Christ Church

“Jesus came and stood in the midst”

“The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early,” we heard last Sunday. “The same day at evening, being the first day of the week,” we hear today. Time is magically stopped and we are mystically present at that day, the day that never, never ends. The Day of Resurrection is just like that. In the spirituality of the ancient Eucharistic lectionary, which is at the heart of the Common Prayer tradition, we see through the eyes of John and especially, the doctrine of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is not something which we celebrate in a moment, even for a day or for a season. It runs through the whole of the year and indeed through the whole of our lives in Faith. The Octave Day places us in that endless day of Easter to show us the Resurrection in motion. It shows us something of the meaning of the Resurrection for us and in us. The symbolism of being “on the same day,” the day of Easter, becomes the meaning of our Sunday worship. It is always a celebration of the Resurrection. We are always in the presence of the Risen Christ and never more so than in the Easter Season when the Resurrection is our principal consideration. The only question is whether we are alive or dead to his presence?

“Jesus came and stood in the midst.” He was “in the midst” on Good Friday, too, crucified between two thieves! How different and yet how similar. Christ is in our midst if only we would have the eyes to see him in Word and Sacrament, in liturgy and song, and in lives of service and sacrifice, in lives of love lived for God and one another. For Christ is in our midst. It is the Church’s proclamation.

But on this day, the day of Resurrection extended for all eternity, as it were, Christ is in our midst behind closed doors. The disciples were behind closed doors in the Upper Room. They were there in fear and great anxiety. The world of their hopes and expectations had been shattered. Then “Jesus came and stood in the midst” of them and suddenly all that was shattered begins to come together again into something new. His presence changes everything. The nature of that change is the Resurrection in us.

(more…)

Print this entry

Fr. David Curry has collected his ten Holy Week and Easter homilies, based on the Scripture text “All the people hung on his words”, into a single pdf document. Click here to download “All the people hung on his words”. These homilies were originally delivered and posted earlier this week on Palm Sunday through Easter Day.

Print this entry

“All the people hung upon his words”

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?

(more…)

Print this entry

“All the people hung upon his words”

This is the night. The night of watching and waiting upon the truth and power of God’s love, a love which is greater than the darkness of human sin and death. Holy Saturday seems to be the quietest and the most peaceful of all of the days of the year. And yet there is the wonderful action of God which marks this night. We watch and wait once again by hanging upon the words of Scripture. We watch and wait in expectancy for God’s great creative action, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The point is very simple. Christ dies but love lives and triumphs over death. All of the Scripture readings at the Vigil underscore this essential insight and truth. We are reminded that the goodness of God is and must always be greater than every form of evil. The Resurrection is Creation renewed by being recalled to the truth of God in love and forgiveness.

The divine desire to be reconciled with his sinful creation means the redemption of all sinners. It requires that we hang upon his words, listening to the great Paschal Praeconium, the Easter Proclamation, listening to the Prophecies of Scripture that speak of God’s triumph over sin and evil, and then renewing our baptismal vows by which God has reconciled himself to each of us in his love for us. Then there is the simple joy of rejoicing in Christ’s redemption of our humanity. We end the vigil with the lauds, the praises of Easter morning, the resurrection alive in us.

How? By hanging upon the words of Scripture that testify to the Resurrection. Dr. Johnson once said that the prospect of hanging wonderfully concentrates the mind. Well, our hanging upon his words concentrates our minds wonderfully upon the reality of divine love. It makes us alive, restored and renewed in love. Such is the wonder and the power of the Vigil. Our hanging upon his words opens us out to the Risen Christ.

“All the people hung upon his words”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, 2014

Print this entry