7th April 2007HOLY SATURDAY

Fr Julian Browning

He is not here. He is risen

Despair, disillusion, fear, these are just a few of the tombs in which we have buried ourselves and others. But Jesus' resurrection is our resurrection too.

The Easter Vigil is a long and demanding service. But we have been waiting a long time for this moment. It has been a long night. There are a lot of words, but it is the story of our salvation. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died and was buried, has risen from the dead. His resurrection will mean our resurrection, our world made new. We who saw him die, who mourned his death, return in the early hours of the morning to where he had been buried, and we have found an empty tomb. He is not here, he is risen, look for him among the living.

What we are given tonight is a whole new way of living. It is a way of living that cannot be separated from a way of dying. Christians have discovered that the two go together, death and life, you and I have a dying and rising again way of living. That way of living will produce great fruits of the Spirit. At last we can be at ease with ourselves and with others. We have found a strong and confident faith. There is so much that we can now do, when we have died to self, and rejected totally the popular attitude in our society that you always put yourself first. Easter turns us into revolutionaries, proclaiming the victory of self-sacrificing love.

The first Christians greeted each other on Easter Day with the words: Christ is risen! And the reply was: Christ is risen indeed and hath appeared unto Simon. To Simon Peter, the coward disciple who denied his Lord, Christ is risen. To us, who made all those promises years ago and have gone the wrong way time after time, Christ is risen. Christ appeared to his Church first. We are among the first to know that the tomb is empty, we are the ones who have to spread the news in a doubting, unbelieving world.

It sometimes seems an impossible task. But we can now see that there is no challenge so great that it cannot be met. Despair, disillusion, fear, these are just a few of the tombs in which we have buried ourselves and others. But Jesus' resurrection is our resurrection too. These tombs are really just empty shells. They have no power to hold us. We can go to these tombs, these places of death and darkness in our lives,  the women went to the tomb on that first Easter morning. But the stone has been rolled away from the tomb, and we are told that Jesus is not here among the dead, he is risen. And we are risen too. Those tombs, those prisons in which we find ourselves trying to live, need not hold us now. The stone has been rolled away, and we emerge into Easter light. It is like a new birth; it is certainly a new life. Christ is now to be found, not among the dead, we are told, He is not here. He is risen. Look for him among the living. That is the challenge. We must look for Christ, for what is Christ-like, among the living, in those whom we meet each day. We must look for Christ, and for the victory of life over death, in the history of the world as it unfolds. We must look for Christ, and what is Christ-like, in ourselves and our own lives, shattered and wounded though we might sometimes be. Christ is there, among the living, among us.

According to St.Matthew, the first two people to arrive at the tomb were Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. And the first words spoken by the angel to them were, Do not be afraid. I know you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He is risen. That is what God says to us tonight. Do not be afraid. Do not be frightened by the tombs in which you live for death has no power over you. Do not be frightened by the stone being rolled away, because it is a door to new life which is opening for you. Do not be afraid of the light which streams in; you are now to see the world in a new light. Do not be afraid of the Risen Lord. God became like us, lived a human life, did the things we do, suffered death like us, and rose again. Where he has gone, we shall follow.