Easter - not just new life of spring

Sermon preached at Whitkirk Parish Church

Easter Day (Year B) - 12th April 2009

This might surprise you, but I think it is quite hard for us to celebrate Easter.  Let me explain.  However much we may have journeyed with Jesus through this past week, entered into the emotional rollercoaster that is Holy Week, we will have known that today was just a few steps away; indeed we have been planning for it.  As day follows night and spring follows winter, so Easter comes with predictable regularity.  That dilutes the impact of the day and therefore the celebration is diminished beyond the excitement of chocolate, egg hunts and spring sunshine, which is all great, but not really the main point.

For Jesus’ first followers there was nothing expected or gradual about his rising from the dead.  Some of the details between the Gospels vary.  Mary is on her own as she comes to the tomb in John’s Gospel, whereas in Mark, Matthew and Luke she has company, as the reading we heard a moment ago depicted (Mark 16:1-8).  But they all agree on a much more central detail.  When, however many go to the tomb, they arrive there, early in the morning, they are not expecting to find an empty tomb.  They expect to find what they left on Friday; a sealed tomb containing his corpse.  The shock was so powerful that there are no words that can break through to them; their system is in shock and so their hearing is impaired.  There is just that empty feeling in the pit of their stomachs.  They are told to announce what they have found to the disciples.  Instead they tell no one because they are frightened and bewildered.  They don’t have a box in their heads to hold this news in.

This is where so much of what we use to celebrate Easter, so much of the images we choose to help give it form and shape, can divert us from the point.  Flowers come at this time of year because it is in the natural cycle that they will, along with blossom and leaves on trees, grass growing and buds appearing on the shrubs.  Lambs and bunnies are born around this time of year following the natural rhythms of life.  All of these are natural, normal and to be expected.

The resurrection of Jesus comes in a completely different category.  It is a dramatic breaking of the natural order and cycle.  The normal rhythm of life ends in death and decay.  The death is real death not just a falling asleep waiting to be woken up.  The Gospels do not mislead us here.  Jesus really dies and he is really buried.  There is no illusion or trickery.  His disciples knew this; they had seen it many times before.

Flowers and lambs or bunnies may speak of new life but they make it all sound so expected and normal.  Maybe the Easter story has become like that to us.  It is no longer remarkable, earth shattering.  But then maybe life has become like that too, not particularly remarkable or amazing, taken for granted.  It takes something to break into the usual round and common task, to grab our attention in the everyday tasks that we face before we start being overcome by awe and wonder.  It might be the birth of a child, which has a dramatic effect on us, or the view after a long climb up a hill that takes our breath away.  It might be a fantastic work of art where line, colour and shading combine to lift our spirits.  It might be the combination of stone, painted glass and space which great churches and cathedrals offer that lift our hearts to praise, or the music that fills them.  It may be those flowers arranged with skill or just bowing gently in a breeze or the lambs skipping in a field that makes us wonder.  And this is where they start to become symbols for us of the wonder of the resurrection because life itself is incredible and so unlikely in the universe that contemplating it inspires our praise and wonder.

So maybe those flowers and chocolate symbols of new life – eggs, lambs, bunnies – are a helpful symbol for Easter, but not in the way we tend to think.  The new life they represent is expected, natural and normal.  The life that is in them in the first place is extraordinary and remarkable.  This is what inspires our praise and brings celebration turning the ordinary into the extra-ordinary.

The Church, though, doesn’t use these as its central symbol of the resurrection.  Yes we have decorated the church with flowers and yes we may have a chocolate gift for you as you leave, but those are incidental, special as they are.  We use something else, something fragile, flickering but which takes away the darkness.  The large candle, burning by the altar is our main symbol of Christ’s resurrection because it is a light shining in the darkness.  Where the women that first Easter day expected to find the darkness of death and grief they found life and the light of hope.  Where they expected to find the ordinary they found the extra-ordinary and mind blowing resurrection.  Today is the most holy and wonderful day of the Christian year because it is so unexpected and we should not treat it as just another day, another Easter.  We should not treat it as being wholly predictable and unremarkable and we should not regard God that way either.

The God we worship is wholly unpredictable.  We think we have it sown up and the boxes we build to contain him are smashed apart just like the stone closing in the tomb.  The Jewish faith of the disciples had dietary laws and regulations about what and who was clean and unclean.  As we read the Acts of the Apostles we find them smashed to smithereens and they have to learn a whole new generosity.  They thought they knew what the Messiah would be like, the promised one who would establish a new kingdom and their whole mental map is blown up by a king who rides a donkey, takes a towel so that he can wash their feet, touches untouchables and makes women the first witnesses to his earth shattering news, women whose status was disregarded.  One sermon cannot begin to do justice to what this means, but Easter is not ordinary or normal, neither is Christian living.

Are you ready for it?  Are you ready for what the God of surprises and unpredictability might do?  Hold on tight because if you really take this seriously it can take you on the ride of your life and who knows where you’ll end up.  Wherever it is, it will be the pathway to blessing but it isn’t about keeping things as they have always been.  If Easter is about anything it is very much not about keeping things as they have always been.  The risen Christ is changed otherwise he would be a ghost.  The community of the disciples, which became the Church, is not the same after the resurrection as it was before.  We are not the same as we were before Easter took hold on our lives.  We are changed by it and will be changed by each encounter we have with the risen Christ as we gather round his altar to share his bread and wine; as we feed on him.

Don’t get involved with the Christian Church if you want everything to be the same because we have new life written into our title deeds.  We have a symbol of light shining in darkness and it doesn’t leave us alone, untouched.  Where it will lead is unpredictable but if we try to contain it in some kind of tomb of our making it will smash its way out.  This is why the Church has continued for 2,000 years and will continue for millennia to come; not as it is, but with the life of Christ within it and guiding it and transforming it.  Again, just like the flowers and bunnies can make us miss the point so can this building which has been here for centuries.  It can make us think of keeping things as they have been.  But what goes on today is radically different to what went on 50 years ago, let alone 500 years ago or 1000 years ago.  To that we can say Alleluia, because if it wasn’t this faith would have died out years ago and it shows no sign of dying out.

So flowers, bunnies, chocolate and candles, even buildings, can point to the life that is truly remarkable, extra-ordinary and unpredictable.  But the point is that it is not just more of the same replenished; it is radically different.  Easter is not just about new life that we see and expect in spring, it is the wonder that is life at all; life that will not be defeated by any darkness.  Where we expect to find death God’s life breaks through and will not be defeated.  That inspires our awe and wonder and is far more worthy of our celebation.

© Ian Black 2009