In this evening’s first reading we hear Isaiah prophesying ‘Thy dead
men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye
that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall
cast out the dead.’ There is a hope that this life is not all that there
is, that there is something beyond, something greater. It is a basic human
desire to believe that this life is not all that there is. And we believe it at
an innate level, so powerful is our need so to do.
And yet, in Christ’s
rising from the dead we know that death is not the end, that our hope, our
destiny, our final destination is to be with God, to behold the Glory of God
for ever, to be surrounded with his Love. Such a gift is free, and offered to
all, young or old, rich or poor, through faith and baptism, for such is the
grace of God, the reckless generosity that embraces a world with Love, that
shows it its hands and side so that they may see what Love looks like. These
are the lengths to which God goes to reconcile the world to himself: to heal
our wounds, to be our peace and our joy.
It is strange that much
of the world when faced with the story of the Resurrection would reply
something along the lines of ‘And their words seemed to them as idle tales,
and they believed them not.’ A former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Hollaway
has even written that Christ did not actually rise from the dead, but
such was the love his disciples had for him that he lived on in their hearts.
This is clearly utter rubbish. The disciple go from being scared and stuck in
an upper room to missionaries, evangelists, spreading the Good News around the
world, regardless of the cost, even of sacrificing their own lives to bear
witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he died
for our sins, and that he rose again, on this day for us, that God loves
us and tells us to love Him and to love one another. It is a
simple and effective message which people still want to hear, even if others do
not.
We should, I suspect, be
a little careful about all the talk of persecution in this country:
Christianity is not about what jewellery you wear, but what you believe and how
you live your life. What is perhaps far more worrying is that more and more
(due to the efforts of a liberal-controlled media) we as Christians are portrayed
as odd, as extreme, as obsessed by gender, sex and sexuality, an irrelevance to
the modern world. Your religion, they say, is a private matter – please do not
bother us with it, we’ll come to church as and when we feel like it, possibly
Christmas and Easter if you’re lucky, but as for believing anything, well we’re
far too grown up for your fairy-story nonsense.
This may be something of
a caricature, but it is a true one, and one which applies to the majority of
the inhabitants of this village, of this county, of this country and indeed the
Western world. It saddens me that such a mindset should have become prevalent
of late, and that when we, as Christians, try to do something about it, we are
told that we are all hypocrites, that we do not practise what we preach. There
is some truth in this – we are sinners, but the heart of our faith and
the Gospel is forgiveness – no matter how many times we mess things up, we are
forgiven. It is this reckless generosity of spirit which people find hard – to
believe that they too can be forgiven, by a loving God, and by their fellow
Christians. That we can, despite our manifold shortcomings we can be a people
of love, and forgiveness, and reconciliation. That God’s Grace will in the end
not abolish our nature, but perfect it, that being fed by Christ,
with Christ: so that we too may become what He is. That faced with the sad
emptiness of the world, and its selfishness, its greed, we can be filled with
joy, and life, and hope. That like the first apostles we too can spread the
Gospel: that the world may believe.
It’s a tall order, perhaps, but one which God promises
us. That is what the reality of the Resurrection is all about, it’s either nothing,
in which case we are the most pitiable of deluded fools – idiots who are more to
be pitied than blamed, or it is the single most important thing in the world.
It should affect all of us, every part of our life, every minute
of every day, all that we do, all that we say, all that we
are. This may not fit in with a reserved English mentality, we think we’re supposed
to be polite and not force our views on others. But this simply will not do. We
are, after all, dealing with people’s souls, their eternal salvation, it’s a serious
matter. And what we offer people is entirely free, can change their lives for the
better, and make life worth living.
So let us be filled with the joy of the Resurrection this
Easter, let us share that joy with others, may it fill our lives and those of whom
we meet with the joy and love of God, who has triumphed and who offers us all new
life in Him, that all that we do, all that we are, all that we say or think may
give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed
as is most right and just, all might, majesty, dominion and power, now and forever.
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