on living the resurrection #2

Acts 4.32-35; 1 John 1.1-2.1; John 20.19-31

You may have finished the last of your Easter eggs already, and the shelves in the supermarket where they were stacked for sale are now full of barbecue charcoal and picnic wear. But for the Church, Easter continues to be celebrated during the 50 days between Easter Day and Pentecost.

The first believers had such a powerful encounter with Christ after his death that they were changed by it. They discover a new life in him, and their experiences have continued to inspire believers through the centuries. Our readings today offers us insights into what this new life looked like.

We start with St Thomas. Poor Thomas, famous for doubting the resurrection of Jesus, when surely all he did was say what any one of us would in similar circumstances. ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ When he, too, experiences the presence of Jesus alive to his faithful fellow disciples, then he believes. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,’ Jesus says.

What Thomas is not willing to accept is the testimony of other believers about the transformation that Jesus brings to their lives. And they are transformed. This rag-tangle band of rough and unsophisticated folk, who have previously been chastised by Jesus for their lack of faith, their slowness to grasp his teaching and their inability to follow the simplest of instructions (‘Watch and pray’) begins to coalesce into faithful followers who find themselves powerfully changed by all they have experienced.

For us, the experiences of fellow Christians has an important role to play in as they share with us what Jesus means to them and how they have experienced new life, a changed life, in him. Our faith is not simply passed on to us through the Bible, but also two millennia of Jesus’ followers testifying to how a life centred around him has brought them a fuller and deeper life.

One of the lovely things about our Lent course this year, as we’ve read various books of the Bible, has been to discuss our reactions to them as well as to open up and share some of the spiritual experiences we’ve had as followers of Jesus.

So one of the hallmarks of the Church since the earliest of times has been to share the impact of our encounters with Christ, and wrestle together with the challenges of faith and his calling to serve God in our lives.

Secondly, today’s reading from the book of Acts shows us another remarkable effect of the early Christians experiencing the presence of Christ in the their lives:

‘All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own... there was no needy person among them...’
— Acts 4.32,34 (NIV)

The first Christians are so dramatically changed by Jesus that they gave up their individualism and self-interest to share a common life. The impact of experiencing Jesus’ presence was to put themselves and their own desires aside, perhaps because they understood that the body of Christ was most fully experienced in the fellowship and unity of a community of believers who were of one heart and mind.

This is still the model for the Church, that when we encounter Christ in our worship, our scripture readings, our personal prayer lives and in breaking bread together, we become united, single-minded in serving Jesus by loving God and caring for each other and the wider world.

Finally, our other reading today, from the first letter of John, points us to another impact of encountering Christ — cultivating an honesty and humility about who and what we are. It is so easy in life to delude ourselves, in order to impress or be accepted by others. But God requires us to drop the pretences. New life in Jesus can only be experienced when we are willing to be truthful about ourselves. John writes:

‘If we say that we share in life with God and keep on living in the dark, we are lying and not living in the truth. But if we live in the light, as God does, we share in life with each other. And the blood of his Son Jesus washes all our sins away. If we say that we have not sinned, we are fooling ourselves, and the truth isn’t in our hearts. But if we confess our sins to God, he can always be trusted to forgive us and take our sins away. If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and his message isn’t in our hearts.’
— 1 John 1.6-10 (CEV)

Spiritual growth and maturity comes from personal examination and self-knowledge. It means facing up to those areas of our life where we’ve been kidding ourselves and others. When we are able to be honest with God about ourselves, it follows that we can be more honest with one another, which in turn builds the kind of unity and fellowship that the early Christians experienced.

When they discovered that Jesus would always be present to them, the early believers were transformed. They shared their stories about how Jesus had changed them for the better, as Christians around the world still do, and bless each other by doing so. They became one body, united in heart and mind, sharing their possessions so that no one need do without. And they cultivated a self-awareness, an honesty and humility about themselves, because they were confident in the grace and forgiveness of God.

This is the faith into which little Zac will be baptised today. His baptism is also an initiation into the church, which continues to aspire to the example of Christ and his early followers.

We pray that he, too, will come to know union with God and the presence of Jesus in his life, through prayer, scripture and communion. As a community of faith, we stand together with him, his parents and godparents in affirming that we will do all we can to help him encounter Christ for himself.

Zac hasn’t had the easiest start in life, but as he grows stronger and healthier it is our hope that he grows to know for himself the love of God, the gentle leading of Jesus and the companionship of the Holy Spirit as he grows into his best self.

on living the resurrection #1

Easter Day 2018

Isaiah 25.6-9; Acts 10.34-43; John 20.1-18.

Alleluia, Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Now what?

No, really. Now what?

We proclaim these words with ease, but what do they mean for us? He is risen indeed. But what now?

After all, Easter is not the commemoration of a long dead saint, but a celebration of our relationship with a living God through the risen Christ; who in his life, death and resurrection completed the work of bridging the gap between God the Father and humanity. Through Jesus, God has become accessible to us without our failings and shortcomings getting in the way. This is why on Easter Day we shout ‘Alleluia.’

The spiritual union with God that Jesus has made possible is, for us, utterly transformational, not just to our personal lives but in firing us up to be agents of change who can transform the world around us. This is what it means to be ‘Church’: we are the bearers of Christ to the world around us, and when we channel our own personal relationship with Jesus into our collective activities as a congregation, we become turbo-charged with the explosive energy with which Christ burst from the tomb.

So the first answer to the ‘Now what?’ question is that we rejoice — re-joice: to feel joy again — at the new life Christ has given us, and to recover that sense of personal and collective transformation that is offered to us by faith.

In the gospel accounts of the death of Jesus, it is the women who move towards the cross, and confront the consequences of Jesus’ death for themselves, while the men retreat. It is the women who first discover the good news of the risen Christ, as they visit the tomb to tend the body of their Lord.

Where, I wonder, do you place yourselves in this narrative? With the cautious male disciples, backing away when things get a bit tricky, needing to debate and discuss what is going on, weighing up this and that before committing to a course of action? Or with the women who stand by Jesus, even when it appears that all is lost. It is those who remain loyal to Christ who first discover the joy of the new life he brings.

When the women go to the grave of Jesus to tend his body it is an act of collective defiance. Robin Meyers writes:

…women went to the gravesite to perform funeral rituals… This would not be unusual or unique [at the time] but they did this for Jesus in defiance of Roman prohibitions against just such rituals, especially for the victims of crucifixion.

Why was this dangerous? Why was it forbidden? Because to give a proper burial to the victims of execution, and then to have public ceremonies of grieving, was to spoil Rome’s intended effect. The empire’s message went far beyond “King of the Jews.” [Crucifixion] was also Rome’s way of making a person and everything he stood for, “disappear.” The real message was: “Behold a nobody who has come to nothing and now is nowhere… You people need to go home now. It’s all over.”

Yes, of course it was.

Except it wasn’t.

It was the women who resisted first, defying Rome through their graveside vigils. It was the women who brought food, broke bread, and raised the spirit of the Beloved — perhaps even giving us a model for the Eucharist… The church was born as an act of collective defiance, and it prospered as a community of resistance. Easter is not just the sound of a solitary bird singing after a thunderstorm… It is the Stone of Hope, covered with nail prints, and rolled away with tears. This is the Easter message: Rome said no. God said yes.

So the second answer to the ‘Now what?’ question is that we as a church must strive to recover this dynamic, radical and subversive faith that stems from the resurrection of Jesus. God did not come among us in human form simply to propagate some anaemic middle-class culture of niceness. Jesus came and immersed himself in the worst problems of the world: suffering, mental illness, disability, poverty, hunger, prostitution and, finally, death.

The risen Christ challenges us to look at our world and tend the places of desolation that need to experience some kind of resurrection for themselves. Where can we help to restore life to situations that appear to be dying? Where in our world, our community, workplace, public life, business or political world is in need of God’s touch to renew and restore it?

Where are the situations of hate, injustice, or intolerance in which powerful people use their position to manipulate or coerce others? The places of abuse against children, women, young men? Where are the hard, cracked places that yearn for an outpouring of God’s love to bring new life out of the dry soil of despair?

They are everywhere.

Read the newspapers, watch the news, look at what is happening in your neighbourhood. The challenge is that there seem to be so many problems, so much depressing news, its hard for us to know where to begin.

And its easy to feel detached from being able to understand or take meaningful action on the problems of our community or the wider world, especially when so much care and compassion has been outsourced to professionals, leaving us bewildered about what the right thing to do is, or how to engage appropriately with such situations.

But do not believe for a moment that you are powerless.

We have a voice, we can make a contribution. However small our individual actions, they gather and accumulate with the small actions of others to gain momentum and create a force for change. This is one of the ways that congregations can use their collective power, and when added to that of other churches and agencies, can make a profound impact.

I want to mention just one situation where it is easy for us to feel helpless but where, in fact, there is much we can do.

Syria.

There has been civil war in Syria now for seven years. Hospitals are bombed, neighbourhoods destroyed, children massacred. 400,000 people have died. 4 out of every 5 Syrians now live below the poverty line.

11 million people have fled their homes, 5 million of whom have gone abroad to find safety. 1 million of those have requested asylum in Europe.

And we look on, appalled. What is happening in Syria is nothing short of a holocaust that is annihilating innocent people who are shouting for the world to listen and take action — people who are yearning for a resurrection amidst the death that unfolds around them daily.

God hears their calls and knows their suffering. What is God doing to help Syria? Many Syrians are Christians — why does God not intervene and bring about peace?

What if it is the people of God, the ones who already know about the power of a resurrection that brings new life to barren places, upon whom God is waiting to act?

St Teresa of Avila famously wrote:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people.

What can we do for Syria? Pray. Agitate for political action. Sign the petitions. Join the protests. Become informed by choosing your news sources carefully. Talk about it with family and friends. Donate money. Raise money.

One of the charities we support at St Anne’s is Christian Aid, which is actively involved in supporting Syrian refugees. Through their partnership with organisations in Lebanon they are ensuring that child refugees from Syria can not only continue their education but can access psychological support to come to terms with their traumatic experiences. They have been supporting refugee women from Syria, some of whom have been terribly exploited. In northern Iraq, Christian Aid is supporting Syrian refugees with vocational training so that they can find ways to make a living. And in Syria itself, Christian Aid is supporting partners providing hot meals to people who have been displaced from their homes following bombing.

That’s why we are participating in the Circle the City event next month, to help raise £500 to support Christian Aid in all its work, not just in Syria but in 36 other poverty hotspots around the globe. (There will be further information about how you can sponsor us online on St Anne’s Facebook page shortly).

The question, ‘Now what?’ is one we must keep at the forefront of our minds. Our new life in Christ is not a gift that we are given to keep for ourselves. It is for sharing. Inspired by the example of Jesus, we are called to reach out and bring healing, restoration and peace to the desolate places that need an outpouring of God’s love.

Christ is risen indeed. Now what?