Christ is risen!
Easter Day: 31st March, 2002
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's Eastern Hill
What a wonderful thing it is to get to this day once again. In a place like
St Peter's – and countless others around the Christian world – there
is a real sense of the participation in the journey towards this day. And it is
heavy going. For worshippers day by day this last week, for the musicians, the
cleaners and the polishers and the flower arrangers, the sanctuary teams, the
clergy, the confirmees and every one else who has been part of this Holy Week
and all the preparations for this day, there is a real sense of now having
come to the place we were working towards. That is the place and time when
we can join in that Easter proclamation.
To be here today is to be making a statement about what is important to you.
In an interview with a radio station about the City Churches Way of the Cross
last Friday I was asked if it is at all important to be doing or encouraging
something like that public outdoor observance, when for most people we were
just starting out on a welcome four day weekend, which is seen to have no real
religious significance. Something of a leading question perhaps and of course
I responded appropriately. But a representative of a very secular Australia
had respectfully asked a genuine question.
That question from secular Australia was perhaps really asking, is there any
need for God for us? A four-day weekend – all that time off work, with the
normal accompaniments of beach and barbecue, a pleasant relaxing time with
family and friends – is that not enough to ask for? We do have much to be
thankful for here in our part of this world – that is true. Comparatively
speaking, we are very well off. Most of us as individuals lead comfortable and
reasonably fulfilling lives. Yet we know too that all is not well. That there
is so much about our own society, this nation, this Church, that requires
renewing, restoring, and reforming. The rolling controversies of these last
six months must surely have alerted us to that. There are many things of which
it is quite impossible to be proud and comfortable.
We hear these words on a weekend when there has been a violent breakout
from the desert prison in which we have placed those Middle Easterners who
have arrived by boat on our shores, seeking assessment as refugees. Consider
the desperation these people must be experiencing. And in the Middle East
itself the very hills and towns that the Lord himself knew and walked are
echoing to the sound of bombs and tanks, and the cries of the dying. Consider
the bitter frustrations and hatreds that are brewing there. All through that
part of the world the powerless little people are being trampled underfoot as
the big power plays are made. And that is not to consider the ongoing horrors
in almost any part of the world we care to look.
So what of this world, for which we declare that Christ has died and risen
again? It is not in good shape. One could almost think it might indeed be in
need of redemption. How is the message to be heard and passed on? How then
might we seek to relate the Easter events and that joyful Easter proclamation
to the context within which we are actually hearing it? Is this not a world
that should be crying out for something different, something better? And yet
many of these horrors are being perpetrated in the name of God, in the honour
of religious tradition and belief. This is a hard context within which to
declare that God needs to break into all this afresh; that new life is the gift
that is required and offered. Yet that is what we do. With all our hearts.
For many there are now basic questions of meaning about much of traditional
and institutional religion. There are huge changes afoot. There are increasing
demands for renewed integrity and consistency, for a practice and a way of
living of and by Christians which is more clearly Christ-like – in short,
this again is a generation that is asking that we all of us practice what we
preach. These demands can sit uneasily with some of the structures and ways
that have developed through the centuries of the Church. But this is not
something to be afraid of. There are likely to be a lot of new beginnings in
the decades ahead.
It is also clear that, so far as residual religious observance is concerned,
in Australia at least, Christmas and its carols and Midnight Mass wins over
the rather more confronting narrative and message of Easter. Without doubt,
those who come to worship now at Easter are here out of some conviction or
actual desire to do so, and not social obligation.
The people of the resurrection who gather for worship on this day do so to
share in the celebration of the Lord's resurrection. We would wish to affirm
that and to encourage that. This is a very happy day. This is the day that
makes us who we are. We have therefore done everything we can by way of colour
and movement and song to underline this truth and to celebrate it.
And on this day of all days, we would wish to offer and share in the
experience of corporate Christian worship – a gathered community of people
from various backgrounds who together find themselves nourished, sustained
and reinvigorated by this common liturgical action. As we say together within
the heart of this liturgy – "We lift up our hearts to the Lord." And it is
indeed a right and good thing to do. The Anglo-catholic tradition of which
this church is a part sees this coming into the presence of God and this
receiving of God's presence, as basic to the shaping of the lives that we
then are to lead. How we are to live. How we are to pray. What others are to
see and find in us. What social action we are going to be part of.
At the end of this mass, with the Easter alleluias ringing in our ears, we
are dismissed to "Go in peace and love and serve the Lord." We have heard again
the Easter good news: of the triumph of good over evil; of the victory of life
over death; of the setting aside of that which separates and divides and
distorts in our relationship with God and each other. It is all summed up in
those simple words: Christ is risen!
What might be different if an individual or a whole society actually
behaved as if this were true? We do have the scriptural accounts of what a
difference it made to the scattering and bewildered disciples and followers
of the Lord. Today we have heard again the discovery of the empty tomb in the
garden. Look at what we have heard about the difference it made to those who
experienced it. Look at Mary Magdalene. Look at Peter and John. Look later
too at Thomas. Look at those who gathered by the lakeshore in Galilee and
shared the grilled fish. Look at the disciples on the road to Emmaeus. Look
then at what that first generation of Christians, utterly recharged by the
experience of the resurrection, actually did in their own times. Look how the
message and the implications of it were spread to the whole Mediterranean
world. Look how lives and communities were transformed.
What then might be the difference as we, too, seek again to live this out?
Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.
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