Opening sentences
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Lighting the Christ Candle
On Good Friday we extinguished this flame remembering with grief and sadness the crucifixion and death of Jesus the Christ, our Lord.
This morning we light the flame with joy, with laughter and delight for Love is stronger than death.
Love has overcome the grave, light shines in darkness
Nothing can separate us from the love of God – Alleluia!
Let Music Play
Listen or join in with this Easter hymn of celebration, or if your tastes are in a less traditional direction, you may enjoy this.
Opening prayer
Come, Lord God, change us and we shall be changed. Come, increase our awareness of your presence. Come, strengthen our love for you. Come, fill us to be wholehearted.
Come, awaken us to be alert and observant of your coming to us –in the disguises of the every day; in life – in every thing that is.
Come, Lord God, change us and we shall be changed; Through the One who lives and reigns with you and the holy spirit, One God, now and forever.
Amen
The gospel reading
You can find the text here, or you can listen to the audio clip below.
Reflections on the text
you can listen to the audio clip or read the full transcript below.
We cannot escape the fact that this is probably the strangest celebration of Easter morning we are likely to see in our lifetime. No doubt this is being remarked upon in most sermons being preached today around the world. Because here is a rare opportunity for us to reflect on what it means to be embodied beings within a bubble; an opportunity to notice new insights about how we might live as the Body of Christ now, separated as we are, and later, when we are permitted to gather again.
What will we have learned from this?
And in these extraordinary circumstances, what does the joyful, hopeful and, quite frankly fantastic, story of Easter morning have to say to us?
Several things struck me as I read and reflected this week. The first thing I noticed in Matthew’s account, is the women: Mary and Mary, devoted disciples and among the very few named women of the gospel. They come to the tomb early in the morning just to be there. They aren’t wondering how to move the stone, they haven’t come with spices to anoint Jesus’ body. They have come because they can’t stay away. They have come because they, perhaps more than any of the others, grasped the essence of Jesus the Christ – Emmanuel – God with us. They have come so they can be with and be near the body of the one they loved – the one they love still.
I guess I’m noticing this more as we move into week three of our lockdown and I’m missing the nearness of the people I care for and who I want to be with but can’t. And I’m noticing again how important – how essential – it is for us to recognise and embrace our embodiment. We know others and are known ourselves through and with our physical being. We experience our inner life and our outer life through and with our physical being. We are perhaps learning the hard way right now that we – introvert and extrovert alike – thrive best with a certain amount of othering. We communicate best when we are present with each other. We learn and grow, express ourselves and offer the gifts of our uniqueness most honestly and we care for each other best when we show up fully – mind, body and soul.
So I imagine Mary and Mary together in deep mourning on that morning; brim-full of grief and still stunned by loss walking to the tomb in something of a haze, a bit numb even, not really seeing much of what was around on their path, and occasionally reluctantly reliving the horror of Friday. I wonder if they any plan beyond ‘let’s go to the tomb’? I wonder if they remembered any of the things Jesus had said about being raised on the third day? I wonder if they had, hidden in their hearts, a hope, desperate, insane! but persistent…what if….what if…what if this makes sense in a way we don’t understand yet? What if there is more and this story isn’t finished? What if we just go and see…just be with him, be near him.
The next thing I noticed in Matthew’s version of this story is that in keeping with the crucifixion narrative, his Easter morning story includes a seismic event at the crucial moment. On Friday, there is an earthquake when Jesus dies. On Sunday, it occurs as the tomb is being broken open by the arrival of the dazzling mighty angel.Matthew wants to leave us in no doubt that some absolutely and quite literally earth shattering reality is unfolding right now, right before our eyes, right where we are. Solid things are breaking open, fixed things becoming fluid and naturally it’s terrifying when this kind of thing happens to you or near you.
The guards are so terrified of the angel, the earthquake, the sealed tomb – that they are meant to be watching over – breaking open that they fall over in a swoon. In the face of the power of the God of Life, they became like dead men. How ironic.
But it makes me wonder again:do we in the church find ourselves swooning over things that terrify us.
Things that appear to break open what has been solid…like the falling numbers in our congregations, the threat of declining beyond our means to sustain our buildings…Like losing our place of honour and influence in society as we see the trappings of our faith in our schools and government cast aside.
What if those are our earthquake? What if those are the signs of God at work, not signs of failure and abandonment? I know for some of you, these are questions that have been asked before, I know these are possibilities you have considered before. So now, in our current context, shut out from our buildings, we perhaps need to consider not so much ‘what if’, but more ‘what now?’
We cannot go to church – so what now? We cannot go through the motions of our Sunday rhythm because, actually, everything feels off – remote meetings are not energising in the way that face to face meetings are because: embodiment. The way we do church has had to change, and so we have an opportunity to focus instead on how we ARE church. We have an opportunity to re-consider and to re-view the habits and activities that make up our understanding of what it mean to be the Body of Christ and to embody this in our every day living. What if all this decline, all this loss, all this disruption of our expectations and plans is the earthquake that alerts us to an earthshattering reality that is already unfolding?
In Matthew’s telling of this story, Christ is already risen and gone ahead – the tomb is opened to let witnesses in, not to let Christ out…so what if being shut out of our churches helps us to become aware of God already gone ahead…already blessing, reconciling and healing the world? God, not just with us, but with everyone. With those who do not gather; with those outside the church; with those who do not believe as we do? What if we recognised God’s withness outside the church? What if being shut out of our building pushes us to look for God in new ways? To share and nurture our faith in new ways? When we are allowed to return to our buildings, I wonder, will we expect to go back to business as usual? I wonder if we will see the world and our gatherings in a different light?
And the third thing I noticed in listening to the story this week was what the angel says to the women. First of all, don’t be afraid – this is a given. Every angel has to say this at least once, because being in a face to face encounter with divine beings is definitely out of the ordinary and evokes a fearful response which, both here and in the angelic announcements around Jesus’ birth, can move easily into joy and evangelism in the purest sense of that word. There is good news. There is good news to share and the joy of the encounter propels those who experience it to tell others about it.
What if we understood being a follower of Jesus as learning the art of withness as the way to be an evangelist? If we are to be effective and authentic witnesses to love, to hope, joy, peace and kindness , we’ll need to cultivate daily habits and practices of faith that guide us as we continue looking for, following and learning to be present with Christ.
The angel also gives a clear and concise summary of the same good news. It goes like this: you are looking for Jesus who was crucified…he is not here, he was raised just as he said…come and see…go and tell…. And then keep going because you will see him. I wonder if – and where – you have been looking for the Christ who was crucified? I wonder if you are still active in listening and following – so many of us heard a message about ‘finding’ Jesus in the past, it perhaps wasn’t clear there is still more to discover.
I wonder if you have a story to go and tell? A story of encountering the Divine and of joy… a story of moving from death to life, from despair to hope….a story of moving from fear to freedom? And I wonder if that story feels current? Fresh? Or is it a story from way back?
What if you, like Mary and Mary, recognised the value and importance of being with, and being near….what would that look like in your life?
What if you returned to the last place you were with Jesus….what if you revisited your last encounter with joy….what if you went to be with your last experience of death and waited there to be with grief and to look for signs of hope?
In the midst of our physical distancing and unable to gather, I offer you these questions and invitations to reflect and review not with judgement or criticism but with hopeful curiosity and compassionate acceptance. When we can be with whatever is happening in us, for us and around us, with gentleness and tranquillity, we are opening a window for hope, for life, for God’s great yes to us all.
Questions for reflection
- What has it meant to you to be part of the Body of Christ and has anything about that changed from this experience of lockdown?
- What have you learned about yourself and your daily practices or habits of faith so far in lockdown?
- What new ways have you found to nurture your faith and to engage in worship, prayer, service or learning?
- How do you imagine we might incorporate our learning and be church differently when we are allowed to gather again?
Community prayers
We come in prayer this morning, this morning of hope and joy, this morning as we are aware again of your great love, your great power for life and for healing, your great yes to us and to all creation.
And so we remember before you, O God, those who live in the dark of despair…those whose lives seem without hope of any kind… there are many in our world today, so we offer our prayer which is born of our love, our peace and joy.
You invite us to be your partners in your redeeming activity so we pray that your kingdom may indeed come on earth as it is in heaven – may your love and light shine through us and into the darkness.
Risen Christ, already ahead of us on the way, may we have ears to hear your call on our lives and eyes to see where you are present and at work around us…
We give you thanks for the great cloud of witnesses that surround us and have gone before us. On this day we are more conscious of the thin veil between this earthly, embodied life and eternal life….there is so much we do not understand mystery we cannot grasp with our mind.
So then, teach us your ways; may we recognise the opportunities to open and to trust; may we listen as you speak to our hearts your word of shalom, of peace, healing and wholeness…for us and for all this world.
Amen.
Blessing
Now is the time to free your heart, to free the joy inside, and to awaken to the wonder of your life.
May the mystery of God enfold you along the road of life; the wonder of the love of Jesus the Christ embrace you; and the Spirit bless and keep you, always.
Amen
