Jesus in the den of life

A sermon preached at Choral Evensong

Daniel 6.1-23; Mark 15.46-16.8

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Daniel in the den of lions is a much-loved story in Sunday Schools and children’s Bibles. Often when we’re a bit older we think we’ve outgrown it, but here it is tonight, along with the women coming to the tomb of Jesus: what’s going on?

Daniel’s place as a ‘high official’, given that he was a foreigner in Babylon seems quite remarkable.

But then Daniel, and his fellow Israelites were not in Babylon by choice.

Daniel was a Hebrew, an Israelite, who along with ‘brightest and best’ of Israelite society had been forced to leave their homeland to work at the heart of the Babylonian Empire.

This was something Empires did, and do.

Nowadays it’s more likely to be in the form of a brain drain, the bright Brit going to work in Silicon Valley: the Israelites weren’t migrants by choice in Babylon taking the jobs of the natives: they were forced labourers, even if in some very significant positions.

Some Jews had been left back in Judea, in and around Jerusalem, but they were the farmers and certainly not the elite.

So Daniel was both bright and good at his job, a trusted lieutenant of the king.

And, as is a perennial issue for migrants, even those who have been settled for some while in a country, resentment breeds.

The native elites don’t like it when others break into their positions of influence and power or who won’t toe the line of the elite groupthink.

So it was that the other ‘high officials and satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the [running of the] kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. ⁵ Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.” (Daniel 6.4,5)

So they approach the king and manipulate him, through flattery, into making a ludicrous, irrevocable law - what we might recognise as a law that seeks to restrict religious freedom - ‘that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to [the] king, shall be cast into the den of lions’. (Daniel 6.9b)

This is the only way they were going to get him.

Freedom of religious conscience is one of the deep principles of our society and born out of Christian teaching:

[The human] response to God in faith must be free: no one therefore is to be forced to embrace the Christian faith against his own will. (Dignitatis Humanae 9, 10)

Notwithstanding examples in history, it is not Christian to coerce belief, but to invite belief from the heart, as a loving response to the God who made us and loves us.

That is where Marxist-Leninism was so anti-human, it sought to force everyone to think and believe the same things, things that were palpably untrue and unreasonable.

Yet that spirit lives on in those who cannot tolerate the religious perspective and voice in society.

Secularism talks of diversity but pushes religious faith into the private sphere and refuses to listen to that voice, fooling itself into believing that a ‘neutral society’, by which it means one that holds to dominant secular mores and norms, is desirable.

Inconvenient Christian voices written off as backward, irrational, bigoted or just tiresome.

Daniel knew different; the practice of his faith was not to be privatised but something under obedience and conviction he would carry on practicing.

So he consciously and intentionally resisted.

Knowing precisely what the law now was, ^‘he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously’. (Daniel 6.10)

He walked purposely and boldly into the trap set for him.

The trap springs, much to the king’s distress, who seeks a way out.

But the king has tied his own hands: the all-powerful king is the trapped one, not Daniel; Daniel, shut in the lion’s den, is free.

Famously Daniel walks free from the den of lions.

The goodness, beauty and truth of God cannot be locked up, and even if they are temporarily suppressed, they will walk free because they cannot be constrained.

All this is why Daniel is a ‘type’ – a precursor - of Christ.

Daniel trusts in his God against the powers; Jesus Christ remains faithful to the Father in the face of Roman tyranny.

Both Daniel and Jesus trust in God to deliver them.

The king didn’t believe Daniel guilty and Pontius Pilate finds no guilt in Jesus but allows those who plot after his life to have him killed (Luke 23.4).

In St John’s Gospel Pilate says this three times, ‘I find no guilt in him’. (John 18.38; 19.4;19.6)

Yet both Jesus and Daniel are sent to their death.

And that’s where parallels cease.

Daniel doesn’t die; he is miraculously protected, as you might expect a hero to be.

Jesus, unheroically, dies on the cross.

And what is found, after Daniel goes to the den of lions and Jesus’ body laid in the tomb, is different.

Just as the king rose at break of day to go to the den of lions, so the women go to the tomb ‘very early on the first day of the week’ (Mark 16.1).

No king comes to seek Jesus, but Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.

The women don’t come to see if they have got away with a miscarriage of justice like the king, but to anoint Jesus’ dead body.

The king finds Daniel there alive; the women find the tomb empty.

The king is relieved; the women filled with holy awe because of the message they are told: ‘He has been raised; he is not here’.

Life itself, the majesty of creation, the prophets and scriptures all hint at resurrection in the general sense, but in Christ’s triumph over death, proclaimed in this Easter season, Creation itself is renewed, human life animated to the glory of God and each person given the possibility of living life in all its abundance.

May we remain faithful, to our belief and practice, in proclaiming the victory of Christ over sin and death, and always seek to shape our lives after his example, reflecting the lively life that deathless shall persevere.

Of sheep and shepherds

Acts 13.14,43b-52 ‘Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles’

Revelation 7.9, 13a,14b-17 ‘The Lamb will be their shepherd and will guide them to springs of living water’.

John 10.27-30 ‘I give eternal life to my sheep’

 

I give eternal life to my sheep. Alleluia.

 

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The Fourth Sunday of Eastertide, today, is traditionally known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

 

That’s because the Gospel, psalm and other readings feature the image, the motif, of the shepherd.

 

And shepherds in the scriptures, and the life of the Church, are all judged against the measure of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

 

The shepherd is the dominant image of Christian leadership and the Good Shepherd the source and inspiration of it.

 

It’s a very different model from the ‘strong man’ leadership we see in some parts of the world today or indeed the ‘anything goes’ style.

 

The word ‘pastor’ is the Latin word for ‘shepherd’.

 

I am charged with the duty and joy of being your pastor, your shepherd, who, as a priest prays for you, teaches you, leads you and offers the Eucharist with you.

 

As a pastor – a priest for you and a Christian with you - my vocation, my calling, reflects in the local that of our Bishop, Christopher, and his care for us across our Diocese, on the worldwide level the new Pope, Leo XIV, has a pastoral care for his people.

 

Priests are told at their Ordination, ’hold the example of the Good Shepherd always before you’.

 

A good place to start considering this pastoral charge, is through the special stick carried by shepherds and by bishops: the shepherd’s crook , known in church as the ‘pastoral staff’.

 

Traditionally shepherds who look after sheep carry them, and so of course do Bishops, the shepherds, the chief pastors, of the Church.

 

The crook is used – with a flock of sheep and the flock of the Church - in various ways: to rescue, to guide, to obstruct, to protect and to lead.

 

The shepherd uses the curve of the crook to rescue by using it to scoop up a lamb or sheep stranded in a ditch or caught in a thicket.

 

So too Christ through his death and resurrection rescues us, from the gates of hell and the valley of the shadow of death, by lifting us up and rescuing us from sin.

 

The pastor in the church is called to seek out and then lift people out from the ditch of sin, despair, sadness and lack of hope where they could quite easily die spiritually.

 

This is done by proclaiming the forgiveness and reconciliation of Christ the Good Shepherd to those who cry out for life.

 

If your life is like that, stuck in a ditch of pain, then Christ the Good Shepherd, through me his priest, seeks you out to bring the healing medicine of the Gospel.

 

That might be through what’s called a ‘pastoral conversation’ (a bit like counselling) or even more significantly through a formal time of confession – that is when Christ, the Good Shepherd, gets in the ditch with you and lifts you out.

 

As the sheep are led to fresh pastures the shepherd uses the crook to guide, gently steering the sheep, pointing the way.

 

The Good Shepherd leads us to be spiritually nourished and fed guiding us along the lifegiving path that we find in his teaching in the Gospels.

 

His priests and pastors are trained and formed to make that guidance life giving and clear.

 

A pastor in the Church needs to know where to find spiritual nourishment so as to be able to point others to the ‘green pastures’.

 

Those green pastures are feeding on the Word of God and the sacraments which are channels of grace and power in our lives.

 

The shepherd’s crook is also to obstruct.

 

It blocks the way of predators who threaten the flock, or sheep who are separating themselves off.

 

The priest is told to be ready to admonish which is an old-fashioned word which means ‘urge by warning’.

 

I am not a good admonisher, I know, but there are times when being nice doesn’t cut it.

 

No one is saved by niceness but by Truth: it’s often observed that if Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was a parish priest he’d be a very unpopular one: he didn’t hesitate to rebuke and admonish.

 

The shepherd uses the crook to protect.

 

The shepherd’s task in ancient times was to fend off wolves and bears from attacking the flock.

 

King David, whose first calling was as a shepherd boy, wrestled predators to protect the sheep, before slaying Goliath to protect the people.

 

The Christian pastor is charged with resisting and obstructing all that threatens the spiritual wellbeing of the flock of Christ.

 

That means in teaching and reading the ‘signs of the times’, those currents in culture and society hostile to the Gospel or antithetical to Christ.

 

The priest calls out that which is evil and spiritually corrosive: and believe me doing that comes at a cost of disdain or hostility, not unlike the apostles Paul and Barnabas encountered on their missionary journeys, but hostility did at least fill them with ‘joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 13.52).

 

And finally, the crook is to lead: it points the direction.

 

Flocks in the Holy Land in Jesus’ day, and even now, are not driven from behind, dogs snapping at their heels, but are led by the shepherd who calls out to the sheep.

 

The shepherd sets the direction and calls.

 

The Good Shepherd, Jesus, says in the Gospel, ‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me’ (John 10.27)

 

The task of the Christian pastor is not to decide his own way arbitrarily, but prayerfully to seek, with his people, the way, the truth and the life of the Good Shepherd.

 

The pastor, as shepherd, is to keep his eyes fixed on the good pasture, life in Christ, and continually to call the flock home to him.

 

And where are we going as a flock?

 

Our second lesson captures it: the vision of heaven, that is to say life in deeper union with Christ in this world, and life with him in the world to come.

 

St Paul says elsewhere, ‘I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus’. (Philippians 3.14)

 

He presses on because he knows our citizenship is in heaven. (Philippians 3.20)

 

That’s what the vision of Revelation describes:

 

I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. (Revelation 7.9)

 

And there is the Good Shepherd at the heart of things, the Good Shepherd who is also the sacrificial Lamb whose body and blood is the food and drink of the Christian life and whose blood washes those who are his witnesses in tribulation and trial and have died to sin to live with Christ.

 

Witnesses to the life of the Gospel as the ‘sheep of [Christ’s] pasture’ (cf Psalm 100) will have their hunger satisfied; their thirst quenched; and be shaded from harm because:

 

the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,

    and he will guide them to springs of living water,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Revelation 7.17)

 

 

O God, our sovereign and shepherd,

who brought again your Son Jesus Christ

from the valley of the shadow of death,

comfort us with your protecting presence

and your angels of goodness and love,

that we also may come home

and dwell with him in your house for ever.

(Common Worship: Daily Prayer, p. 679)

The power of His Name

Acts 5.27b-32, 40b-41 ‘We are witnesses to these things and so is the Holy Spirit.’

Revelation 5.11-14 ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth.’

John 21.1-14 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish.

 

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‘Having called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name’. (Acts 5.40-41)

We’ll come back to that account of the apostles being beaten up and yet somehow emboldened by the experience.

The Acts of the Apostles is the story of the very earliest days of the life of the Church after the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus.

That’s why the first reading at the Eucharist during Eastertide is from the Acts, rather than the Old Testament – had you spotted that?!

Acts is volume two of the Gospel of Luke, as Luke writes to the man who commissioned his work, called Theophilus (a name meaning, ‘Love of God’ or Loved by God),

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1.1-3)

Those forty days after the Resurrection take us to the Ascension of the Lord when the Eleven remaining disciples, with the Virgin Mary, wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost – more of that in thirty-five days’ time.

We began with a beating, a thuggish attempt by the authorities, known as the council, to silence the Apostles from speaking about Jesus, and in the name of Jesus.

They took it, and were emboldened.

This is all a matter of weeks after they had fled Jesus’ sham trial and abandoned him as he hung dying on the Cross.

What a change: from deserters to strong witnesses!

What changed them?

The answer comes in three stages: the Resurrection, when Christ was raised from the dead; the Ascension, when he ascended into heaven; and Pentecost, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

These coming days of our observance of Eastertide reveal the transformative power unleashed that means the Apostles would willingly take a beating, risk death and actually rejoice ‘that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name’.

The Resurrection gave the Apostles the insight to see their lives afresh and make connections with a man who could just have been an inspired guru, wonder worker or insightful teacher, but whom they come to recognise as Son of God.

The recognition is made real on the shore of the Sea of Tiberius, also known as the Sea of Galilee.

There Jesus appears unannounced, unrecognised, at first, until they saw a miraculous haul of fish; they gathered in more fish than they could catch in their own power, even as experienced fishermen.

I wonder what connections went through their mind, now it was interpreted by his Resurrection?

He told us that we were no longer fishermen but fishers-of-men: now we see our task is not to be on the Sea of Galilee but to be drawing people to the life of God in Christ.

All this echoes in our hearts.

He multiplied fishes when he fed the five thousand, now he multiplies the catch from our boat: it’s worth counting them on the shore, 153: is there significance in that number? We just know for us it’s a lot, and the net wasn’t even torn.

All this echoes in our hearts.

He fed the crowd with loaves and fishes that day and now he says, ‘come and have breakfast’ and he gives us bread and fish.

All this echoes in our hearts.

It’s the third time he is revealed to them.

He had already appeared to Mary Magdalene, but the first time Jesus came to the Apostles was in the Upper Room, doors anxiously locked, when he came bringing shalom, deep peace, and breathing the Holy Spirit upon them. (John 20.19-23)

The second time was back in that Upper Room, doors still locked, with Thomas wanting to see what the others had seen the first-time round: and on seeing that it was the Crucified One raised from the dead, with his sacred wounds, Thomas exclaimed, ‘My Lord and my God’. (John 21.24-29)

Now they see him on the Sea of Tiberius, Galilee, their skills are enhanced by him and they are fed by him.

Three appearances.

Once might have been a mistake, twice might have been an accident, three is surely a pattern.

They’re getting it!

He is everything he claimed to be.

He is, for them all, in Thomas’ words, ‘my Lord and my God’.

They’ve come a long way.

And the patterns they see, and that are offered in John’s gospel as we have heard from Easter up to and including today, and will go beyond, are offered to us to make connections with the patterns of who Jesus is and the power he exercises in our lives.

Bear in mind that St John writes immediately after Jesus’ second appearance to the apostles and immediately before the third:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20.30-31)

That’s telling us that we don’t need and won’t get every last detail, but that we are invited to spot the patterns, make the connections, so that we may believe and have life in his name, the very name that the apostles where speaking in the incident we began with.

That’s telling us that we don’t just need to fill our heads with information about God, about Jesus Christ, but that we come to believe and to declare ‘It is the Lord’ when we see wondrous things in our lives.

If all we glean from the readings today is some interesting detail that we may not have known or may have forgotten, then my job as a preacher is not done well.

But if our hearts have been moved to see Christ more clearly in our lives and in our world, then things are happening.

How do you recognise and see Jesus Christ moving in your life and in the world?

Can you see that he will strengthen you in timidity, still your seething fear and satisfy your deep hunger?

Jesus invited the disciples that day to come and have breakfast: now he invites you to be fed by him in his Body and Blood, to believe in his Name and step into his way, and truth and life.

A faith in touch

Acts 5.12-16 More than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.

Revelation 1.9-11a,12-13,17-19 ‘I died, and behold I am alive for evermore.’

John 20.19-31 Eight days later, Jesus came.

 

‘Put your finger here, and see my hands;

and put out your hand, and place it in my side’

(John 20.27).

 

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The papacy of the late Pope Francis, whose funeral took place yesterday, was marked by bold gestures.

One of the most moving and affecting moments of his papacy was when he reached out and embraced a very disfigured man who many others, myself included, might have passed by, looked away from or stared at.

In this he was consciously echoing the example of Christ.

Jesus’ ministry is one that is in touch with people.

When Jesus heals someone so often the gospel writer tells us that he touched the person concerned.

In our times, as people become more remote from each other, and buffered by suspicion, hostility or fear, the sense that we are in touch with each other diminishes.

Increasingly people of different opinions, views and perspective won’t go near someone who has differing opinions, views and perspectives out of fear for the consequences.

I was on the London Underground on Friday evening and mused how Covid seemed to train us to be more distant and less in touch with other people.

And then the word ‘touch’ is regularly prefixed by the word ‘inappropriate.’

Human beings aren’t in touch anymore, we are losing our sense of touch.

Increasingly we are losing touch with God too.

The WEIRD world - WEIRD being the mnemonic for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic – our weird world seeks salvation in the very technologies that drive us apart, that shield us off from other people.

The smartphone is the icon of this.

Social networks have created more loneliness, fear and suspicion than they have connection and sociability.

Experiencing something means having a photo of it.

An advert for cruises says ‘experience the world in comfort’: sitting back on an armchair on the deck of a cruise liner may be comfortable but it is not experiencing the world.

We have to ‘create memories’, rather than participate in something and thus remember it.

Virtual reality sounds exciting and fun, but it’s what it says it is: virtual; not real.

I could go on.

Little wonder we become disenchanted.

What Pope Francis did - in embracing the disfigured, showing a kind touch to the sick, washing the feet of prisoners, giving space to the homeless - imitated the Lord who is in touch with us.

That is experiencing the world: embracing its pain, not observing it mediated by others.

Our readings today, especially the Gospel, turn us away from the unreality of modernity and technology towards the real and embodied, to things that we can touch.

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles speaks of signs and wonders performed that bring healing.

This is an exercise of divine power, what the New Testament calls, in Greek, δύναμις (dunamis), it’s where we get the word ‘dynamic’ from.

It’s worth just pausing on that for a moment: the healing dunamis of Christ is transmitted and entrusted to his Apostles.

Is the Church dynamic today, in the sense of receiving and transmitting the healing power of the touch of Jesus Christ?

We believe in an Apostolic Church: do we really believe in the healing power of Christ? Or is it a half-buried memory or just a bit embarrassing?

I wonder.

Pope Francis embodied the mercy and healing power of Christ: he was utterly unembarrassed by it, and nor should we be.

Such is the power of the touch of Jesus that even the shadow of the apostles falling on someone brought healing.

St Teresa of Avila tells us:

Christ has no body on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassionately on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.

The dunamis of Christ is given to his Church: we just have to put ourselves in touch with it.

Don’t pray for world peace, without being a person who is a channel of peace.

Don’t pray for healing, if you are not ready to be a healed healer; someone who knows how to bring healing and to receive healing.

Do pray!

Payer is about putting ourselves in touch with the power of the living Lord.

The reading from Revelation describes a vision born out of the intensity of encounter with the Lord in prayer.

He heard a voice, speaking personally to him, he saw the one like a son of man, in heavenly brilliance, he fell down at his feet in worship and adoration.

Hearing, seeing, falling down in adoration are all actions of the body, in reality of experience and participating in the mystery.

And that takes us to Thomas.

Jesus, who touched the sick, allowed the spiritually sick Thomas to touch him: ‘put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side’ (John 20.27).

Our faith is one that is in touch; in touch with the visible and invisible realities of the world.

When, like Thomas, we are in touch with the Crucified and Risen Lord then we receive and transmit the power of being witnesses to the world that Christ is Risen, ‘the first and the last, and the living one’ (Revelation 1.18)

It’s not enough to hold general principles or ‘values’: the world needs a Christian Church in touch with the needs of the materially and spiritually poor: then we are the Good News the Gospel proclaims.

Our faith, the faith of Thomas and the apostles, is not a virtual reality faith, not a metaverse faith, it is an in touch faith, what we call an incarnate and sacramental faith made up not of ethereal spirits, but real bodies.

Real bodies that offer bread and wine to receive the presence and life of Christ; real bodies that are anointed with oil for healing and protection; real bodies that are drenched in life-giving water for washing away sins.

Our adoration and worship is not remote or virtual but intimate and a real presence in Christ’s presence.

Christ is risen bodily from the tomb. Come let us adore him: may we be empowered by the Spirit of the one of whom we say: ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20.28).

Life with the stone rolled away - An Easter Day sermon

Acts 10.34a, 37-43 ‘We ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.’

Colossians 3:1-4 ‘Seek the things that are above, where Christ is.’;

John 20.1-9 ‘He must rise from the dead.’

 

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We have just heard that Mary Magdalene arrived, that first Easter morning, while it was still dark to find the stone had been taken away from the tomb where Jesus’ dead, lifeless body had been placed.

Something brought her there; quite what it’s not clear other than to be near the body of Jesus.

We come, in the light of day, to this church this morning and we too find no stone blocking the way, but the doors – literal and figurative – open: open to the light and life of the Crucified and Risen Lord.

The tomb is open and empty: Christ, the Lord of life, is not to be found in places of death; he is life; he brings life.

What do you do with that?

You may think you decided to come to church this morning; but in fact, you are responding to a call, the call of the Crucified and Risen Lord.

It may be a call you can’t articulate, but it’s there all the same, calling you on a level you may not know or comprehend.

It’s a call to life.

It’s a call Mary Magdalene heard in her heart, that drew her, through her tears, to the tomb that early morning.

It’s the call that drew Peter and John running to the tomb, not knowing what they’d find there.

You’re here, I’m here - in this place that proclaims life in all its abundance - called by the Author of Life itself.

And there’s another stone that now needs rolling away.

The challenge for us today, responders to the call of Christ, is to embrace that fully, to open the doors of our hearts, to have the stone that holds death within us taken away and let life flood our lives.

What does that look like?

Our second reading helps us: ‘If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.’ (Colossians 3.1)

Rolling the stone away is about elevating your mind above the deathly ways of the world into the life-giving way of Christ.

The experience of the disciples on the first Easter morning was one of perplexity, confusion, bewilderment.

They still hadn’t got it: as the evangelist says, ‘as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.’ (John 20.9)

Be ye sure, coming close to the Crucified and Risen Lord means we can’t see life in the same way again.

Be sure that perplexity gives way to trust in God’s faithfulness.

Peter, who was perplexed on the first Easter Day, comes to proclaim, as we heard in the first reading, that ‘to [Jesus] all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’ (Acts 10.43).

In other words, there’s no need for perplexity: the prophets are witnesses, and, Peter might add, Jesus told you all this in person too!

And the response of faith leads to our forgiveness; the lifting of the millstone of deathly ways from around our necks: it’s ‘the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’ (Romans 8.21)

This is the faith of the Church; this is the Christian faith.

The Resurrection of Christ is the guarantee that all that went before is vindicated - his life anointed ‘with the Holy Spirit and with power’, that ‘he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil’ – even his being put to death on the wood of the cross – all is now vindicated.

This is not just some metaphor of fresh chances, new beginnings or springtime.

If the resurrection is only a metaphor; well, to hell with it. (cf Flannery O’Connor)

If the resurrection is only a metaphor, what a delusion it is.

Make no mistake, Christ is risen from the dead.

As St Paul points out in customary directness in his first letter to the Corinthians:

If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. (1 Corinthians 15.14)

I should shut up and you should go home!

He carries on:

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. (1 Corinthians 15.17)

How pitiable we would be.

But in fact, says Paul, Christ has been raised from the dead.

We are not now locked in to Adam’s sin, the condition of life that is bound in to deathly ways with a stone rolled across it.

Rather ‘in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Corinthians 15.22), that’s when we allow the stone to be rolled away, when we step out into the daylight and ‘walk as children of light’.

The letter to the Ephesians nails it, and what our lives become in Christ:

for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. (Ephesians 5.8-10)

What brought you here today? The call of light; the call of all that is good and right and true; the very call of resurrection life.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

Christ who lives in me - The Vigil of Easter

Genesis 1.1,26-31a The Creation

Exodus 14.15-15.1 ‘The people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground’

Ezekiel 36.16-17a, 18-28 ‘I will sprinkle clean water on you ands I will give you a new heart.’

Romans 6.3-11 ‘Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.’

Luke 24.1-12 ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’

 

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What has just unfolded before us tonight?

It’s a bit of a shock to those who have never attended this service before, and it is so very different from the orderliness and stability of our regular worship: but then Easter disrupts settled patterns and assumptions all round.

There has been drama and performance and texts.

This is not theatre, but the Church’s time-honoured way of revealing mysteries that don’t just speak to our heads, but speak to our hearts, and all our senses, for tonight, in this proclamation of Easter, life and light flood our lives, our whole being.

We have gathered around the primordial element of fire, with its sparks, leaping flames, heat and light.

The fire evokes the pillar of fire that led the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt; the fire of the Burning Bush in which Moses encountered the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the fiery furnace into which the three young men were thrown because of their faithfulness to the faithful God who preserved and delivered them.

The flames evoke the disciples on Easter Day whose hearts burn within them as Jesus unfolds for them the scriptures on the Road to Emmaus; the Day of Pentecost and the tongues of fire that dance upon the apostles’ heads, not burning them but setting them on fire with zeal for the Gospel.

From the fire in its wildness we light the luminous Paschal Candle that burns as a witness to the Risen Lord and the light he sheds on our hearts and minds, and illuminates our reading of the scriptures.

And, haven’t we had a good dose of scriptures tonight!

The Exultet gave us the broadest sweep of salvation history, distilled from scripture, and its power in us now, tonight: represented in this Paschal Candle.

We have heard afresh the Creation born out of life-giving water, as we celebrate the New Creation in Christ.

We have heard afresh the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as we celebrate our own deliverance, in Christ, from the slavery of sin.

We have heard afresh of the prophetic promise that God will replace Israel’s heart of stone with a heart of flesh; as we celebrate the new and contrite heart that expands and beats with love in Christ.

All this, we believe, points us more deeply to the rich meaning of the Christian life, a life initiated, refreshed and made sense of in baptism, which took us to St Paul’s letter to the Romans.

It is, as it were, his meditation on the encounter we have with the Crucified and Risen Lord.

The key to the experience of the Resurrection is in the language of being buried and being raised.

The same thing, he says, is going on when we are baptised.

We are sacramentally experiencing death and resurrection, so that ‘we too may walk in newness of life’.

The Sabbath Day was the day when Jesus’ body rested in the tomb: and it was to that tomb that those women came.

And thanks be to God for the myrrh bearing women – Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women whose names we don’t know - because their devotion and faithfulness blessed them through something prophesied but utterly perplexing.

They did not find Christ’s dead body, as they had expected, but they became the first to hear the greatest proclamation of them all: ‘He is not here, but has risen’.

The evangelion, the Good News of the Gospel flows from that empty tomb; what seals Christ’s incarnation, ministry, passion and death is an unsealed empty tomb and the proclamation: ‘He is not here, but has risen’.

This Good News proclamation shapes the Christian life finds its home in the liturgy, in our worship.

As one writer puts it:

Evangelization is the first touch that starts someone on that journey; evangelization is the nurturing of that initial conversion into a full-blown conformity to Christ; evangelization drags the Christian through the font and deposits him at the foot of the Eucharistic altar where communion with Christ is attained. (David W Fagerburg, ‘From Divinization to Evangelization’ in Divinization: Becoming Icons of Christ Through the Liturgy, p27)

The ‘dragging through the font’ of Baptism is a thoroughly Easter Sacrament, it encapsulates the Mysterium Paschale, the Paschal Mystery which is proclaimed tonight.

Hence why we will refresh the promises of our own baptism: we renew a covenant tonight.

The Exultet speaks of tonight being the night, ‘when things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and divine to the human’.

That’s why tonight we are ‘deposited at the foot of the Eucharistic altar where communion with Christ is attained’.

I began by referring to the primordial element of fire, I’ll end with the primordial element of water.

Just as we stood outside by a fire, shortly we will stand by a fountain, a pool, the font with the water of baptism.

We didn’t get burned, but we will get wet!

This is the saving, life giving water, into which we plunged in baptism and from which we are raised in Christ.

Baptism effects the heart of the Easter Gospel:

Death has no dominion over Christ, so you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6.11).

In the midst of the drama, the many layers of meaning, there it is: ‘Christ is not here. He has risen.’; ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’ (Galatians 2.20).