Lord Jesus today, of all days, we come before you with thanks and praise for your grace to us. We ask that we would experience that grace afresh this morning, in our worship, in this story and in our reflections on it.
I am not sure if any of you have seen the advertisement for the Lindt chocolate easter bunny this year. It begins with a young boy sitting in a car. He is staring at a phone but then he looks up and notices that the Lindt chocolate easter bunny behind him is sparkling. A golden trail bounces out from behind the car. The car passes a woman on a bike and a couple walking their dog who also have a golden trail emanating from their lindt chocolate easter bunnies. The car arrives at home and the boy grabs the bunny and runs inside. The golden trail following him. Inside is his grandfather. With great joy the boy presents the glowing bunny to his grandfather. And his grandfather in turn presents him with a glowing bunny and they embrace in the golden light. And a voice says “make your Easter sparkle with the Lindt gold bunny.”
Leo Burnett, Lindt’s UK chief creative officer said the ad highlights Lindt’s role in captivating the magic of the occasion for Easter. He goes on, “The Lindt Gold Bunny is a proper Easter icon and we wanted to create a film that fully captured its magic.”
Don’t get me wrong, I love a Lindt Easter Bunny as much as the next person (although my personal favourite growing up was the Cadbury Crunchie Easter egg) but we, the church, of course, have a different idea about what constitutes a “proper” Easter icon (see on the screen behind you) and where the so called “sparkle” of Easter is to be found.
However, as with Christmas, consumerism has done a good job at coopting the wonder and awe of Easter but for me the story we have in the Bible of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is far more captivating and wonderful than the story of a bunny who leaves chocolate eggs.
Regulars here will know this has become a bit of theme for me this year but in a world in which so many people (particularly the young) are struggling to find meaning and purpose and seem to me to be crying out for a sense of the transcendent and the divine I think we the church need to embrace the more mysterious, weird and so called enchanted parts of our faith.
This year the lectionary takes us through the gospel of Luke and so today we have watched an interpretation of Luke’s version of the story. Those of you familiar with the gospels will know they can vary slightly, sometimes even a lot. I tend to think this gives legitimacy to them. We know, no story will ever be told exactly the same by everyone.
And so today I will be focusing in on Luke’s particular story and what we might draw from it.
It was the first day of the week. That is Jesus was crucified and laid to rest on the Friday. On the Saturday the people had taken Sabbath. And then at dawn on the Sunday, the women, who had journeyed with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem (a journey we have been on this lent), who had watched as he was crucified and then followed Joseph of Arimathea to discover where his body was laid, returned to his tomb taking spices and ointments they had prepared, only to discover that Jesus body was no longer there. Instead, they encounter two men in dazzling clothes. They fall to the ground in fear but the men ask them, “why do you look for the living among the dead?”
They then proclaim the incredible news that we too proclaimed this morning, “He is not here, but has risen.”
And finally, they remind the women that Jesus in fact told them that this would happen, that he would be crucified and on the third day would rise again.”
As said this year we have been reflecting a lot on the weird and wild nature of the Christian faith of which this story is at the heart.
No doubt people have questions, even doubts, about this story. I think that must be ok because the story itself does not provide much detail. There is nothing that tells us what happened in the time between Jesus being laid in the tomb and his rising. This is nothing that tells us how it happened. It seems that the story is not that interested in that. All we can gather from the story is that sometime in the predawn hours the great mystery of resurrection transpired. And it transpired in secret. No sunlight illuminated the event. Unlike Jesus’ death no human being witnessed it.
I do not know why but it seems the mystery of resurrection is one to be known only by God. Whatever, it was and is, its fullness lies in holy darkness, shielded from our eyes.
And so I have been pondering this week what can I say about it. What can I possibly say about this great mystery?
Well here a just a couple of things that have come to me as I have been reading about and reflecting on this text.
Firstly, Resurrection, it seems, dawns upon us, only as we stay faithful to the fact of death. It is to the women who return to the tomb that the angels come. This suggests that when it comes to resurrection, you cannot press skip through the hard bits. You cannot refuse the dying, or avoid the space of emptiness and unknowing.
Secondly, And yet this story (and the Christian faith) proclaim death no longer has the final say. In fact, it seems life begins to break in precisely through As James Alison once said in an Easter sermon, “He entered into death and made it untoxic.” This releases us from the fear of death, which in turn can lead us to live less fearful lives, more generous lives. Sarah Bachelard, in a book titled, “Resurrection and the moral imagination”, suggests, more “moral” lives. This is not say, all Christians live completely moral lives and all non Christians do not. Clearly this is not the case. But if protecting ourselves at all costs is not our ultimate goal, it does liberate us to do what is right no matter the risks.
Thirdly, Two weeks ago, reflecting on another story, about another woman, another Mary even, Su Sze commented that Christianity is an embodied faith. We, after all, believe in the incarnated Christ, she said. Julie Canlis in article from seen and unseen describes it like this, “In re-living the events of Holy Week, all eyes are on Jesus’ body. And Jesus’ body is doing some very physical actions – like healing bodies, raising bodies, touching unclean bodies, washing feet. And then it is his turn to have his body ravaged. All eyes are not on the idea but on the body of Jesus.”
And resurrection too is embodied. This might seem peculiar to us given Christianity’s historically mixed relationship to the body. But Christian orthodoxy proclaims that Jesus still had his body. The resurrection of Jesus is not just a metaphor (although it is that too, resurrection is all around us). Rather Christians believe that he is alive and well, in some kind of body and thus pouring out blessing on all embodiment. This isn’t a body that is somewhere floating above us in the clouds, but is an embodied person raised as their whole life narrative into eternity. Resurrection is not the hope of our joining Jesus in the clouds, but of this same raising of our whole lives into Life itself.
The question therefore according to Canlis is not just “is there life after death.” That’s part of it but also is there life before death?
Fourthly, the world is a pretty dark place right now for a lot of people. It is a pretty dark place for a lot of people in our own town, even for some people here. You do not need me to list all the reasons. We need resurrection. I came across this quote from Nadia Bolz Weber again this week. I quoted it last year but I had forgotten it so I am going to guess you did too. It made really happy when I read it again and so I am going to share it again.
“Right now, I need stories of resurrection. I mean, I’m sort of desperate for them. I know of all the stories in the Bible that are hard for us to believe, stories of people rising from the dead can sound especially crazy. But I love them. I love stories of resurrection. I love stories of resurrection because I’m someone who’s desperate for second chances and third chances and really just like all the chances. I love stories of resurrection because they’re messy and they’re weird, and they sync a hook of hope into me like nothing else can. And we could use some divine hope right now, could we not? We could use some resurrection up in here. We could use something a little more powerful than our virtues, a little more reliable than our wokeness, a little more hopeful than our attempts to just try harder. I’ve tried trying harder. It doesn’t make me free. It just makes me tired.”
Finally, though resurrection is a mystery, despite 2000 years of trying, no human has fully been able to pin it down, I believe it’s true. As most of you know I have a morning liturgy and as part of that I say the words of the creed,
We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
We believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.
This is not to say I don’t have questions, that is not to say I never have doubts, I do which is part of why I say it. So that when I can’t believe it myself, I draw on the faith of those past, present and future who can. This is why we need the church. Why we don’t stop coming when we have doubts. Rather, when we have doubts we come even more and allow the faith of others to carry us to a place when we can again carry the faith of others. I have said it before but the Christian faith is an inherited and communal faith.
I don’t know how but I believe that somehow in that ancient tomb God worked in secret to bring life out of death. Somehow, from the heart of loss and misery, God enacted salvation.”
This is good news. This is the gospel. Amen Hallelujah.
