside down by corrupt rulers who are oppressing the people.  He takes to the forest with the outlaws launching guerrilla raids on the sheriff and his cohort.  Mixed into this tale of justice and compassion is a love story.  Marion, whom he has known since boyhood, catches his eye and slowly their fondness for each other increases.

The recent BBC version gave this tale a twist.  In episode 12 Marion dies after being stabbed by Guy of Gisbourne.  Well, she appears to die and we have the moving scene of them both desperate to say what they mean to each other but not quite managing it.  It’s a shock because the happy ever after tale has been disrupted and I bet loads of people screamed at the telly that that was not supposed to happen.  Marion can’t die.  The whole point of the story is that they live happily ever after.

Well, it turns out she was in a coma and the tale can continue into series 2!  The jolt, though, that Marion’s apparent death brings touches real life more than the happily ever after does.  Sometimes the worst happens to us and what we think shouldn’t happen does.  Happily ever after is only a temporary delaying of what is inevitable one day.  For some it comes tragically too soon.  Young lives ended when they should just be beginning.  Sometimes it comes at the end of a life well lived, possibly after a debilitating illness.  For some it comes somewhere in between.

I caught a touching glimpse in a nursing home the other day of a couple.  The man had come to see his wife and in the split second that I saw them I got this picture in my mind of him telling me about the frail old lady in front of me, how she used to do so much.  She had cared and loved and lived and now all we saw was a mere shadow of that former self as dementia was setting in.  Of course this is all my day-dream, he said nothing of the sort, but it was a thought that erupted in my brain.

The Christian faith is a bit like that episode of Robin Hood; it is not a normal happy ever after tale.  The great hero, Jesus, doesn’t march on stage, bang a few heads together and wipe out all sorrow and pain or even promise that there won’t be any.  In fact, he does quite the opposite.  Just when everything is gathering momentum and it looks like he can do no wrong, the people love him, he is betrayed, taken prisoner and executed.  It is a tale that makes us scream at the bible, “that’s not supposed to happen”.  Unlike Marion, Jesus really does die and does not just slip into a coma.

That is what makes what happens next all the more exceptional.  ‘Happy ever after’ is given the biggest twist it can be given in the new life he brings that first Easter day.

This afternoon we stand somewhere between the two ‘happy ever afters’.  Some may still be screaming at the telly of their lives “that’s not supposed to happen”.  Some may have a profound sense of Easter and the new life he brings.  Others may still be on the journey in between having moved from screaming but not quite got to Easter day, in a kind of Lenten faith.

Some of where we find ourselves will be to do with our faith, what we believe, what we don’t believe, what we’re not quite sure about; and some to do with how much we miss the person who has gone.  It is perfectly natural to scream when you miss someone, especially if their departure was sudden or at the end of the kind of debilitating disease I saw in that couple in the nursing home.  The emptiness they can leave is a large hole to fill; may be a hole that you think no one will ever be able to fill again.

But it also is about faith and what we think has happened.  One of the things I like about the Christian faith is that it doesn’t just talk in abstract concepts.  What we are given is a person.  Jesus is God showing up to show us the great Easter hope, first hand.  Jesus doesn’t play at being human, but gets stuck in right up to his neck.  Real death is real death and in that he shows that there is something God given about death as much as there is about life.  I don’t pretend to understand it all, and scream “that’s not supposed to happen” with everyone else on occasions, but actually it is supposed to happen and today we stare at both what we might regard as being the light and the dark of it.  We live for God and because of God and somewhere this takes hold of the loose edges of our faith and supports them while we make our journey between the two ‘happy ever afters’: the one that makes us scream in shock and the one that is the full Easter hope.

This is not something that can be caught by argument, it is a place we come to as we reflect on all that has been and all that shall be, as we allow where we are to be touched by the story and faith of Jesus.

So, wherever you are on that journey between ‘happy ever afters’, even if you’re screaming, later on we have a chance to hold that before God as we light candles and place them on the altar.  May be the silence and symbol of that fragile flickering flame will say more than words can, especially if words are difficult to find.  My prayer for you is that you are able to move towards the greatest happy ever after that comes in the light and hope of Easter.

© Ian Black 2007