by CCW | 12 April 2020 08:00
We are constantly being told that “we are in this together.” And so we are. We are all implicated in the global pandemic of Covid-19 if only because it reveals the assumptions of our global world and culture and challenges all our technocratic dependencies. It challenges us about the understanding of our humanity. But even more than this current crisis, we are implicated in the sufferings of our world in every age. For suffering belongs to the realities of our fallen humanity. Yet it is precisely the conditions of sin and evil, of suffering and death, that God addresses in the radical meaning of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. You see, the Passion and the Resurrection are utterly inseparable. You can’t have one without the other and that is simply, literally, historically, and theologically the case. Such are the deeper joys of Easter. They arise out of the Passion just as the Passion, paradoxically, arises out of the Resurrection.
“Herein is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” we heard (or read!) on Good Friday. Such words from 1 John are part of the Good Friday anthems (BCP, p. 173[1]). And “herein is love,” too, in the wonderful motions of the Resurrection Gospel, the running of Mary Magdalene to Simon Peter and to John, and the running together of Simon Peter and John to the sepulchre, to the tomb where the stone had been taken away. It is empty. Everyone is set in motion. Such are the motions of love for love is motion towards another, towards God and towards each other.
It begins and ends with the divine love in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross; God’s love towards us for “while we yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5.8). It ends in death, yet love does not end and cannot end. “Never that which is shall die,” as Euripides observed so long ago. Love is ever in motion. Out of the Passion of Christ comes Resurrection because it is all about love. And love casts out fear. It changes everything. It changes us even in our current fears and anxieties. And love connects us even in our current isolation and separation. Not digitally except perhaps as a means to share thoughts and ideas but through the connecting power of prayer. For that is Christ in us, his love ruling and moving in us in our care for one another. Love is Resurrection, the life that death cannot overthrow.
There is, I think, a wonderful contrast hinted at in the Gospel readings for Easter Day, the one from John’s Gospel about Mary Magdalene running to tell Simon Peter and John the beginning of the great good news of the Resurrection and their running in response to the tomb and finding it empty (BCP, p.183[2]); the other, from the last chapter of the Gospel according to St. Mark about Mary Magdalene and another Mary coming to the tomb of Jesus (BCP, p. 185). They have come to anoint the dead body of Christ with the burying spices. They come anticipating a dead body. They find, instead, that he is not there through the encounter with “a young man … clothed in a long white garment,” an angel, it seems. He says to them “Be not afraid. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified; he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.” Such powerful and astounding words are followed by his direction to them to “go and tell the disciples and Peter” that not only is he not here in the tomb, in the place of death, but “that he goes before you into Galilee where you will see him as he said unto you.” That is how the second Easter Gospel ends.
But what did they do? The very next verse tells us. “They went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; … for they were afraid” (Mk. 16.8). This is viewed as the original or short ending of Mark’s Gospel. It ends on a note of fear even after the words, “be not afraid”! But note, too, that they “fled from the tomb”; they ran away in fear.
I cannot not think of this shorter ending and the contrast between “be not afraid” and ‘running away in fear’ without connecting it to the moment in Mark’s account of the Passion where Jesus is betrayed and taken captive. “A young man,” follows Jesus, Mark tells us “with nothing but a linen cloth about his body; and they” meaning Jesus’ captors, “seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.” We are naked in our fears. He ran away from being with Jesus. I like to think, following the suggestion of Austin Farrer, that the young man was Mark who runs away in fear and yet in coming to face his fear writes his Gospel which in both the short and long account is testimony to the love of Christ and to the Resurrection. He runs towards Christ in the writing of his Gospel.
Easter is the great celebration of Christ’s Resurrection. It is the triumph of love over our fears, over our sin and death. His Resurrection is the ‘death of death’; death is changed and in radical ways. At issue is whether we are alive to Christ’s Resurrection and its radical meaning for us. Are we running away from the tomb, from the place of death in the fear of death, or are we running to the tomb as the place of new life and Resurrection, of new birth and life, of re-creation?
Be not afraid. Run to the tomb with Simon Peter and John. Enter in and see the tomb empty and begin to run with what it means. It signifies the triumph of love over sin and evil, of life over death, of light over the darkness of our world and day. “Herein is love,” the love of God towards us. Here is the radical message and meaning of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. The love which is poured out unto death rises into life because “love is strong as death” (Song of Songs 8.6), indeed, even stronger, for nothing can quench love, nothing can overcome it. “Arise my love, my fair one, and come away” (Song of Songs 2.13). We arise into the love of God. We arise into the living love of God through the atoning sacrifice of Christ which issues in his Resurrection. For “Christ is risen from the dead” (1 Cor. 15.20) and “being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God” (Rom. 6. 9,10). And so for us. We only live when we live unto God and we only live unto God when Christ lives in us. We only live in our being with one another in love, not fear. These are all the motions of the Resurrection in us. They are the motions of love. We are set in motion towards one another through the love of God running and moving in us.
But not if we are huddled in fear, running, it seems, away from the tomb, afraid of death, it seems, not realizing that the great good news of Easter is about the overcoming of death through death. This is love’s triumph. The greater life of God is the death of death. It is the ultimate triumph of good over all evil. It is radical new life. It comes out of the nothingness of death. Life is all. And life is the love of God in us whatever the circumstances and situations. We are dead in our fears and anxieties whether it is the Covid-19 virus, the economy, our jobs, our families, our communities, our churches, whatever. All our fears are deadly. “Perfect love casts out fear,” to be sure, but its corollary also holds a potent force; fear casts out love.
The great good news of Easter is the Resurrection. It is the fruit of the Passion. The great good news of Easter is “be not afraid.” The great good news of Easter is our “runn[ing] together” to the tomb, our running together, it seems, to find the Risen Christ and to learn from him.
“Herein is love,” to be sure, for the lessons of the Passion now become the lessons of the Resurrection. They run together like Simon Peter and John, like faith and reason. The paradox is that without the Resurrection there could be no Passion. What I mean is this. The Passion of Christ only comes to be remembered and written down and commemorated because of the Resurrection. The Resurrection comes out of the Passion and yet the Passion comes out of the Resurrection. The Resurrection changes our thinking about the things of the past. It gives a new and radical way to think about suffering and death. Death is no longer the terminus ad quem, an endpoint, a final destination. It has become a transitus, a transition or stage towards the fullness of life in Christ, a life in which we participate now through prayer and praise, through sacrifice and service, in Word and Sacrament which also go together and are inseparable.
We are ‘cloistered’ with one another, I would like to suggest, rather than isolated and separated from one another. Whenever we read and pray these Scriptures, we are intentionally with God in his will for us all. Such a remembering with shouts of Alleluia is our spiritual communion on this day. If we are not afraid then we run to Christ and with one another. Such are our Easter joys, notwithstanding all the fears of our world and day. “Herein is love” for it is only in love that we run together. As always, the poets put it best, such as George Herbert in his poem, Easter, and with its further complement, Trinitie Sunday. The Resurrection runs through us and enfolds us in God’s love.
“Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise/ without delays … The Cross taught all wood to resound his name/ Who bore the same. His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key/ Is best to celebrate this most high day,” for in so singing in our hearts, we learn to “runne, rise, rest with thee.”
Christ is Risen, Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia! Alleluia!
Fr. David Curry
Easter 2020
Posted not preached owing to the Covid-19 outbreak
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2020/04/12/sermon-for-easter-4/
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