Category: Sermons

“Then opened he their understanding
that they might understand the Scriptures”

It is Luke’s recurring theme about the resurrection. It is about the opening of our minds through the understanding of the Scriptures. We saw that on the road to Emmaus. We see it here with Jesus “[standing] in the midst of his disciples.” Somehow we make sense of the resurrection through the interpretation of the Scriptures. Jesus is our exegete, our interpreter. This is itself a key insight into the Christian faith.

It is an astounding scene. We had, on Maundy Thursday, the institution of the Holy Communion at the last supper in the Upper Room. That intimate and intense event set in the context of the ancient Passover story takes on a whole new meaning through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Luke’s accounts of the resurrection convey a sacramental understanding that underscores the reality of human redemption.

“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself,” Jesus says to the disciples before going on to ask if they have any food and taking a piece of broiled fish and a bit of an honey-comb. What is it all about? It is all testimony to the mystery and the reality of the resurrection. Christ is risen, body and soul. The body is not nothing. Neither is it everything. There is a mystery. The mystery is about human redemption. The mystery is about the larger understanding of our humanity that is opened out to us through Jesus and especially through the interpretation of the Scriptures.

In other words, this meal, too, with Jesus is a learning moment. He teaches them and us about the meaning of his passion and death and about his rising to life again from the dead. The further message that flows out from those events is that “repentance unto forgiveness of sins [is to] be preached in his name unto all nations.” It begins with the disciples in Jerusalem but it continues to the ends of the world and to the end of time. This is the resurrection and its meaning for us. We live in the power of the resurrection. It is about new life and new hope. It is about repentance and forgiveness.

Such things are lived out in the body. They are realised in the every day aspects of our life. We live the resurrection through repentance and forgiveness. For it is Christ who lives in us. If we are the witnesses to these things then we must live what we proclaim. We can only do it in his body, the Church.

For here we wrestle with the understanding of the Scriptures. For here we encounter the Word audible and the Word visible. For here we are fed and nourished in our souls and bodies with the Word proclaimed and the Sacraments celebrated. For here we learn what it means to be with Christ. If we will learn.

“Then opened he their understanding
that they might understand the Scriptures”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Tuesday, 2011

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“He was known of them in the breaking of the bread”

After the intensity of the Passion comes the rich wonder of the Resurrection. What is set before us are the scenes of the Resurrection. None is more dramatic than the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus runs out after us.

It is his running after us, as it were, that teaches us so much about the truth of the Resurrection. In the story of the Road to Emmaus, Jesus runs out after us to be with us in Word and Sacrament. In a way, Luke provides us with a picture of the life and witness of the Church. What is altogether of moment in that picture is the presence of Christ – the living, running, risen Christ.

The Resurrection is not a static event. It sets everything in motion. The Church is the running miracle of God. After all, what else could possibly account for the Church, except the existence of God and the truth of the Resurrection? Certainly not ourselves.

What are we ourselves, you and me, and by extension every congregation of souls really, except by times rather dull and dreary, weary and pathetic, boring and not nearly so fascinating as we would like to think we are? Or to put it scripturally, are we not often enough, “foolish and slow of heart”? I mean to be provocative, not insulting, but I do hasten to add, “in ourselves”. I once overheard a conversation in which the subject was the church – not this church in particular, but church in general. The claim was that church is always boring. In a way, I’m afraid, it often is. Why? Well, to be honest we really only need to look at ourselves. Do you really think that you are all that exciting? It is really we who are rather boring, I am afraid.

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Christ is Risen. Alleluia, Alleluia!

The Church’s ancient proclamation captures something of the joy and the excitement of this day. But make no mistake, the Resurrection is not some sort of clap-happy event, a happy ending to an otherwise sad and bitter tale. No. The joy and the excitement of Easter are born out of the Passion and Death of Christ. The intensity of the Passion gives rise to the joyfulness of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is a bodily event. But it gives rise to a new understanding of everything. There is, we might say, a resurrection of the understanding. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is radical new life. Radical is the right word, actually. It refers to the root of things, the radix. The Resurrection goes to the root of all life itself. That root is the reciprocal love of the Son for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit.

The God who creates ex nihilo – out of nothing – recreates out of the greater nothingness of sin and death. The Cross has made visible that greater nothingness. The full force of sin and evil are revealed in the crucified Christ. The greater nothingness is the vanity of our wills as against everything that is good – against one another in the human community, against the good order of creation, and against God himself. But the Cross has also made visible the far greater love of God both for us and in itself.

If the message of Good Friday is that God is dead, then the message of Easter is that death is conquered, death is dead. “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;/death hath no more dominion over him.” Christ is risen from the dead never to die again. The meaning of death itself is changed. The tomb is not only empty; it has become the womb of new life. The unending life of the Resurrection is accomplished in and through the darkness of death. Christ is Risen!

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Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Who is risen? Jesus Christ is risen. Risen from what? Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Risen to what? Jesus Christ is risen to everlasting life never to die again: “in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” Risen for what? Jesus Christ is risen for us, for our justification, for the purpose of making us right with God, that we may be “alive unto God through Jesus Christ.” We have no life apart from him.

What, then, is the resurrection? The what, first and foremost, is who. Christ is risen. He can only be in us if we are in him. Christ is “the resurrection and the life.” It is what he told us beforehand though we failed to understand. It is what he told us because he who is “the resurrection and the life” is also “the resurrection and the life” for us.

And that is all the joy of this day and, indeed, our abiding joy. We behold the figure of his resurrection and see in it the shape of our own. No faith where there is no resurrection. No Christians where there is no resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. No church where the resurrection is not proclaimed and celebrated. For if he is not risen, then he is not alive and neither are we. If he is not risen, then we, too, shall simply cease to be as if we had never been at all. But “in Christ shall all be made alive.” There can be no holy abiding in him if he is not risen from the dead. And if we do not abide in him, then where shall we dwell? In the tomb? But the tomb is empty. To dwell there is to dwell where there is no meaning and life is not life but death.

But if we cling to our hurts and sorrows, our hatreds and animosities, our pretension and arrogance, our anger and despair; in short, to what Paul calls “the leaven of malice and wickedness,” then we are but the walking dead. We choose death and reject the hope of new life. Let go of it all. Choose life. Choose Christ.

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“What mean ye by this service?”

Holy Saturday is the quietest and most peaceful of all the days of the Christian year. Why? Because all the noise and nonsense of our fallen and broken humanity has had its way, right to the bitter end. God has put himself into our hands and we have done our worst. Christ is dead. Christ now lies buried in a borrowed grave. In one way, we are a spent force.

But it is the quietest and most peaceful day for another reason. “It is finished,” Christ said on the Cross in what is the penultimate word of the Crucified. His last word, too, signifies the fuller meaning of that sense of completion. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” But what is finished? What is in his spirit that is placed into the hands of his Father? Simply all that belongs to human redemption. It is all accomplished. There is peace between God and man.

Holy Saturday is paradise restored. It recalls the original harmony between God and man and between nature and God. That, too, is part of the peace and quiet of this day. But that sense of paradise restored is only part of the meaning of this day. Paradise in the biblical and theological understanding is not our homeland, not our end. Our end is with God in the glory of heaven. That is something more and greater than Paradise. It is, perhaps, Paradise plus! For we cannot return to Eden.

We cannot undo the effects of the fall, the effects of sin and folly. The purpose of Holy Week, after all, was to make us more fully aware of sin so as to understand better Christ’s overcoming of sin. Sin and love have been fully on display throughout the pageant of Holy Week. I hope that we have learned something about our selves and about God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. The purpose has not been for us to forget our sins and their disastrous and deadly consequences. No. The purpose has been to see the divine work of human redemption transforming our sins into his righteousness and truth.

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“What mean ye by this service?”

This has been the question that has framed our Holy Week meditations. It reaches its climax in this service on this day which we are privileged to call Good Friday. Christ is crucified. Christ is dead. What, indeed, do we mean by this service?

Simply put, we behold him who we have pierced, as Zechariah prophesied and as we hear at the end of the Passion according to John. We behold Christ Crucified and dead on the Cross. That is the most basic answer to the question. But like so many questions, it only opens us out to more and more questions. Why is Christ crucified? What does it mean? Who crucified Christ? The questions are as disturbing as the answers.

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” So goes the old spiritual. The question is not merely rhetorical. Of course, in a literal sense we weren’t there. The crucifixion was long ago and far away. And yet, in a metaphorical sense, the sense of the hymn itself, and theologically, we are there. And even more, we are they who crucified our Lord.

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“What mean ye by this service”

Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the most intense part of the Passion of Christ. It is the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days which concentrate our attention on the Passion of Christ and on the forms of our participation in his Passion.

The word “maundy” is the englishing of the Latin mandatum, meaning commandment. It refers explicitly to Christ’s words in John’s Gospel, “a new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.” A new commandment? How so? Because of what transpires in this week of the Passover. Christ unites the love of God and the love of one another. That is the love that is on display in the Passion of Christ. And that is the love which is set before us on this night, this “very night that he was betrayed.”

“What mean ye by this service?” Maundy Thursday is especially the night of services. There is the ritual of the pedilavium in which Christ washes the feet of his disciples. It is the powerful illustration of service that dovetails with the theme of sacrifice. That is the actual occasion for Christ’s new commandment to “love one another, even as I have loved you.” There are the customs and traditions of royal offerings, called Maundy purses or Maundy coins, given as a form of charity. There is the tradition of stripping the altar, an image of the desolation of Christ as a result of human sin. But at the heart of it all is the institution of the Holy Communion at the Last Supper.

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“What mean ye by this service?”

Tenebrae is a Latin word meaning shadows or darkness. In the pageant of Holy Week, the service of Tenebrae anticipates aspects of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday that bring us to the celebration of Easter.

It signals a greater degree of intensity and a more inward emphasis. So much of the violence of Holy Week, the violence of hatred and anger that lurks in our fallen hearts, is expressed outwardly. But on the Wednesday in Holy Week there is a more inward turn. This greater degree of inwardness is expressed in the psalms and readings of Tenebrae as we enter more fully into Christ’s passion. It is also an important feature of the Passion Gospel which is read on this day. On Wednesday in Holy Week, we read the Beginning of the Passion according to St. Luke.

The purpose and intent of Holy Week, especially in our Anglican understanding and practice, is to immerse ourselves in the fullness of the Scriptural witness to the Passion of Christ. That is why all four passion accounts from the four canonical gospels are read throughout Holy Week. On Palm Sunday, we read the Passion according to St. Matthew. On Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week, we read the Passion according to St. Mark. Today, on Wednesday in Holy Week, we begin reading the Passion according to St. Luke which we will conclude on Maundy Thursday. On Good Friday, the Passion according to St. John will be read. It is the complete packet of the Passion.

Each gospel account of the Passion provides a different perspective and has a distinct emphasis. Are there inconsistencies in terms of the details? Yes. Are there any major discrepancies that have any bearing on the basic and fundamental teaching about the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ? No.  To appreciate the differences is to grasp the deeper and creedal unity of the Christian understanding.

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