Easter Sunday 2010

Easter moves around a lot from year to year. Unlike Christmas, which always falls on December twenty-fifth, no matter the day of the week, Easter can fall on any Sunday between March 22nd and April 25th. There is, in fact, an entire section of the Book of Common Prayer devoted to finding the date of Easter Sunday in any given year. Read it some evening if you are having a difficult time falling asleep.

Before you drift off, you will learn about golden numbers and Sunday letters, astronomical and ecclesiastical equinoxes, and the phases of the moon – all of which are critical in determining when exactly it is that we celebrate the feast of the Lord’s Resurrection. In fact, the dating of Easter was one of the earliest controversies to face the early English Church long before the time of Henry VIII. Sadly, it has not been the last. But that is another story.

Time has always been important to Christians for the simple reason that our redemption takes place in time. Unlike the gods and heroes of mythology, Christ lived among us in time and history. He was born. He grew up. He preached the kingdom, and he died. It is recorded there in scripture for all to read. It is part of salvation history.

And as the Gospel of Luke tells us, on a certain first day of the week – specifically at early dawn – Christ’s empty tomb was discovered, and the proclamation of his Resurrection began as the women made their way back to the eleven and told them what they had seen and heard. That proclamation continues to this day.

It is no wonder then that over centuries the Church has been so precise and meticulous about the timing of such an important feast. But as arcane as the computation is for establishing Easter Day, it is only part of the story. For not only is Easter a special time, it is quite literally special time. It is time out of time, time like no other.

The Resurrection is something completely unique and unprecedented. Here is how New Testament scholar Holt Graham explains the Easter event:
“We do not understand it and indeed cannot. … It never happened before, and it has never happened again. What we have learned from ordinary existence is no help when we come up against the absolutely unique happening. It is in the full and literal sense a mystery. It occurred beyond the boundary line of our existence.”

The Resurrection in other words, while a part of our salvation history, nevertheless occurs beyond our experience and senses. Other scholars explain the Resurrection as the “bursting forth” into time – into history – of eternity itself. It is as if all eternity were concentrated into this moment when Christ overcomes death and the grave, and the infinite sweeps away the temporal. Yet if the Resurrection is unique in our experience, it is essential to our existence as Christians.

No one saw the Resurrection. No one knows just when it happened or how. There was no car chase. No film on the News at 10. No leads. No body. No CSI. No Gill Grissom! The tomb is open and empty, abandoned except by a couple of ethereal, angelic figures and a few devoted, if somewhat disconsolate, women. For something at the very heart of our faith, this remains pretty slim pickings. Where was BBC News? Where were the press?

But of course we don’t get any of it. There is quite literally nothing to this story. An empty tomb. Our great Christian symbol of life and hope is found in something missing, something not there, a displacement. “The Case of the Missing Body,” as mystery writer Agatha Christie might have called it. It is indeed a mystery, but unlike anything Agatha Christie ever imagined.

For this empty tomb is full of meaning. From this empty tomb, hewn in rock, we as Christians draw forth all of our faith and hope for this world and for the kingdom to come. At this empty tomb we find the Christ of eternity alive in the here and now. From this chasm, a symbol of death and defeat, comes forth victory and life itself. Christ’s tomb is the earthen fissure through which God’s love pours out upon our parched world of sin and death.

We do not know how this is so. But then there are a lot of things we do not know. How life began in some ocean lagoon billions of years ago, for instance. Or even how our parents fell in love. Just as our lives today are in some real sense mysteries we shall never fathom, so is the Resurrection for us a sharing in the mystery of God’s own life. Or perhaps more to the point, it is a sharing by God in our lives.
Time is on our side. Our life and our world mean something. They are not random events, and we are not lost among the dust and debris of history, footnotes in a book of no meaning or consequence. In this single event, the Resurrection, everything is changed for all time. We live now in Christ forever. In Baptism, we have been raised with him, and death no longer has a grip on us. We seek now, as Paul says, “the things that are above, where Christ is.”

As Christians, we do not see and then believe. We believe so that we may see. And what we see in the Resurrection is our lives transformed. “Let the whole world see and know,” we pray in one of the final liturgies of Holy Week, “that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new.” Christ’s Resurrection is finally the most real thing there is… or ever was… or ever will be!

The Lord is risen indeed.

Amen. Alleluia.

Luke 2 v 22-40 Expect the Unexpected

Snow, something we are not really used to dealing with. When it fell recently in large quantities, we were somewhat unprepared. For a few days it seemed as if everything had ground to a halt. The roads were treacherous, people couldn’t get to work, services were grounded, and we ran out of salt-grit. Some children, were treated to that rare and wonderful thing: a snow day or two.

For so many, an unexpected heavy fall of snow – especially on a weekday – is inconvenient, dangerous and frustrating. But perhaps we can all remember (and maybe just a few of us feel this still) the joy of a few hours’ liberation from the normal course of events: that feeling that things don’t always run their normal course, that sometimes everything goes topsy-turvy and we can build snowmen, make snow angels and risk our necks on a sledge. Alas, it never lasts long, but these interruptions to the everyday course of events can become treasured memories that stay with us for the rest of our lives

We read today of a really intriguing part of the Gospel story. Intriguing, not because it is packed with angel choirs and extraordinary events as the last part of the story was, and not because it is smattered with miracles and drama like the next bit will be, but because it speaks of a time of getting back into the swing of everyday life. Apart from one other significant event when Jesus is twelve, it is the last thing we hear of Jesus as a child – in fact the last thing we hear of him for about thirty years. And in the meantime, things get back to normal. Well almost!!!!

Mary and Joseph circumcise their son after eight days, and they set off to the Temple at Jerusalem to perform the ritual that every good Jew would perform – they offer a sacrifice to the Lord for their firstborn boy. The pattern of life and worship begins to resume. But then they are approached by Simeon – someone whom we know nothing about apart from the fact he lived in Jerusalem and believed God had told him he would not die before seeing the Messiah. It’s easy to picture this devoted man being – well, slightly odd. He takes the child – a little nerve-racking for a parent – and praises God for having let him see God’s salvation, although not without offering some disturbing words too.

And as this is happening, Anna the prophet comes upon them and begins to tell all those around that that baby was the one they had been waiting for: the redemption of Israel. We’re very polite about Anna, and, of course, hindsight proved her right, but this is a woman who has lived in the Temple for what could have been about sixty years, doing nothing but fasting and praying. She’s eccentric, to put it mildly. It’s easy to imagine that Mary and Joseph might have been a little embarrassed by this interruption to their quiet ceremony. But it is in this interruption by two out-of-the-ordinary people that God speaks, and this human baby is once more named as the saviour of the world. Food for thought as Mary and Joseph return home to Nazareth and begin the business of raising their child.

Application

For most of us, it is not the drama of the angels and shepherds that best reflects our experience of Christian life, but the more mundane interruption of the presentation of Jesus at the Temple as Mary and Joseph get on with the rituals of life and worship. The Spirit of God often moves in the interruptions and disturbances that take place as we try to get on with things. The thing is, do we see it? Just like that snow, interruptions can be inconvenient, dangerous and frustrating. We do our best to avoid them most of the time. But they can be liberating, joyful and the key to opening up new ways of being God’s people. Mary and Joseph were probably attuned by their recent experiences to observe and listen to God’s intervention in their lives. But what would we have done? Hugged the child to ourselves and scuttled on our way? Laughed it off with that embarrassing laugh we do. Who knows? Let’s pray that we may be open to the interruptions that God sends and to the changes that they might bring to our way of looking at things.

SUMMARY

1. Interruptions to the flow of everyday life can be both frustrating and liberating; a heavy snowfall can be inconvenient and dangerous, but it also can result in that rare treat – a day off school.

2. There is a “getting back to normal” feel to Mary and Joseph’s actions as they take Jesus to the Temple to perform the rituals after childbirth. But that ritual is interrupted by Simeon and Anna as they prophesy about the child.

3. Our experience of Christian life is often very much like Mary and Joseph’s: it is in the interruptions to everyday life that God speaks. We need to be able to take the time to hear.

Julie Bowen