Poetics

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

An Easter sermon

Christ is Risen!

Do you hear the full import of those words, as spoken to us in the course of today's Liturgy? From the first lesson at morning prayer today, the prophet Isaiah says: "For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built." (Is. 25:2) Since the Fall of mankind in the commission of Original Sin, we have built up many needless edifices. Out of self-generated fear, our forebears in the garden became ashamed to show themselves to the God who created them and knew them better than they knew themselves. To the civilising Law of Moses costly and useless personal burdens were added. The worship of the Temple, intended to be on behalf of the entire nation of Israel, became impossible without the exchange of currency. The glory of the Messiah was replaced with the poverty of human conceptions; no longer an emissary of the very life of God, but a political or a military leader who would do nothing more than improve conditions here on earth for a select few.
 
Way back on the second Sunday in Lent, the bulletin insert contained the following commentary on the Epistle: "God loves us enough to accept us as we are, but too much to leave us as we are." And indeed, the Law of Moses and the rites of the Temple were not only fulfilled but surpassed in the Upper Room, on Calvary, and in the empty tomb on the third day. What was destroyed were any fallible conceptions that had been added to these things and which did nothing but discredit the practice of religion and veil the covenant that God Himself had given to us. Thus we read: "And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations." (Is. 25:7) And yet, how often are we tempted still to veil our faith? In a long string of "what ifs", "I don't knows" and "if onlys" our own poverty is exposed and our hope is hidden. But, our worry really is quite needless. All of these things have already been taken care of. "For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress." (Is. 25:4a)
 
Consider what has been done for us. From an ancient, anonymous homily on Holy Saturday: "For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden....I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you."
 
This is quite earthy, dramatic imagery, but it corresponds exactly with the passion, death and descent into the place of departed spirits that Jesus undertook. And this is exactly what St. Paul is exhorting us to this morning. "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." (Col. 3:3) I don't know about you, but whenever I find myself at a graveside, the first thing that comes to mind isn't: this is great, how fortunate we are to be here! A grave is not a nice place. It is dirty, cold and confined. Neither is a cross. It is both physically and psychologically mortifying, meant to make death as ugly as possible. But these terrible things have been truly converted. The veil of uncertainty, anguish and despair is now permanently torn away. For, you see, our God has the uncanny ability to turn that which is hideous and filled with death into something perfectly beautiful and lifegiving. And just as our Lord Jesus Christ passed through the Cross into the Resurrection, so are we, of our very nature as Christian people, called to do likewise. In the words of St. Gregory Nazianzen: "Let a man give all things to him who gave himself for us as the price of redemption and as the substitute of our guilt. Nothing so great, however, can be given in return, as the offering of ourselves, if we rightly understand this mystery, and if we, for his sake, become all things, whatsoever he for our sakes became."
 
After all this, the beauty of our false constructions being torn away and the conversion of death into the way of eternal life, I admit that I find the Gospel selection for the principle service today somewhat more subdued than I think it ought to be. There is not the great proclamation of faith, 'My Lord and my God!', that Thomas will make later on during the course of the Liturgy. There is the fact that only the Beloved Disciple seems to have had immediate faith in the Resurrection. There is the troubling fact that we are told "as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." Mary Magdalen immediately assumes the worst, that someone has removed the body. The whole scene is almost too anti-climactic. What we won't hear liturgically is that Mary has remained behind and questions the man she assumes to be the gardener who in fact is the only one able to comfort her sorrow and reveal the truth of the situation.
 
"Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord." What a tremendous relief it is to read those words. The faith of the Beloved Disciple is confirmed. The other Apostles are awakened to at least the possibility that what they had learned and received from Jesus were not in fact the ravings of a madman, but the truth of the living God.
 
And that, my friends, really speaks to the heart of why we are here doing what we do and believing what we believe. From the ancient Baals, to the fickle and self-serving deities of Mt. Olympus, from the humane wisdom of Confucius to the obedience demanded by Allah, right down to our own day where numerous self-declared atheists have rejected an anthropomorphic parody of God; none of these objects of our fear and devotion have ever spoken to the deepest need of the human heart, which is to hear: "I love you" from one who actually means it. Only in Jesus Christ, while He healed and preached, drove out demons and welcomed sinners, gave of Himself at the Last Supper and on Calvary, when He rose again and appeared to His first friends, has our God declared His love for us and shown us what it really means.
 
And so it is most chiefly in these things, but also every day that we are privileged to draw in the breath of life, both when we are filled with great faith and during those moments of crushing despair and fear of what is unknown, that we are able to "[b]ehold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us." Again, from that same ancient homily: "Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity." And if all that sounds too good to be true, way beyond our deserving, we have only to read again II Peter 1:4, "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." As our need was indeed beyond our condition to repair, so the remedy freely given is ten thousand times beyond our wildest imaginings. And it is not begrudgingly given, but generously. So ought it to be received in the hearts of all believers. "It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."

Christ is Risen!