by CCW | 20 April 2014 15:18
Have we hung upon his words? It is our constant challenge. Only so can we find meaning and purpose for our lives. It is really all about the words of Christ, the Word and Son of the Father alive in us if ever we will truly live.
Out of the crucible of the Passion comes the Resurrection! “Christ is Risen. Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord is Risen, indeed. Alleluia! Alleluia!” It is the great word for this day and this season. Even more it is the word that alone enables us to hang upon his words, the words of Scripture in all their fullness of meaning and purpose. We have gone through the pageant of the Passion in Holy Week but the accounts of the Passion, indeed the Gospels themselves, only come to be written in the light of the Resurrection. How really could it be otherwise?
Something changed. The Resurrection is radical new life. It does not mean the eclipse of the past of sin and folly, of suffering and death, but a whole new way of thinking about our humanity and our lives with one another. There can be no going back to some imaginary paradise. We can really only think of the paradise of Creation through the realization of our separation from it. We cannot go back to paradise because that would mean no longer knowing ourselves or God. It would mean forsaking our self-consciousness, the very awareness of ourselves as selves.
No. The good news is the Fall of our humanity is the necessary event by which we awaken to ourselves. The greater good news is that God, too, falls into our humanity and world to redeem us from ourselves and return us to him but without the loss or denial of our self-awareness and our individuality. And perhaps nowhere is that better signified for us on this Easter day than in the baptism of Hazel Elizabeth Robinson, the daughter of a daughter of the Parish. Baptism is about the radical new life of the Resurrection for her individually. She is incorporated into the life and death of Jesus Christ. She is made the child of God, a member of Christ and his body the Church. How?
Because out of the pierced side of the crucified Christ in the hour of his passion and death flow blood and water, symbolic of the sacraments of holy Baptism and holy Communion in the life of the Church. Out of the crucible of the Passion comes the Resurrection and renewal of life, the radical new life which is about our lives with God. What Easter teaches is that we are more not less than our bodies and that through the simple yet wondrous things of the world and even human labour we are united to God; the simple yet wondrous things like water and bread and wine. They become not less but something more by the Word and Son of the Father. If we will hang upon his words.
It is all a kind of resurrection, the opening out to us of radical new life where we are no longer defined by grief and sorrow, by suffering and death, but rather discover joy and salvation. We discover ourselves as loved by God, the love which alone makes all the unloveliness of human sin lovely, the love which alone compels us to love one another. Baptism is about the love of God bestowed knowingly and willingly upon Hazel; though she does not yet know this, you do. It is part of the charge of this service that she is to be taught about this day and this event. It is the business of the Church to proclaim the simple yet profound truth of God’s love for our humanity; it is the mission of the Church to baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the spiritual reality of God as Trinity which we know and in a way can only know by hanging upon the words of Christ.
Hazel’s baptism is visible reminder to us, too, of our baptisms, of the radical new life bestowed upon us through the love of God for us in Christ Jesus. Last night in our little vigil of Easter Eve we had the renewal of our baptismal vows, too, the vows which signal self-consciously our Christian identity in Christ. What is that about? Word and Sacrament! God’s Word engages us physically and spiritually. Many of you cannot remember your baptisms. Yet through the baptisms of others, especially little children, we are reminded and renewed in our Christian profession. In other words, Hazel is an evangelist, a messenger of the good news of the Gospel, to all of us on this day precisely through what she has received: new life, new birth, the beginnings of her life as a spiritual creature made in the image of God and loved by God in his Son Jesus Christ. She is the reminder to us of our identity in the body of Christ, the Church.
The Resurrection is the great and joyous proclamation of this day and for all our days. At once mystical and even, dare I say, magical in the sense of a wonder and a mystery it teaches us something profound and true about our humanity. We are created by love for love and all of our betrayals of love cannot change that. We may deny it and dismiss it but that sadly will only affect us; the love remains and is always there. It is always there for us to return to. Death and Resurrection are the pattern of Christian life.
The garden of the Resurrection is more than the garden of Paradise. We see now the empty tomb and hear the beginnings of a parade of witnesses to the dawning realization of the divine love which creates and recreates and makes all things new. Suddenly we are given a new view of ourselves and our humanity that frees us from all forms of fatalisms both ancient and modern. We are more than computers with meat; we are more than a mindless bundle of appetites. For if we are alone and lonely, the cosmic orphans of an indifferent universe and world, then we are already dead. But we are more than dust and death. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ shows us who we are in the sight of God.
Holy Week and Easter reveal to us the true dignity and worth of our humanity. The Resurrection shows that we are made for God and for one another. Easter awakens us to the grace of God which does not destroy but perfects our nature. The Resurrection is about our life with God and in God and for God. It means to hang upon the words of the crucified and risen Lord, now and always.
Fr. David Curry
Easter, 2014
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2014/04/20/sermon-for-easter-day-4/
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