8th April 2007EASTER SUNDAY
Fr David Cherry
“Christ indeed from death is risen; our new life obtaining.” (Words from the Easter Sequence)
May I speak to the glory of our Risen Lord who lives with the Father and Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen
One God, two gardens.
The Christian religion is a religion of revelation; of something
being discovered because it has been shown to us by a gracious and
loving God. You and I are always being invited to be present to,
attentive to what God is showing us – as individual persons and
as a People, the Church.
The soil of our hearts has been turned over through Lenten observance,
preparing for Easter. We have grappled with theology and prayer
in the Lent Group. We’ve been silent in prayer in presence
of Jesus before us in the Blessed Sacrament. We have waited,
struggled to be there; we have noticed our minds wondering and our
backs aching, but we have been there with Jesus. We have followed in
procession through the long drawn out contemplation of the last three
holy days, the Sacred Triduum: from the Last Supper, to the Cross, to
the Tomb and last night as darkness covered this part of God’s
world, we lit candles signalling the Light that no darkness can ever
extinguish : “Christ indeed from death is risen; our new life
obtaining.”
And what is being revealed to you and me? This revelation will
tell me something about who God is and where I fit in. What is
God showing me?
There is a clue in St John’s gospel – ‘On the first
day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto
the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the
sepulchre.’
‘….when it was yet dark’ brings to mind the
beginning of Creation when ‘darkness was upon the face of the
deep and the earth was without form and void’. (Genesis 1 :
2) It is the first day of Creation. The Resurrection is on the
first day of the week : today – the first day of Creation.
And then there is another clue : Jesus is misrecognised by Mary
Magdalene as the gardener – or rather Jesus is in fact recognised
by his true nature : the Divine Gardener as he was in Eden, the Creator
walking in the cool of the day, utterly at home in all he has
created. One God, two gardens.
The Resurrection is the revelation of God as Creator. Look I am
still creating; look it is still me. Jesus himself said
‘My Father is still working and I am working.’ (John 5 :
17)
St Paul said: ‘He is the image of the invisible God…. All
things have been created through him and for him… in him all
things are held together’ held in being. (Colossians 1 :
15-17)
St Ignatius was able to see that ‘God conducts himself as one who labours’ continually. (#236)
Hopkins, my favourite poet, with luminous vision was able to write :
‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God.’
But what is God still creating?
God is constantly at work drawing the world back to himself – not
like some sulky child wanting it all for himself, but because God knows
that our true and deepest happiness is to live in communion with God,
in fellowship, in community – to live, drawn into and taken up
into the relational life of the Persons of the Trinity. This is
God’s project.
Jesus prayed: I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of
those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be
one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you…’
(the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus in John 17)
God is a God who sacrifices himself – that is God is a God who
offers himself to us : “Here I am; this is my life, share in
it. Let it take hold of you: abide in me as I abide in you.”
The Church – a living People, living in fellowship is to be the
sign of what that means to the world. God is creating of us
– of you and me – the beginnings of a new society we call
the kingdom of God.
And this is no symbolic idea or sentimental reality (that would simply
be a kind of mumbo-jumbo) – but a solemn invitation which is also
a charge to you and me. It involves the hard graft of being and
loving one another. It involves repentance, a repentance which is
more than turning away from sin but the discovery of its true meaning:
‘seeing anew’ seeing with fresh eyes; in a new light: the
Easter light here in which we stand.
It involves seeing with a luminous kind of new vision, seeing each
other in a new light: the light of God’s compassion; the Light
of God's loving trust he bears towards us. Each of us is still
being formed by God. I am a work in progress, a handiwork in
creation, being brought into the fullness of being. How we resist
that!
But this is what should cause us to delight and get us giggling with joy this morning.
Here on the first day of the week, this Creation and Resurrection Day
we make remembrance of who this gracious, creative God is to us and of
what God is offering us; and doing in us.
Here in Communion with this gracious and ever-loving God may you and I
find our lives take on new significance and meaning. We have
observed 40 days of Lent and a rigorous Holy Week. We’re
all verging on a mild and happy exhaustion. But before us lies 50
days of Easter, 50 days in which to make remembrance, to recall and
meditate on its meaning to you and me, to allow its truth to come home
to each one of us personally and as his People, the Church.
Let the whole earth exult and sing for joy in its Creator; Let the
Church exult and make merry in its Maker and Redeemer; let you and I
continue to contemplate, to meditate on so great a mystery.
“Christ indeed from death is risen; our new life obtaining.
Have mercy Victim King, ever reigning
Amen. Alleluia”