I would like to take you back tonight, as I did on Monday at the Penance Service and again on Good Friday when we remembered the horrific events of the Passion, to the starting point of our lenten reflections this year; the great Genesis myth of the Fall and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden. We saw, then, how, to eat of this tree, was to be guilty of arrogance in the face of God, to take to oneself the right to decide what was right or wrong without reference to a higher authority, the fundamental message being that, by doing this, humanity has upset the balance of creation and introduced an element of chaos and disharmony which lie at the root of all our problems. But it wasn’t like this in the beginning, the author of Genesis tells us. In the beginning, as we heard tonight, God looked at what he had made and saw that it was good. The original state of the world, the default position - to use an image from the world of computers – was, according to the myth, one of balance and harmony with the mind of the creator. Sin upset that balance and the fundamental message is that, until humanity learns to live again in harmony with the mind of God, it will continue to wander through history indulging in self-harm and self-destruction. That is why, during Advent, we hear those wonderfully poetic passages from the prophet Isaiah where he speaks of the lion lying the the lamb, the panther with the kid and so on. Isaiah is longing for the restoration of the original harmony and a return to things as the creator intended them to be. What neither Isaiah nor any of the other prophets could have imagined, however, was the wonderful and amazing way in which God would do this.
And so, just three months ago, we celebrated the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery by which, in the person of Jesus, God became part of our world, accepted the limitations of being human and entered deeply into our experience. He proclaimed the coming of the kingdom, the fulfillment of Isaiah’s dream, and opened up to humanity a whole new way of living which, if the world were to follow it, would, developing the imagery of the Genesis myth, restore to creation the original balance it had lost, enabling us to live once more in harmony with the mind of God. But it isn’t that easy. Once we have eaten from the tree in the middle of the garden and been seduced into thinking that we are gods, that we know better, there is a deep resistance in us to this movement of God in our lives and in history. And on Friday we saw the consequences of it. Faced with Jesus and his call to radical conversion, humanity’s deep conservatism, its profound resistance to change, the original illusion that we are a law unto ourselves, kicked in and the world rejected him, preferring Barrabas, and sending the Word made Flesh to the cross. The final act of the Incarnation had taken place. God, in Jesus, had plumbed the darkest depths of the human condition. In the words of the Creed, he had descended into hell, so that, as he rose, he lifted the whole human race with him. The resurrection is God restoring creation to its original beauty, undoing the damage caused by human arrogance, and from that moment onwards history is no more than the truth of this unfolding and becoming reality in the world. Salvation is not something in the future. Salvation has already happened. The world is saved from itself and the joy of this fills the hearts of those who believe and can see it all around them in everything that happens.
But, as happened on that first Easter day, many cannot see it. Even, or should it be especially, within the Churches, there are those who continue to think that the world is a terrible place, failing to recognize the power of the Resurrection at work in it. And yet it’s everywhere. We see it in the faith of so many people in the face of adversity. We see it in the courage of those who continue to trust in God when all human grounds for trust have gone. We see it in those who, despite the forces of hatred, and despair lined up against them, continue to believe in the presence of God’s kingdom in the world. We see it in those who work for peace in the midst of seemingly unstoppable violence. We see it in the faith of man and women who, in the presence of death and the heart-break it brings, continue, not just to believe, but to know with a deep interior knowledge beyond all human logic that death is not the end and that beyond it lies a new way of living far greater than anything we can imagine. And we see it, perhaps above all, in humanity’s unquenchable longing for something better, something more permanent, something that does not slip through our fingers, something that will finally satisfy those deep longings in us which nothing created is ever able to satisfy. We are made for God and only God can satisfy us.
But there is one particular place where I invite you to see the Risen Jesus this Easter, and it’s in the Church itself. Faced with the current situation of declining numbers and so on, many despair and long for byegone days. They are profoundly mistaken. Like Mary Magdalen on that first Easter morning, they are standing weeping outside an empty tomb. That tomb is the past, and Jesus is not in it. Mary thought that someone had taken Jesus away and that she had lost him. The truth was that he had risen and was standing behind her. But, still stuck in the past, she was not able to recognize him, thinking that he was the gardener. And it is the same today. Yes, many have walked away from the Churches. We do face many questions and the future, as it was for Mary and the others that morning, is unclear. But all of this is as it should be. For there to be new life there first has to be death. Many of the crises facing the Church today are no more than the old dying so that something new can be born. The disciples were in despair on Easter morning. But events were already moving in a direction they could never have imagined. God was at work, just as he is in the Church today, and there is nothing to fear.
The light has shone in the darkness and the darkness has no power over it any longer.
BIDDING PRAYERS
As an Easter people, men and women of the Resurrection, we ask God to stir in us today something of the joy and hope Easter brings to those who believe. We ask him to lead us beyond the pessimism and negative way of thinking about the world which so often fills the hearts of religious people and open our eyes to the presence of Jesus, risen, alive, and active in everything that happens. May we be a joyful, hopeful, faith-filled and Christ-like people in the midst of the world…….Lord hear us
When Mary Magdalen came to the tomb early on the first day of the week, she was filled with sadness, heart-broken by the events of Good Friday. But what was to follow changed her life. Having met the Risen Jesus, she became the first bearer of the Good News of Easter to others. And so we pray for George and Jennifer, that their lives, too, will be changed in some way by what has happened here today and that, like Mary, they will be able their experience with others…………...Lord hear us
Many today have lost touch with the meaning of Easter. For many it is no more than a spring holiday. And yet humanity’s need to hear the Good News of the Resurrection has never been greater. Having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and rejected the One who created us, we are destroying the very planet we live on. And so we pray that, in this third millennium, humanity, having rejected the gods of supersition and magic, will come to know the true God and learn to live in harmony with his dream for us……………………………..Lord hear us
The presence of the Risen Jesus in the world is there for all who have eyes to see. His Spirit is at work in people who don’t even know there is a Holy Spirit. He is in those who hunger and thirst what is right; in those who work for peace where peace seems impossible; in those who feed the hungry and clothe the naked; in those who are merciful and refuse to judge those whom the world condemns; and in so many other good people everywhere, far beyond the boundaries of church or organised religion. And we simply pray for the grace to see this……...……..Lord hear us
In St John’s account of the Resurrection, Mary Magdalen stands weeping outside an empty tomb while the Jesus she seeks has moved on. She is looking into the past, facing in the wrong direction, and to see Jesus she has to turn around and look the other way. And so we pray for all in the Churches today who are looking into the past for what no longer exists that we will turn round, open our eyes and recognize the new thing that God is doing for a new age………………..Lord hear us
And as an Easter People, we pray for all those who have died. We pray, too, for those among us who are living through the pain of loss and bereavement after the death of loved-ones, that the Spirit will stir in all of us this Easter a deep faith in the reality of life beyond death, a life which, since it is far beyond our current experience, can only be known through grace……..Lord hear us
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