Category: Sermons

“A little while and ye shall not see me;
and again a little while and ye shall see me.”

What on earth does it mean? Peek-a-boo with Jesus? What kind of game is this? Well, it is a profound and important part of our thinking about the meaning of the Resurrection. It relates as well to the various forms of human knowing and the way those are challenged by the God who creates and redeems; in short, by the Risen Christ.

Seeing is believing, it is commonly said, and surely that point-of-view has ample confirmation, it might seem, in the story of doubting Thomas. And yet, the whole point is that the truths of religion go far beyond the physical and the material yet without denying them; the whole point is that human experience, too, cannot be reduced to the empirical, to the sensuous and experiential. Perhaps, no thought is harder for our church and world, and, yet, perhaps, no thought is more necessary.

The stories of the Resurrection are full of the questions of wonderment and awe. There is confusion and uncertainty, to be sure, like the disciples huddled in fear behind closed doors or fleeing in dismay and terror from the Jerusalem of their crushed hopes. There is sorrow and grief, like Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb in the early morning. There are the stories of strange things, like the suspicion that the disciples might “come by night and steal” the body of Christ away, like the empty tomb with the stone rolled away, like the rumours of angels, like the report of the women; all the strange, strange dawnings of an awareness of things seen and unseen.

The Gospel readings for the remaining Sundays of Easter are full of a different sort of questioning. They are taken from the so-called Farewell Discourse of Jesus in John’s Gospel. In a way, Jesus is preparing for his going from them in two senses: his crucifixion and his ascension, itself the culmination of the meaning of his Resurrection. The meaning of these gospel readings is captured for us in the memorable mantra, “because I go to the Father.” Through the images and the reality of the physical and material world, Jesus opens us out to the greater reality of God, of things spiritual that embrace but cannot be reduced to the physical and the material. This is the great teaching and central idea of the Christian faith: the Incarnation gathers us into the mystery of the Trinity.

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“Christ is risen from the dead”

The Resurrection changes everything. But only if we will be changed, only if we are open to its truth and meaning. But what kind of change? The Christian religion is the religion of the hope of transformation, the hope that we can be something more than our dead and deadly selves. And all because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It changes how we look upon our selves, how we look upon our humanity and how we look upon our world, and, certainly, it changes how we look upon death.

But the change that is the Resurrection requires death. Only so can death be changed. The death that is required is not only our physical death – none of us get out of this alive, after all – but more importantly, it requires our dying to our selves. The Christian religion is, in so many ways, the counter to the culture of self-fulfillment and entitlement. It is the religion of love and sacrifice, the love that is sacrifice without which there can be no resurrection, no life. The paradox of change, here, is that we can only live if we are dead, dead to the illusions about ourselves, dead to the deceits and mistakes which are the sad and sorry tale about ourselves, dead to what the Church simply calls sin.

To be dead to ourselves is to be alive to God. The accounts of the Resurrection show us the transformation of the understanding, the transformation of the understanding that changes lives, that sets lives in motion. In a way, it is very simple. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb in the early morning. What she seeks is not there. She tells Peter and “that other disciple” and they both run to the sepulchre. “That other disciple” runs faster and looks in but does not enter. Simon Peter comes and enters in and is followed by “that other disciple”, who then sees and believes. What do they behold? Simply the empty tomb and the discarded burying clothes, described in terms of exactly where they were found.

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“And they came to the Valley of Eshcol,
and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes,
and they carried it on a pole between two of them”

This Sunday is known as Good Shepherd Sunday because of the traditional Gospel reading at Holy Communion on this day about Christ the Good Shepherd. It is a familiar and a comforting image but I fear we overlook its radical meaning. It is one of the great images of God’s providential care for his wayward and wandering sheep, meaning you and me. It is an image, too, which belongs to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ bears us in his arms. The same arms that are stretched out upon the cross are the arms that have embraced our humanity, the arms which gather us into the love of the son for the father. He carries us into the hands of the Father.

The great image of God’s care, its greatness lies in the cure it provides. The cure is the triumph of God over human sin and death. Christ the Good Shepherd, after all, is the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world” as we pray constantly in the Liturgy. The Good Shepherd is the one who has laid down his life for the sheep, for you and for me. The image is rich in meaning and quite powerful in its symbolism.  We live in the care of the Good Shepherd who has triumphed over human sin to carry us home to the Father.

But the image is even stronger because we live in that care now in the power of the Risen Christ. God’s providential care is the active principle which sustains and maintains creation redeemed and restored, the active principle which sustains and maintains our redeemed humanity. In a way, so many of the biblical images of God’s providential care meet in the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. As I Peter 2 puts it, we “are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls.”

We live in the care of the Good Shepherd. Yes, but how do we relate to that care? Are we grateful and alive in the joy of redemption as the community of the redeemed? Or are we a pack of complainers? Do we rejoice or do we murmur? Do we give praise or do we mock? These are the questions which are also set before us, the questions which speak directly to human freedom and dignity. I fear that the therapeutic culture which, on the one hand, calls us to take care of one another and wonderfully and rightly so, yet, on the other hand, creates a culture of dependency, a culture of the depressed and the walking dead. Which will we be?

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“Jesus said, I am the good shepherd”

It is a familiar and a comforting image but I fear we overlook its radical meaning. It is one of the great images of God’s providential care for his wayward and wandering sheep, meaning us. It is an image, too, which belongs at once to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ bears us in his arms. The same arms that are stretched out upon the cross are the arms that have embraced our humanity, the arms that gather us into the love of the son for the father. He carries us into the hands of the Father.

The great image of God’s care, its greatness lies in the cure it provides. The cure is the triumph of God over human sin and death. Christ the Good Shepherd, after all, is the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world,” as we pray so often in our Liturgy. The Good Shepherd is the one who has laid down his life for the sheep, for you and for me. The image is rich in meaning. We live in the care of the Good Shepherd who has triumphed over human sin to carry us home to the Father.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Mary’s word opens us out, quite literally, to the words of the Incarnate Christ, “the word made flesh,” but most especially and, perhaps, most tellingly to the words of the Risen Christ. It is not too much to say that the words of the Risen Christ inaugurate the most dramatic change in human outlook and understanding that there has ever been. The effect of the presence and words of the Risen Christ on the disciples leads to the intense recollection of all the details of the Passion of Christ and, by extension, to the accounts as well of all the other words and deeds of Christ including his nativity that comprise the Gospels and, then, the other writings that make up the New Testament.

In other words, there is something dramatic and compelling about the Resurrection. Death and Resurrection are two of the foundational themes and principles of Christianity, though not entirely unique to Christianity. There is, in late Judaism, the idea of the resurrection and resurrection, too, is a feature of the Islamic religion. But for Christians the focus is on Christ, on his death and resurrection. And Christ is the primary teacher of the Resurrection.

What is that teaching? That we are more though not less than our bodies, which is probably good news for some of us. That we are not the “slave[s] to fate, chance, kings and desperate men,” as John Donne puts it, the mere pathetic victims of the fatalistic determinisms of our social, economic, political and therapeutic culture. No. We are freed to God in whom we find the very truth of our being and life, the God in whom we become who we are truly called to be and in whom we are more and not less than ourselves.

This is, I think, pretty amazing and quite profound. It is the case historically and theologically that the Resurrection effected the greatest sea-change in human culture imaginable. It quite literally changed the world. And it changed the world because it changes our outlook. It changes our minds and it changes our thinking.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Mary’s word to God at her Annunciation is found in Luke’s Gospel. Readings from Luke’s Gospel also provide the Gospel readings at Holy Communion on Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday, the story of two resurrection appearances by Jesus: the one, on the road to Emmaus; the other, the story we have heard this morning about Jesus appearing “in the midst of his disciples” in Jerusalem. It serves as a complement to John’s account of Jesus appearing behind closed doors in the second lesson read at Evening Prayer on Easter Day and in the Gospel for the Octave Day of Easter, “the same day at evening” as we shall hear next Sunday.

In both accounts, there is this twofold emphasis on the Word explained and interpreted and the presence of the Risen Christ who teaches us about the reality of the Resurrection. “Behold, my hands and my feet, that is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and blood, as ye see me have.” That direct encounter is not the end of the story here, however, for two more things follow. First, Jesus asks if they have any food. “And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey-comb.” Somehow, the holy tradition of the Church avoided turning this moment into something ritual and sacramental! Just as well.

But secondly, and importantly with respect to our Marian theme of letting the words of Christ define us, Jesus says, “these are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me.” Then, as on the road to Emmaus, “opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.” The Greek words emphasize the opening of their hearts and minds and the idea of comprehending something thoroughly. There is something intense and intentional about the teaching. Beyond rumour and report, beyond fantasy and fabrication, beyond even the evidence of the senses, there is this primary emphasis on understanding the Resurrection through the pageant of the Scriptures, explained and interpreted.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Mary’s response to God at the Annunciation informs our learning about the Resurrection, too. The actual feast day of the Annunciation more often than not coincides with Lent and Passiontide but occasionally, the 25^th of March can be Easter Day itself and whenever that happens or when the Annunciation coincides with days of Holy Week, the commemoration is transferred to Eastertide. There is a wonderful sense in which Mary’s word belongs to the lessons of the Resurrection, especially when it is the Risen Christ who teaches the most and most clearly about the Resurrection.

One of the most powerful lessons about the Resurrection appears in the Gospel for Easter Monday. It is Luke’s marvelous account of the events on the Road to Emmaus. It is an extraordinary scene and one which ultimately focusses on the interpretation of the Scriptures and even more poignantly on the complementariety of the Word spoken and explained and the Word enacted and performed. It is Christ who teaches. Christ is the exegete of the Scriptures of the Old Testament that reveal the meaning of his Passion and Resurrection. We are opened out to a new and radical understanding of our life with God in Jesus Christ.

The Risen Christ runs out after the disciples who are fleeing from Jerusalem in fear, their hopes and expectations having been utterly destroyed by Christ’s crucifixion and death. They had “trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel,” they say. Such words say a lot about their expectations and their understanding of the nature of redemption. Christ is the redeemer of the world, the redeemer of Israel in a new and radically transforming way, not in a political or social way, but spiritually and theologically. There is a radical transformation of the understanding of redemption. It can no longer be confined to the hopes and expectations of politics and power.

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Fr. David Curry has compiled all of this year’s homilies for Holy Week and Easter into a 45-page booklet, complete with appropriate sacred art. Click here to download as a pdf document.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Mary’s word to God at the Annunciation has provided us with a way of contemplating the Passion of Christ through Passiontide and Holy Week. Her word signals the most profound idea and reality. God engages our humanity in the most intimate manner imaginable in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. In the Christian understanding of things, the Incarnation has its beginning in time with the Annunciation which marks the conception of Christ in the womb of Mary. The larger significance of that is the greater celebration of this day, Easter.

Christ is risen, Alleluia. Alleluia!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia. Alleluia!

For Mary’s word signals her affirmation of God’s new creative act, the act of redemption. The Resurrection is the new and radical creation of our humanity. Such is the joy of the Annunciation in the blessedness of God being with us through Mary but such is the greater joy of the Resurrection in the renewing of our creation, hence all our alleluias on this day!

New life and new birth, the triumph and overcoming of all sin and folly, marks the celebration and meaning of Easter. And, in a way, all because of Mary’s word to God. It signals our task as well.  What is that? To let the word of the Risen Christ define us; to let his word be unto us; to let Christ teach us the great good news of his Resurrection. Why? Because it defines our Christian identity and witness. Because it is about the radical truth of God’s being with us. Because the Resurrection celebrates the divine purpose for our humanity.

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“Be it unto me according to thy word”

The Vigil of Easter is most emphatically “according to thy word,” the word of prophecy and hope, the word of prayer and praise, the word of expectant excitement, and, above all else, the word of renewal and re-creation. The Vigil is all about our waiting upon the divine word, like Mary pondering the words that were spoken about the child Christ. We wait at the grave but we wait expectantly, waiting upon the word which called all things into being and now recalls everything to its truth and principle. It is by all accounts a new creation.

What we await is not about a return to Paradise. There can be no going back. No. What we await is something more, paradise plus, perhaps, for the creation as renewed and restored cannot mean the forgetting of all the folly and wickedness of the human experience, past, present and future. Indeed, the Resurrection presents to us the radical nature of our disobedience in order for us to consider the greater power of divine love. In other words, we await God’s new creative act in a spirit of anticipation, in a mode of holy expectancy. Why and how? Because of God’s word to us. We wait just as Mary waited for her time to come. We are waiting upon God in the knowledge of God that has been revealed to us.

It is not presumption but holy waiting. It is an essentially Marian attitude of faith best captured in her word, “be it unto me according to thy word.” We await expectantly as based on the witness of Scripture and the hope in God that arises from the strength and glory of ancient Israel. We await the great something new that will be wonder and delight, peace and joy abounding unto glory. Our waiting must be like Mary, a waiting that is always “according to thy word.”

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, 2012

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