Last week I reflected on the metaphors we use to explain and explore and understand Atonement – the everything that God does to bring all of creation into communion with God.
There are many metaphors that give us windows into this landscape, and each one offers us a different perspective on the whole – a whole, which is thoroughly beyond our full comprehension, but which we experience with wonder, nonetheless.
And after the grievous journey to the cross and into the empty silence of death, we come to today – a day of fullness, of celebration and shouting with excited delight.
The resurrection is an atonement moment, and again we can hardly find words adequate to speak of this thing that is too big for us to grasp and cannot be contained – not by tomb, not by mind, not by metaphor.
But it can be experienced, this fullness and celebration of life that is endless generosity. We can know this. We can participate in this.
In the epistle reading today, we heard Paul telling the church in Corinth that sin touches everything – all die in Adam, which is his shorthand for humanity in all our capacity to wander, get dirty, be unfaithful, fail, overstep ourselves, rebel and generally stuff things up.
Sin touches everything and everything ends in death.
And in the resurrection, everything is made new. All will be made alive in Christ….did you catch how big that vision is? All will be made alive in Christ. Not just we who believe, behave and belong to the church – the right church, obviously.
All will be made alive, all made new, God has reconciled all of creation to Godself.
God’s generosity is endless, God’s love without limits.
When you think of all things being made alive in Christ, of all things being made new – the book of revelation offers that vision of a new heaven and a new earth – how do you imagine that looking?
For many of us, we have an idea of heaven as perfect – that the garden of Genesis 3 was a garden of perfection which was spoiled and that this work of atonement we are talking about brings the spoiled thing back into perfection.
God’s idea of perfection seems to be quite different, however.
We think perfect means without fault – pure and clean – not cracked and muddied, patched and mended. Not bruised and scarred, nailed and pierced.
The wounds remain in Jesus’ resurrection body because Divine perfection is the ability to include what seems like imperfection.
The ability to draw in, and embrace fully and completely without reserve, that which seems not to fit.
Look at Jesus’ ministry if you doubt this. Look at the male disciples who are a wildly mixed bag of men.
Look at the women who also followed and learned alongside the men.
Look at the stories of who Jesus chose to heal, to talk with and to eat with.
Look at the stories Jesus told that challenge the idea that some people, some races, some genders, some followers of other faiths do not fit.
Nothing is left out of God’s love – no one is left out. There is a place and a way for all to belong – and in belonging and being embraced and accepted as we are – we are changed and transformed by love, into love.
The resurrection shows us that it is overflowing joy that is at the foundation of the world – it is divine joy that is wrapped in flesh and in swaddling bands. It is overflowing joy that seeks and calls, learns and laughs, eats and sleeps, shares, weeps, suffers and dies.
And it is joy that cannot be held or contained, that cannot be manipulated or extinguished.
Love is joyous and love is a verb, a doing word. Love is movement, and perhaps a metaphor would be helpful for us here – this one is mine.
Like the ocean, this joyous love surges into life – a mighty force that can quite literally move mountains.
And this joyous love is also like the slow seeping of water, moving so, so gently through the earth. This joy dissolves the hardened defences we carry within and makes beauty in the hollow emptiness of our longing.
And sometimes this joy is like a clear spring that wells up out of the depths, moving slowly and steadily, almost undetectable except that it doesn’t stop and there are tiny ripples that indicate the freshness that is feeding the flow.
Love flows. The emptiness is filled, the fullness overflows, the cracks shine with light, the darkness is luminous and fear – fear has nowhere left to live.
This joy burst forth from the tomb, this joy makes the guards faint and the women tremble – it is terrifying and tremendous.
So let’s pause for a moment and consider – how do we receive and respond to the joy of this day?
How is joy moving you?
I was moved to consider this question by a telling of the easter story which was written by a friend of mine and she had a friend of hers record it.
All will be made new, alive in Christ. This is resurrection life. This is good news – news worth shouting every now and then.
News worth whispering gently too.
But it’s actually more complicated than that, isn’t it?
Talking about it isn’t particularly easy. How do we share this good news and participate in the mission of God?
I had an email from the presbytery last week reminding me, gently, that it’s time for St Peter’s to revisit and refresh our mission statement.
And I have been thinking about that – how do we form a mission statement, what is our mission, our goal, what are we hoping for here?
I have been thinking about it in light of the resurrection, and this flowing joyous love that moves in so many different ways through us and in us.
And it seems to me that we might talk about good news all we like.
We can tell people there’s a river of love, there’s a deep well of forgiveness and liberation from fear and there’s a gentle washing of wounds and there’s a gradual softening of anger and there’s wave after beautiful wave of creative inspiration and there’s always more…
But for many of us, we have done little more than dipped our toe in those waters.
We’ve heard about it, we believe it, we are committed to it… and if you are like me, then at first, prayer was a delight, or at least it felt meaningful and important. And bible study was stimulating and there was lots to learn and consider, to talk about and maybe argue over.
For a while I stuck at it even when it became dry. When prayer began to feel like I was just talking to the air, and I confess that once I felt familiar with the scriptures, I found it harder and harder to go back and read again – especially on my own.
After all, if I had heard it and understood it already, and I still couldn’t integrate that wisdom into my life, then what good would it do to read it over and over? I only knew how to read to know, not how to dwell so as to be known…
And there are obviously parts I don’t understand and simply reading those words over again does not help me to understand.
Does that sound at all familiar to you?
While that was happening in my daily practices, I kept up regular church attendance. I hardly ever missed a Sunday.
I was very active in lots of different areas of church life, but my own inner life was parched. I came to church hoping for a good dunking in the water of life- which didn’t always happen- and then I gradually dried out again over the week.
And the good news became this: there is a community who know where the water is – if you join us, you’ll get a sense of it and some weeks it is truly flowing among us.
Other weeks, not so much, but you have to keep coming in case this is the week when the Spirit is moving and you don’t want to miss that.
Does that sound at all familiar to you? If it does, I want you to know that you are not alone and that it doesn’t mean you are failing as a Christian or that there is no way to change the state of affairs as they stand.
Because if there is indeed a river of love which is making all things new, which is the life of God flowing in us an in all things
and is an unstoppable force for healing and growing into our fullest potential….
if that’s the good news of the atonement and all that is needed is for us to allow God to love us like God is willing to, wanting to, waiting to…
Then it seems to me that telling people the good news isn’t so much the problem.
Actually receiving it is….
Receiving it over and over and deeper and deeper, and living into it as a daily practice;
as a returning to the inner well, as a tuning in to the trickle of that hidden spring of love and actively dissolving the barriers to its flow… that’s the part that’s hard.
And in fact, that is the journey of life in faith.
It’s probably more than a life-time’s worth of work, but it is never too late to become who you were meant to be.
Shout it or whisper it, it doesn’t matter.
How can we give to others in mission that which we have not allowed ourselves to receive?
I am not calling you to return to daily bible reading that is dry and informational, or to a prayer life that is a shopping list of needs to bring to God’s attention.
I am calling you, inviting you, to a daily practice of opening to love, of resting in love, of allowing love to hold you as you are, warts, wounds and all, and to hear love telling you: you are beautiful. You shine so brightly.
When we live the good news of love, when we receive it and let it soak into the depths of us, we won’t need a mission statement. We will be a mission statement – a living, flowing, growing body of Love.
