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Sermon for Easter 2 Year C - Mr John Stubbs
One of the many anecdotes which clutter up my mind comes from that
repository of anecdotes, the Readers Digest from which over the years I
have gleaned quite a few to add to my store. It concerns a university
class – probably in physics.
“Can anybody tell me what electricity is?” asks the professor. A series
of blank looks and then a hand is raised tentatively, before it drops
back down.
“Well what is it, then?” asks the professor.
“I’m sorry sir” came the answer. “I’ve forgotten”.
“Oh dear” said the professor, “the only man in the world who knows what
electricity is, and he’s forgotten!”
I am not a physicist, but I think I understand what is being said. I
won’t ask any of you what electricity is, but perhaps you will allow me
as a mere layman to muse on the subject, and some of the questions it
raises in my mind. And if I’m wrong, tell me quietly later. As far as I
know one cannot see electricity. That may not be strictly true insofar
as one can see lightning, or sparks. But in the ordinary way of things
one cannot see electricity. You cannot look at a length of wire and tell
whether there is any electricity in it, not even if you can see the wire
is connected in some way to a source of power. And that is true even if
the wire is not covered in any way, is simply bare. You may discover to
your cost that it is there if you pick it up, and it is what we call
“live”.
We can work out in which direction it may be travelling along a wire,
and we characterise its movement as “flow”. We have found ways to create
it and to measure it and we have found out how to use it in many many
ways. We can see it at work without actually seeing it or without really
being any the wiser as to what it is.
By now you may well be wondering what these ramblings are in aid of. Or
perhaps you may have begun to sense that it has perhaps some parallels
as well as differences with that event which we celebrated last week and
which we continue to celebrate today, the resurrection.
It was given to only a very few people to see the risen Jesus. And Jesus
himself was only too aware of that fact. Remember those words in the
lesson, addressed to Thomas but also in the long term to all of us.
“Because you have seen me you have found faith. Happy are they who never
saw me and yet have found faith”. Of course it was important that some
people did see the risen Jesus. I guess that resurrection faith has to
be grounded in that sight of their Lord which the disciples and others
saw in the period after Easter. Without it we probably would not have a
gospel of hope and might not be here today in this place of worship. But
unless Jesus were to become a figure who lived for centuries it was
inevitable that he would no longer be there where people could see him.
What if he had lived for ever in human form, if that had happened it
would have been a total denial of the nature of world which God had
created, and made a complete mockery of the statement that Jesus was a
human being like us.
We have one additional witness who claims to have seen the risen Lord
after not only his resurrection but also his ascension, and that is St.
Paul – but we have no account of what he saw, only what he heard.
So how do we know that the resurrection happened – an event which is
highly unlikely in the minds of many of our contemporaries. Bishop Tom
Wright of Durham writing on Easter Saturday in the Guardian said
“The Easter stories tumble out in bits and pieces, with breathless
chasings to and fro and garbled reports – and then stories like nothing
else before or since. As the great New Testament scholar EP Sanders put
it, the writers were trying to describe an experience that does not fit
a known category. They knew all about ghosts and visions, and they knew
it wasn’t anything like that. Equally they knew the risen Jesus wasn’t
just a resuscitated corpse, still less someone who had almost died but
managed to stagger on after all. They had the puzzled air of people
saying ‘I know this sounds wacky but this is truly how it was’. They
were stumblingly describing the birth of a new creation, starting with
Jesus but intended for the whole world.”
We cannot get into each other’s heads. We cannot know what each of us
sees in with our mind’s eye. We can only accept what we say to each
other and to recognise that, just as if someone says that electricity is
in that wire, so when we are told that someone is aware of the risen
Jesus or encounters him, or hears him speaking then something real is
happening.
There is a sense, however, that we can see Jesus – remember the words of
Jesus in the parable of the sheep and goats. What we do to the poor and
needy, the prisoner and those in need we do it to Him. In that sense we
see Jesus all around us, and we can see something of him in everybody.
And just as we can recognise the existence of electricity by seeing what
it does, we can also see something of the reality of the resurrection in
the events which followed as recorded in the epistles, and in the
history of the followers of Christ since that time, a history of which
we in our turn are a part. Eleven frightened men and their associates
who go out and beard the multitudes. One who backed down at the moment
of crisis in the High Priests house, Simon Peter, then taking on the
establishment boldly and fearlessly. The list of those who followed
suite is endless.
And for me another example of the power of the resurrection is to be
found in those letters to the seven churches in the Book of the
Revelation. They are a peculiarly milk and water sort of group. But they
and their like overturned the mighty Roman empire.
And just as radio waves, which I take to be another form of electrical
activity, permeate our universe, so to does the spirit of the
resurrected Jesus. He is everywhere, and yet is there just for each of
us. Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford writing in the Observer
about Rowan Williams on Easter Day has this to say :-
“True religion always leads one to question oneself rather than make
claims over others. Jesus is not a possession or a badge of superiority,
but the one before whom you stand, in gentle self questioning.
The Christian faith does not offer easy consolation: in some integral
way, the sublime hope it gives is linked to our human anguish.”
Jesus death and resurrection took place in the context of Passover – he
was after all a Jew!
And Passover is a celebration about freedom, a powerful celebration of
an escape from slavery. It was powerful throughout the history of the
Jewish people for much of their time the nation was in bondage. It was
very powerful in Jesus time because the nation was in bondage to Rome.
Not for nothing therefore did the events of Easter come at Passover,
because above all the new creation ushered in by the resurrection was
the offer of freedom, what St Paul called “the glorious liberty of the
children of God”. But freedom is scary. We can easily join in the
celebrations of Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade. That
was 200 years ago. But what about the modern slave trade in all its
forms – what about that?
We can easily be radical about actions 200 years ago. But where does the
church stand on issues of human freedom today? Why is it that so often
Christians are known for what they will not do rather than what they
will do? Why is it we squabble over issues of human relationships ? Why
is it that for many Christians, and for much of the church freedom is
sin ? Where do we stand on the many issues of human relationships which
face us in our world. The risen Jesus challenges us to embrace the
freedom he offers, and to work to set aside the obsession the churches
have had and still have with control. As we stand before Jesus in gentle
questioning, let us look fairly and squarely at our fears, our
prejudices, our wish to make others slaves to our own moral stances,
everything which constrains our and their freedom, and trusting in the
power of that risen Lord reach out for the freedom for which Easter and
the resurrection was the first birthday. Amen