All Saints’, Glencarse Easter Day 16 April, 2006

It will probably come as no great surprise to you to be told that I’ve preached on Easter Day every year for the last 10 years with, I think, only one exception!

So, when I sat down, last Thursday, to write this year’s Easter Sermon, the first thing I did was to browse through some old Easter sermons – partly, I suppose, to put off the evil moment when I’d have to start writing a new one. . . but mostly, to see if there was one that could cope with a second, or even, dare I say, third airing! Or, at least, for some bits to salvage, to form perhaps part of a new sermon. And, sad to say, it wasn’t long before I found myself stifling a yawn!

Now, I guess it’s quite likely that one or two of you here today occasionally find listening to the sermon a bit boring. That’s to be expected, and probably quite normal – but it’s altogether more worrying when the preacher himself gets bored with his own sermons!

It wasn’t that there was anything particularly wrong with them – in fact they seemed fairly typical of the genre. Or, at least, typical of sermons produced by liberal Anglican Priests – which, translated, means `comfortable, not particularly challenging with a tendency towards the platitudinous!’ Whereas, of course, what I really wanted was radical, thought-provoking and disturbing!

And then, when taking a short break from the stress of all that, I read an article in Thursday’s paper about Anglican clergy which rather reinforced the way I’d been thinking!

In the article, the writer laments the domestication of the Anglican Vicar over the last couple of centuries. He remarks that Anglicanism has become a religion of, `hospital visiting and flower-arranging, with a side-offering of heritage conservation, rather than the risk-all faith of a man who asked his adherents to take up their cross and follow him.’

And, as for the poor hapless vicar – he is the result of a master-stroke of Anglican creativity, the non-religious priest – promising to treat God as a private matter and to exercise discretion in all things pertaining to faith.

Needless to say, this is all intended to be rather tongue-in-cheek – and the writer is, himself, a priest in the Church of England.

Yet, lighthearted though that article was, it makes a serious point to – and that is that our form of Christianity, and particularly our church-life and our worship. . . has tended to become rather comfortable and easy. . . . and lacks that radical challenge which was so strongly present in Jesus’ own ministry.

So. . . back to Easter and the Resurrection And, I guess, part of the problem here is that the story’s all too familiar . . . we know it too well and so there’s no element of surprise. . . no sense of amazement or wonder at what’s happened, at what we’re celebrating. . . because, of course, we’ve known it all along!

Yes, of course, we have our big service, with music and flowers. . . .we ring the church bell and we sing `alleluia’. . . but, nevertheless, we’ve done it all before—nothing unexpected happens!

And yet, what we celebrate here in our routine, Anglican, liturgical way surely is unexpected. . . surely is impossible to believe—and even more difficult to understand.

I’m reminded of an apocryphal story beloved of preachers the world over. The story’s about a boy called Johnny (isn’t it funny how they’re always called Johnny in these stories) – anyway, Johnny had been to Sunday School for the first time, and, when he got home, his parents asked him what he’d learned about.

`Well’ said Johnny,. . . .we had this really cool story. Moses was leading the Israelites to the Red Sea, when all of a sudden they saw the Egyptian army coming after them.

They were trapped. But they didn’t panic. Moses got the Corp of Engineers to build a pontoon bridge across the water. His Air Force pilots kept the Egyptian army pinned down while the Israelites crossed the bridge. He had a demolition team plant plastic explosives all along the bridge. . .

. . . and when Israelites crossed they just waited for the Egyptians to come after them. When the Egyptian army was on the bridge they pushed the plunger and blew their whole army to bits!’

When his parents heard this, they were somewhat surprised,. . .

. . . and asked Johnny if that was really the way his teachers had told the story. `Well, not really’, said Johnny, `But if I told it the way they did, you’d never believe it!’

And surely we can say the same about the resurrection. What we’re talking about here is someone coming back from the dead . . .

. . . not as a ghost, or some fleeting apparition. . . . . . but as something altogether more substantial than that! And that, surely, is something unheard of!

Many people, of course, have tried to do what Johnny did.

For centuries, people, especially theologians, have tried to retell the story of Jesus’ resurrection in a way which is more believable. Some suggested that it was all a con. . .

. . . that the disciples were on to a good thing, so when Jesus died, they hid his body and pretended that he’d risen so that they could maintain they’re own status.

Others suggested that Jesus never really died at all, but just swooned or fainted on the cross and later recoveredenough to crawl out of the tomb and escape. Still others suggest that the disciples suffered from mass hallucinations . . .

. . . and so on and so on.

I even entered the fray myself a few years ago. . . .

. . when I started my doctoral thesis on the subject of the Resurrection – what happened, and what it means for us.

Little did I know what I was letting myself in for—the subject is, to say the least, tremendously complicated. . .

. . . with a huge amount of different and often conflicting ideas, theories and speculation to make sense of. No wonder I’ve not finished it yet!

But that question. . .

. . . `what does the resurrection mean to us, today?’ is an extremely important one.

Because, if it’s true that Jesus did, in some way, appear to his disciples after his crucifixion—either in the flesh or in a vision

. . . and if he appeared not as a ghost or as some kind of hallucination, but in his resurrection body. . .

. . . then that surely brings into question everything that we think we know! And the question of what it might mean is extremely difficult to answer.

And, lest you think it was any easier for Jesus’ contemporaries to make sense of it, it wasn’t. They knew as well as we do that once you’re dead, you’re dead and there’s no coming back.

Jesus’ rising from the dead was as much a shock to them as it should be for us.

Only on the question of meaning might it have been easier for Jesus’ followers. They already believed that at the end of the age. . .

. . . when God finally established his kingdom on earth. . .

. . . the dead would be resurrected and enjoy a new life in God’s kingdom.

And for the Jews this was a clue to understanding Jesus’ resurrection. If the resurrection of the dead was to happen at the end of the age, then the fact of Jesus’ resurrection must mean that the end of the age had arrived

. . . that the resurrection of all the dead would happen imminently and God’s new kingdom would be inaugurated. And that was, indeed good news!

Nearly 2000 years later, it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way . . .

. . . or, at least, not yet. And, in fact, that whole way of thinking, that world-view, in which it was thought that God would intervene inhistory

. . . raise the dead and usher in a new age of peace and harmony. . .

. . . has long gone.

In the present age of scientific knowledge, rational thinking and skepticism about anything that isn’t open to scientific methodology,

. . . those very tenets by which Jesus’ resurrection was originally interpreted, have disappeared.

Which leaves us with a bit of a problem! How do we make sense of it?

We could, of course just continue to accept the old interpretation, even though it no longer fits with our world-view. . .

. . . or even choose to accept the old world-view in which that interpretation was made. . .

. . . and many Christians do exactly that!

But, for me at least, I can’t help feeling that’s a bit like burying your head in the sand and failing to take reality seriously.

If we want what we have to say about Jesus and his resurrection to be taken seriously—then we have to at least try to offer something that’s credible to people living in our own age.

Perhaps one way of starting to think about this is to recognise that our world-view is very much influenced by the idea of evolution. . .

. . . not just the evolution of species, but the general process of, what we might call, emergence . . .

. . . starting with the Big Bang, through the formation of atoms, galaxies and planets, to the evolution of organic life on earth and even of culture and values.

And, this picture of the universe as the creative ground of a process of emergence or evolution. . .

. . . moving ever towards complexity and integration. . .

. . . is the background against which we might, tentatively begin to make sense of Jesus’ resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus suggests then, perhaps, that the final purpose of the physical universe lies beyond itself. . .

. . . that those emergent processes begun in the present, will find their fulfilment in God, beyond the boundaries of space and time. . .

. . . and that the emergent processes which we ourselves are engaged in. . .

. . . our own personal growth and development. . . . . . won’t, ultimately be thwarted by the danger and uncertainties of life and death on earth, but will finally transcend all that and move towards completion in God.

And so, the resurrection of Jesus isn’t just a corpse coming back to life in a reversal of the laws of physics. Rather, it is the appearance in this life of one who has transcended space-time and found personal fulfilmentand unity with God.

It is, therefore, a foreshadowing, in time, of the purpose of the whole of creation. . .

. . . and a vision beyond history,. . .

. . . of the completion of all things in the Kingdom of God.

And that, I think, is both truly astonishing. . . and. . . a good reason to celebrate!