Easter Day

March 23, 2008

Acts 10:34-43;  I Corinthians 5:6-8;  Matthew 28:1-10

 

 

When I was a child, my grandmother possessed an old Bible bound in leather that was illustrated with the engravings of Gustav Doré.  His depiction of the parting of the Red Sea sticks in my mind even to this day.  He shows the Egyptians armed to the teeth, riding on chariots with their hair flying in the wind.  The hapless Hebrews are lumbering along before them, carrying their children in their arms and dragging cars overflowing with possessions.  Moses stands apart, his staff raised in his hand, and in a classic Doré moment, the sun’s rays pierce the clouds and the waters begin to part.

 

We know from the last months in Darfur and many other places throughout the world that the stories of people fleeing from pursuing armies seldom have such happy endings.  God’s miraculous intervention in the flight of the Hebrew refugees from the pursuing Egyptians can strike us as a fable –a piece of wishful thinking tin the face of the despair and the sadness of the world.  Perhaps we feel the same way about the resurrection of Christ.  It can strike us as a fool’s hope; a story concocted to comfort us in the face of the death of someone we have loved.  But the Easter story makes no claims that Christ is only present as a risen savior.  This Easter he is also present in the tents of the people of Darfur, he is to be found amongst the families of those who have died in the Congo, in Iraq and Afghanistan and countless other places on our sorry planet.  The resurrection is not an escapist’s dream.  On the contrary.  It tells us of what love can do when it accepts the reality and the necessity of suffering or death.

 

What difference does Easter make?  In one sense, none at all.  It will not stop the bombs; it won’t put an end to terrorism, genocide or famine.  It will not bring back to earth the dead we have loved, it won’t restore our loved ones to perfect health or bring back an unfaithful lover.  But in another sense, Easter makes all the difference in the world.  WE may not be able to banish such suffering or pain in the here and now, though we can do our own part to fight against it.  Christ’s resurrection shows us that despair is not an option.  It shows us how to hold all the word’s suffering and evil in the palms of our hands, and yet to emerge triumphant.  As St. Thomas à Becket puts it in T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral: 

 

“Peace, and be at peace with your thoughts and visions.  These things had to come to you, and you accept them.  This is your share of the eternal burden, the perpetual glory.  This is one moment.  But know that another shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy, when the figure of God’s purpose is made complete.”

 

For the time being, we are caught between the dust that we are, and the glory that is yet to come.  But we have been shown already what the end of all things will look like.  In a moment of piercing an d painful joy we have been shown that nothing and no one will be lost, and that we have every right to our hope that one day all things will be brought to completion in Christ’s love.  Whether this day is a happy or a sad one for you, know that Christ has been there before you, and that he holds you gently in the palm of his hand. 

 

A happy and blessed Easter to you all.

 

The Revd. Nigel Massey