Easter Sunday 2024

Jyoti Sahi (Indian, 1944–), “The Resurrection.”

This is the sermon I preached for Easter Sunday morning 2024…

So. We’ve sung songs of celebration. We’ve proclaimed that Christ is risen. Later, we’ll have the chance to decorate the cross with flowers to celebrate life bursting out of an instrument of death. But for a moment, let’s rewind slightly and look to Mary Magdalene. Because less than 48 hours ago, Mary witnessed Jesus being nailed to a cross. She watched as he was mocked and humiliated, she watched the person who had brought her hope and healing die the death of a criminal. And that must have been like a knife to her heart and her faith, seeing the person who she hoped would save the world being snuffed out as he was crucified.

Mary would have been familiar with crucifixions. The Romans used crucifixion to send a message and reserved it for traitors and rebels and slaves. It was a way of identifying a threat to Rome and ending it in the most brutal, humiliating and degrading way possible. Not long after Jesus was born, a rebellion broke out 4 miles down the road from Nazareth; the Romans marched in and crucified 2,000 people along the roadside, leaving them hanging in shame and disgust and defeat as a horrible reminded of what happens to you if you mess with the power of the empire. Smaller scale crucifixions like Jesus? Dump them in a mass grave and forget about them. Crucifixion wasn’t just about execution, it was about scrubbing your name from history.

Jesus avoided that fate. A secret follower of his, Joseph of Arimathea, allowed Jesus to be buried in a family tomb, allowing him to be laid to rest with at least some dignity and honour. That was Friday.

But now Sunday is here. Mary rises after the sabbath day’s rest, not even waiting for daybreak, and goes to that garden tomb to anoint Jesus, to do what she can to lay to rest her hopes and her saviour. The grief is still raw, a terrible grinding hurt in her heart, every step taking her closer and closer to confronting the reality that Jesus is dead, that Jesus is gone. All she can do now is mourn.

And then the latest horror – she gets to the tomb and it’s been opened, the massive stone that once blocked its entrance rolled away. Who did this? Graverobbers? Hardly, it’s not like Jesus owned anything worth stealing. The Romans? The Temple authorities who had orchestrated Jesus’s lynching in the first place? Maybe. Maybe they wanted to obliterate Jesus’s memory even in death.

Mary runs to tell the disciples, Peter and John running to the tomb to see what’s going on. John outruns Peter, because hey, this is John’s gospel, but on reaching the tomb Peter overtakes him, running straight inside. He sees the grave clothes but no body. The men graciously accept that Mary had been telling the truth and then they…

Well, they go home. And Mary is left, standing in the garden, heartbroken and alone.

Don’t let that pass you by. Mary is standing in a garden.

A long, long time ago, God planted another garden on a holy mountain. Here he places the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve created to be co-regents of creation. They tend the garden and walk with God, and it’s a place of perfection and communion with the Lord himself. Eden is what creation is meant to be, but sin and death and Hell invade it, they tempt Adam and Eve and bring about the fall of humanity, and the garden is lost to us. And as God closes off Eden, he curses the serpent who instigated all this in the first place; although the serpent will continue to strike at humanity, a descendent of Eve will ultimately crush the serpent in turn. With a lot of hindsight, this is the first hint of Easter, given as humanity is ushered into an uncertain future.

But as they move into that future, God is with them and he promises to continue to be with us. Fast forward to Revelation, a strange book full of monsters and bizarre images that ends with a beautiful picture of the City of God. The author of Revelation writes that:

The angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse.

The City of God, in which all curses are broken and death is no more and which in the people of God will once more walk beside him, is full of trees and fruit and healing and life. The City of God is a garden city.

One garden at the creation of everything. Another garden at the re-creation of all things. Here in the middle, Mary stands weeping in a third garden. She dares to look into the tomb again, hoping that she and Peter and John were all mistaken. She looks into the tomb again, but now there’s someone there, two angels who ask her why she’s crying.

“They’ve taken away my Lord, I don’t know where they’ve taken him, I…I…I…”

Then another voice asks her the same question: “Why are you weeping?” She doesn’t recognise this person, she thinks he’s the gardener and she’s distracted by the tomb and the angels, looking back and forth and saying: “Please, sir, if you’ve moved him, just tell me where he is, I want to deal with all the arrangements, if you need me to move the body I’ll get it sorted, I…”

And then the gardener says one word. He says “Mary.”

He says “Mary” and the penny drops, suddenly she recognises who she’s talking to: “Rabbi!” Teacher. Jesus himself.

It’s the most profound mistake in the Bible. Jesus wasn’t the bloke paid to mow the grass and pick up the litter in this particular garden, but in the moment, Mary isn’t wrong, she’s a prophet. Because God has always been a gardener. Eden and the prophesied City of God are evidence of that and through the death and resurrection of Jesus, access to those sacred gardens is restored. And so is hope and life and forgiveness.

It’s impossible to discuss Easter without talking about new life. Sometimes that’s the sudden, miraculous revival of what once was dead, but often it’s a slower resurrection, a cultivation carried out by a loving and patient Gardener. Sometimes resurrection takes longer than three days – the death of hope or love isn’t always reversed overnight. But new life is coming. Mary’s grief turns to joy, she goes from survival to revival.

There’s a moment at the end of The Lord of the Rings when the lead character, Frodo, wakes up. The last thing he knew, he’d been wounded and traumatised by everything that had happened throughout the book, and as he closes his eyes he thinks it’s for the last time. But no, he wakes up and then he’s then reunited with a friend he thought was long dead. And he’s so overtaken by joy that he blurts out “Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?!”

We live in a world where the sad things are very real and they feel very true. But here on Easter morning we celebrate the deeper, eternal Truth that lies behind this world. And that can be difficult to grasp, because sometimes the garden of this world feels more like a wasteland. But at the core of everything is this resurrection moment that allows all things to be reborn. Maybe not immediately; maybe the garden is just soil full of seeds at the moment, maybe new life slumbers beneath the surface for a winter. But the garden isn’t a wilderness anymore. Hope can be reborn, faith, peace, love.

I have a bit of an imaginational heresy, that one day in Heaven, Mary tracks down Eve, gives her a hug and says, “I was in a garden too, it worked out okay.” Because she met the true Gardener. He’s the new Adam who got it right; the one who reopened the gates of Eden and shows us the way inside. Walking through the trees of the Garden, we’re called to tend the world, to bring tool belts to broken places, to bring first aid kits to broken lives, to bring tears, coffees and casseroles to those who mourn, to bring wine and cake to those who celebrate. Easter isn’t just a yearly festival of chocolate and bank holidays, it’s a way of life.

And so we celebrate, because Christ is risen. In one of the set readings for today, the Old Testament prophet Isaiah had a vision of God throwing a great banquet for all peoples. He imagines God himself preparing the meal, breaking out the finest wines, the ruler of the universe serving as chef and sommelier because he’s celebrating the defeat and destruction of death itself. And with that, God will wipe away the tears from all faces and take away his people’s disgrace from all the earth. This is the great heavenly banquet, the ultimate party, the restoration of all that is broken, the forgiveness of sins. And the guests at the party respond to all that God has done saying “This is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

Isaiah sees all this taking place on a mountain. A very specific mountain, in fact, Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The city where Jesus died. The garden where Jesus rose. Soon we’ll have the opportunity to anticipate that final celebration once more and put flowers around the cross. And even if you don’t have flowers, please go and spend a moment out there. Because at the foot of the cross we can remember the things we’ve done wrong, the sins that haunt us, the regrets and the loss and the heartbreak and the guilt, we can remember all these things and lay them down. Because the cross is empty. The cross is empty and Christ is risen, and the power of sin and death and hell no longer have to hold us, they no longer need to drag us down, they no longer have the power they once did, because two thousand years ago, Christ was nailed to a cross and all those powers thought they’d won. But days later, in that garden, Christ rose again, he took their power and broke it in two and now we can be free. Now we can be restored. Now we can be born again.

Blessed Are The Songwriters (Good Friday 2024)

Blessed are the songwriters, for they give us words when our own words are exhausted, they take melody and poetry and give expression to thoughts and emotions that we can’t articulate on our own.

As Jesus hangs on the cross, as his body breaks down and as death approaches, he remembers a song. It’s one of the psalms of David, a song that asks where God is, why God isn’t riding the rescue when David is surrounded by enemies. It’s a question, a plea, an accusation: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As Jesus dies, these are the words on his parched lips. Is Jesus simply quoting or is he mustering the last of his strength to sing, falling back on the poetry and music that formed his people?

David wrote Psalm 22 centuries before the crucifixion but these two moments in history are somehow linked, a rhythm and a melody knitting together either end of the song. The psalm takes on a spiritual weight; did Jesus choose a handful of words because they gave voice to his despair as the light grew dark? Or was it a deeper message?

It’s enough for the words to express anguish. Jesus is God incarnate, the omnipotent experiencing day-to-day humanity. He knows betrayal. He knows stress and worry and anxiety. He knows suffering and he knows crushing physical pain. He knows the injustice of being trampled by politics and religion, the legitimised brutality of corrupt powers. There’s solidarity and understanding here, God scarred by his own creation.

There are other layers to this though. As the psalm goes on, it eerily starts to sound like it’s describing a crucifixion, even if this is outside its original context. In his own despair, did David tap into a vision of the suffering of his own descendent? Is he prophesying? David sings of being surrounded by his enemies, but something strange is going on; scratch the surface and these don’t (only) seem to be human foes or the armies of man. There’s a reference to “strong bulls of Bashan”; in the theological landscape of the Hebrew scriptures, Bashan is not a good place, the spiritual opposite of the Lord’s mountain at Sinai. The “bulls” represent spiritual powers arrayed against God. And so, when the Roman soldiers nailed Jesus to the cross, which other empires were gloating, which other powers and principalities were cheering?

And why wouldn’t they cheer? Jesus is dead and they have won, right?

But while psalm 22 starts in despair, it doesn’t end there. David goes from asking where God is to praising the coming of his Kingdom:

All the ends of the earth
    will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
    will bow down before him,
 for dominion belongs to the Lord
    and he rules over the nations.

In the midst of his enemies, surrounded by evil, David can see that God will overcome them. Centuries later, Jesus uses part of this song to express the agony and horror of Good Friday, but as one lyric threads into another, quoting part of the song quotes the whole, bringing in a note of defiance – yes, it’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming; the bulls of Bashan stand smugly, drunk on victory, but they don’t know what’s really going on and they’ve orchestrated their own destruction. Meanwhile, the song Jesus started to sing ends in a couple of days, and we know how it ends.

Maundy Thursday 2024

Solomia Kazanivska, “Washing of the Feet,”

Maundy Thursday is the day on which Christians around the world commemorate the moment that Jesus knelt before his disciples and washed their feet. On one level it’s a scandalous image, almost offensive – the master becomes the servant, God washing the feet of mere humans. On the other, it’s an example of the divine love we’re called to reflect in the world; ‘maundy’ derives from the Latin word ‘mandatum’, ‘command’ – as in “A new commandment I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” And so, on the Thursday before Easter, churches will hold foot-washing services.

I’m never sure how I feel about this. I guess my fear is that it ritualises something that should transform us, something that should mark out Christ followers, not because they literally wash feet all the time, but because of their humility and service. I don’t think Christ’s command was intended to establish a ritual, helpful as rituals may sometimes be, but to serve as an inoculation against the temptations of power and pride. And if we share this ritual in church services, then are we serving those who need it most? After all, many feet are forgotten.

So, on this Maundy Thursday, let’s remember those who do all the humble jobs that keep our churches running: the cleaners, the caretakers, the people who empty the gutters and empty the bins. The people who put the chairs out, the people who make the coffee, the people who tend the gardens and create the rotas and do the flower arrangements and tweak the mics. The people who follow Jesus under the worst of situations; meeting when their doors are locked, worshipping when their church is bombed, praying as they sleep in doorways.

Let’s remember the people who get forgotten, the people who are misunderstood, the people who have been shut out, the people who have been exiled. The disabled struggling with a world that seems designed to exclude rather than include, those struggling with mental health issues, those tethered to pasts that hold them back. Those being crushed by the gears of power, be it political, economic or ecclesiastical, those we’ve maligned as demons (because people are not demons).

Let’s remember that the power God grants us is often found in a towel and a basin, that our words and songs are quieter than our actions and our hearts, that our rituals are momentary but our discipleship is every day, that Satan offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world but Jesus turned away and headed towards Cavalry. And that after Maundy Thursday comes Good Friday, because a Servant King is crowned in a very different way.

An Unexpected Journey (Palm Sunday)

‘Palm Sunday’ by Evans Yegon

Today is Palm Sunday, one of the celebratory bookends of Holy Week. After all, we begin the week celebrating Jesus entering Jerusalem riding a donkey; next week we’ll be proclaiming that Christ is risen. And between those two, making the story complete, are all the shadows, the agony in the garden, the cross at Calvary. It’s a journey that leads us inexorably towards Easter.

I say that, but people didn’t realise what was going on. Palm Sunday starts as a pilgrimage to the Passover celebrations in Jerusalem, but things begin to escalate as the group nears the city. Jesus obtains a donkey, riding it through the gates as his followers start cheering “Lord, save us!”. They wave palm branches and throw their cloaks on the road to provide Jesus a red carpet. They know what’s going on – this is a royal procession. After all, they’ve come from the Mount of Olives, the place from which the Messiah was due to emerge to save his city from the enemies surrounding it. And Jesus deliberately rides a donkey, bringing to mind King David’s preferred mode of transport, Solomon’s coronation, even a connection between their ancient ancestor Judah, donkeys and kingship. And then there’s Zechariah’s prophecy that the gospel writers directly link to all this: “See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.“

This is a royal procession, and everyone knows where it’s going – towards the overthrow of the Romans, to the restoration of faithful religion, to peace and hope and the rule of God being established over the whole world. Keep going Jesus, your destiny is almost here! They arrive in the city, they make a beeline for the Temple and…

Well, it’s late, so they have a quick look around and go to bed. They don’t even stay in Jerusalem.

Over the next week, it becomes evident that Jesus is straying from the script. He isn’t fighting the Roman army. He disrupts the Temple, but that ends up getting him arrested. Within a few days of this triumphal entry, he’s subjected to a show trial then lynched on a cross.

I use the word ‘lynched’ deliberately. The theologian James Cone condemns how we’ve turned the cross – an instrument of oppression, political violence and brutal execution – into a harmless symbol. Sure, we remember its horror on Good Friday, but we’ve neutered its offence; we look at our ornamental crosses and remember that Christ no longer hangs on them because he’s risen from the dead, but they lack the visceral memory of his death – our crosses don’t have bloodstains or nail marks. Without that memory, the Church can and has ended up re-enacting the same abuses of power as Pilate or Caiaphas or Herod.

Play Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit‘ over an image of the crucifixion and it gives some idea of what’s going on here. Don’t start the reading of Palm Sunday at Mark 11, go back to Mark 10 where James and John are hustling to win power once Jesus is crowned. Think about how, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, no-one’s rushing to display the Beatitudes in the Pentagon. Think about the times the Church has rushed to baptise earthly power and, in turn, has ended up being baptised into kingdoms that aren’t Christ’s.

For most people present at that first Palm Sunday, the journey ended unexpectedly. The crowds that were cheering for Jesus were conspicuously absent when he was hanging from a cross. In a way it’s hard to condemn them too much – from a certain perspective, Jesus had lost, he’d failed, nothing to do now but go home and wait for the next Messiah to come along. Maybe the next guy would succeed.

But Jesus still wears a crown, even if it’s made of thorns. Jesus is still welcoming people into his kingdom, even as he’s dying. The soldiers declaring him as king think they’re mocking him, but really they’re prophesying and they don’t even know it. And the Devil, who once offered Jesus all the power of this world, watches smugly even as the clock runs out on the power he thought he had.

But Easter Sunday is next week; then we can proclaim the arrival of Christ’s Kingdom. But for now we’re still in Lent and this is a time of wrestling. With the idolatry of power and influence, with how our words and actions can so often reject Christ’s humility and compassion and grace, with our refusal to beat swords into ploughshares, with our willingness to crucify others in the name of the One Who Was Crucified. It’s Palm Sunday, and we’re challenged to reveal who we’re truly following, in our hearts rather than our words; to follow Jesus on an unexpected journey.

Finding Jesus (Epiphany 2024)

It’s dark outside but I can’t see any stars This is a bit of an irony, because today is Epiphany, the day on which we celebrate the Magi visiting the infant Jesus. The star stops over the place where the child lay and by its light Christ is revealed to the world beyond the manger. Liturgically speaking, this is the last gasp of Christmas, on the Twelfth Night after the big day. The decorations come down and the Wise Men worship, drop off their gifts and head home. Things go back to normal, on the surface at least. All you’ve got to do is find somewhere to keep your twelve drummers drumming.

It’s great to have a celebration of Jesus being revealed, but it’s also the time he goes into hiding, carried into Egypt by his parents to escape violence and politics. Traditionally this is the day on which Christmas decorations are put away, squirrelled away until next year. Even the gospels go quiet for a while, a biographical gap in their narratives in which Jesus surfaces for a cameo appearance at age 12, but for the most part stays hidden in the assumed mundanity of potty training and puberty. We don’t hear about Jesus learning to walk or talk, learning to carve wood or lug planks around building sites. Now, for those who follow the Church’s set readings, this hidden period gets glossed over. We dive back into the story with Jesus’s baptism as a 30-something and from there on in it’s a runaway train to Easter.

But it’s worth contemplating those silent years. Because I can sign up for the big theological ideas like the incarnation or the resurrection, for instance, or Pentecost overpowering Babel. Finding Jesus in the everyday? That I find more difficult. I appreciate the nativity sets and the Christmas trees and the carol services because they’re markers on the road and I’m bad at navigating my faith, and because Jesus gets hidden under the everyday when in fact he should be standing over it.

That’s an excuse though. I don’t keep my eye on the star enough. “Seek and you shall find,” Jesus says, but I don’t seek enough. Stuff gets in the way, all the stresses and complications of life on top of a toxic belief that Jesus isn’t that interested in this particular game of hide and seek. Honestly, he’s probably hiding behind the curtains with his feet sticking out and coughing loudly every time I get close, but still I think he’s run off to play with the other, cooler kids.

I appreciate this is all a bit messed up. These disruptive thoughts need to go; after the Wise Men encountered Jesus, they had to take a different route home because the original road was no longer a good idea.

And yet the only way forward is to keep looking, keep searching, and that means keeping eyes open, remembering that God maybe invisible but he’s not in hiding. Epiphany is a time of revelation, but that revelation is ongoing because Jesus didn’t just stop interacting with the world two thousand years ago; there’s still a chance to follow the star.