(I am taking the liberty of posting my Easter sermon, and all in one go. The bible reading to go with it is John. 20. 1-18, which is the story of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Christ after having gone early to attend to Jesus’ body for proper burial)
Christianity is the most realistic and transformative faith we could possibly have. Our faith is the supreme gift of the God of love to us, each and everyone of us, and to the whole world, as the way of finding life in all its fullness.
Let’s begin with a lesson for resurrection life that we learn from today’s passage.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the lesson is faithfulness in death. “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb”. Mary went to attend to the messy, gruesome business of caring for the body of her Lord and master and friend. No expectation of a happy ending. All hope gone. Yet still there are jobs to be done.
Christianity is the most realistic faith we could possibly have because we accept the reality of the world we live in, and of human nature, including our own. We understand that Christ was put to death because he challenged the authority and position of those who held power – whether it be the religious authorities hating to be upstaged by a common, wandering preacher who rejected the religious orthodoxy, or the Romans, always ready to stamp on any threat of disorder. We understand that in this wonderful, beautiful, bountiful world, every single one of us will suffer, sometimes terribly. And around the world, so often, that suffering is because of the stupid, violent hatred of men seeking power.
And in response to our own weakness in combatting the suffering and evil poured into the world through the abuse of power, what do we do? We continue in faith and love to deal with caring for those we love who are in need and trying our best to clean their wounds – in whatever way our situation requires. For Mary, that meant going, as soon as she possibly could, to clean away the blood of her dear Lord and treat his dead body with reverence.
Because this is who we are, or rather, because this is the way that God in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ has made us, we do not realise how shockingly unusual this is. The normal human response is hatred, fear and anger, hitting back at those who hurt us, and sometimes getting our attack in first just because we are afraid of what might happen. But I am jumping ahead to the transformative power of our faith in Christ.
We also accept the reality of our own failures and loss and despair. It seems to me that the modern secular world is so lost precisely because people cannot bear to think that they are not exactly as they should be, and living their best possible life. In contrast, we know that we are sinners, and sometimes we feel that very keenly indeed – wretched sinners that we are. But we are redeemed sinners! We accept the reality of the gift that God has given us, what God has made possible. To be forgiven, redeemed, purified, healed, restored, empowered, enfolded in the love of God, in communion with him and in the fellowship of our brothers and sisters all round the world and through all eternity. Our faith has enabled us to see that this is the ultimate reality, the pearl of great price, worth giving up everything else in order to have that privilege to come before God and say, “Yes Lord, here I am”.
So, we also accept the reality of our hopes, and we dare to believe. Mary – like all of us – had put her hope in Jesus, except, unlike us, she had done so with no inkling that the resurrection of Jesus was possible, or that life in the Spirit, in full communion with God was the mission for which the Father had sent his Son. But, again, unlike us, when Mary put her trust in Jesus she had no inkling that he would be put to death with such horrific violence and hatred and humiliation. She, who saw and listened to Jesus, could not possibly believe that his message of God’s forgiveness and acceptance of all people would be rejected.
So, Mary and we are alike in our faith and love for Jesus, but we approach from different ends of the story – she not knowing how that story would finish, but we not being in on the beginning when all was hope and excitement and joy. But we are also alike in our faithfulness in death and in our acceptance of the reality of our own humanity, with its glorious possibilities for reaching out in compassion, and our capacity for selfishness, fear and greed – which we never lose sight of, but of which we are not afraid, because we have complete trust that it is the grace of God which will triumph in us.
Christianity is also the most transformative faith we could possibly have. Mary was still in the garden crying. One of the great mysteries of the resurrection accounts is that the closest friends of Jesus did not initially recognise him. What might we take from this? On that first Easter Sunday morning, Mary was already in the presence of Jesus, but she didn’t yet know it. Seeing Jesus in the garden, hearing his voice, did not have any effect, but when he called her name, she knew him instantly. Similarly with the two on the road to Emmaus, they saw and talked with him for ages without knowing him, and then in the instant Jesus broke and blessed the bread for them, they knew it was him.
I think there is a deep truth about the Christian life here. Not so much about the way we become Christians, for some of us can tell you the exact moment of our conversion, while others can only say that they came to faith sometime between – and then they quote one time when then did not believe and another when they did. Rather, I think it tells us about how we become aware of the presence of the Lord. God is always with us, but we are sometimes unaware of it. What is it, what does it take to bring about the breakthrough? I am not grasping for some unrealistic, miraculous, mystical experience. Notice how Mary took completely in her stride an encounter with two angels – her focus is simply on serving Jesus – she simply says to the angels that her Lord has been taken away and she wants to find him. When she is actually in the presence of Jesus, she does not immediately have a wonderful emotional experience; she simply asks Jesus, if it was him who removed the body, please tell her so she can go to him.
Then there is the moment of recognition. It is in recognising the presence of the risen Christ that she is transformed. It is not resolution for her grief she seeks, not some guarantee of well-being, not some gift of everlasting peace: she wants her Lord. And this is her message when she rushes back to tell the disciples. She doesn’t even say, “Jesus is alive!” – though this is the inescapable truth behind what she does say. What she says is, “I have seen the Lord!”.
This is what makes Christianity the supremely transformative faith. Modern secular ideology, in the corruption and futility of its thinking, mistakes the reality of the physical creation and the work of human hands as the only reality that there is, but the ultimate reality is the presence of God. When we see him, then everything we look at is transformed.
In human reality, the cross is the place where those in power imposed their will to destroy Jesus. They thought that they were destroying him, humiliating him, proving that Jesus was a liar and that God supported their way of thinking. It is a symbol of the fear of change, fear of losing control, fear of the challenge if we change our values. It’s a symbol of hatred – hatred of Jesus’s message of forgiveness of sins. It’s a rejection of the hope that God will come to us.
But in God’s hands, the cross becomes the place where his mission to redeem humanity succeeds. It is a symbol of the triumph of love and life. It is the door opening up between God and humankind to enable us to live in communion with him and in justice and compassion with one another.
The cross should be a symbol of revulsion which all good people should reject. How can the messiah, the saviour sent by God, possibly be hanging in powerless humiliation, dying the death of a common criminal? But so transformative is the grace of God that when we see the cross, we see God! Our eyes are opened, and we exclaim, “Ah! This is what God is really like. I see it now”. He loves us so much that he gives his very self unto death in order that we might be set free from the dominion of sin and evil and death. All worldly values are upended. It is not power that is the supreme value in the world but love. It is in service to others that we are made whole. We see that on the cross, Jesus is not being defeated by evil and hatred and fear, he is winning the victory of our salvation. We see exactly how much God loves us. How could we have ever grasped this if God had not done this for us? He who is Lord came not to be served but to serve, and in loving us, and all people, he loved us to the end and on the cross he wins the victory of our redemption.
Our life now is simply a life of living out the grace that God has given to us, to love and serve him, to rejoice in the faith by which we are redeemed.
Christ is risen! Alleluia!
Spiritual Devotion 