bath & wells: from the bishop
A SERMON PREACHED BY
THE BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS
EASTER BATH ABBEY 2008.
In 1875 the sailing ship Deutschland was wrecked, and among the loss of life was a group of Franciscan nuns. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins found this loss caused him to reflect that God was beyond our grasp. Confused as he was he never failed to hope, and he offered his prayer to God: ‘Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us.’ The term ‘easter’ here is a term used by sailors. It means to steer a ship towards the east, and into the light.
Today we celebrate Easter. For Christian people this festival is a welcoming of the light of God given to us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Since the beginning the resurrection has been something that people have found difficult to grasp. From the beginning people have doubted its reality. For others it has been a gesture of faith and of hope, while recognising that a complete understanding of it is, as with God, beyond our grasp.
Controversy over Easter will always continue because of its importance for Christian faith, and because of the historical and scientific difficulties of proving the claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. For Christians, however, the resurrection provides the very reason for Christianity. As one writer has commented, ‘the only reason there is any Christianity is because of the resurrection.’
We may say that the how of the resurrection is shrouded in mystery , but the why of the resurrection is a revelation. Let me explain what I mean. The resurrection, in the first place, is God’s ‘yes’ to Jesus, and the truth that Jesus spoke concerning the kingdom of God. It was an affirmation of the quality of life that Jesus lived as he both lived and taught about the justice of God.
By his deeds and his words, in healing the sick, defending the poor, challenging the powerful and demonstrating forgiveness, including that of enemies, Jesus revealed the possibility of a new order of humanity. To believe in the resurrection of Jesus is to commit ourselves to bringing an end to injustice, poverty and death. To invite, as Gerard Manley Hopkins, to ‘let him (that is Jesus) easter in us’, is to commit ourselves to Jesus’ cause: the justice of God.
If the resurrection is God’s ‘yes’ to Jesus and the vision of the justice of God; it is also about the renewing, re-birthing of the created order, what is often called the cosmos. Jesus is the sign of a new age signalling that God has broken through into the present dark age, and that it will come to an end. To use Manley Hopkins words, it will be a ‘dayspring to the dimness of us.’ The resurrection offers us hope, when everything around us within human experience, speaks of despair.
If the resurrection confirms for us the vision of God for a world renewed; and offers us hope for the ending of the darkness that destroys; then third, it offers us grounds for courage. For what resurrection speaks of is that there is life beyond death. Life to be lived fully and usefully in the presence of God. And such an understanding provides those who believe in the resurrection to act with courage in seeking the justice of God ending injustice, poverty and the causes of death.
Anthony Gormley the sculptor whose statues include the Angel of the North and the one hundred figures on the sands of Crosby beach, designed a statue in Margate entirely made of rubbish. It was designed to be burnt – and to collapse slowly. Crowds came to watch – and it was filmed. In the filming the camera caught the eyes and faces of people transfixed by the burning. One observer of this remarked, it was as if within this event, the world was crying ‘save me.’
There is little doubt that we are living in times when the cry is ‘save me’, whether it is the victims of war and violence, those who are poor and at the margins of human society, or the cry of the planet and its habitat. The Christmas story is surrounded with so much schmaltz and sentiment that it is difficult to remember that the purpose of God breaking and entering into the world in the person of Jesus Christ is to bring peace.
In times where such a reality seems far away from fulfilment, it is easy to escape into pietism, to reduce the vision of God simply to peace of mind, ease of conscience and personal uprightness. The resurrection invites us not only to faith and hope, but to courage and action.
If the resurrection bears witness to the truth of life after death, then we may with confidence overcome our fears of death, whether by natural means or the exterminating deeds of others. There is real comfort to be discovered in the repetition of scripture: ‘Do not be afraid. Fear not.’
More radically, our hope in resurrection, can lead us to the confident belief that justice will prevail, and that it is possible to bear unfairness in the here and now, because we know that it will be vindicated by God. Resurrection requires of us then that we take responsibility for thinking and acting creatively about what we can do socially, internationally, and individually to find solutions to the problems that our world faces.
I am not a great one for old movies. I was sorry to miss Brief Encounter and have never seen Gone with the wind – but maybe one day. There is one film, which was drawn to my attention recently, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, starring James Stewart. It is a film about a small town guy called George Bailey, who wants to leave and see the world. He never makes it. He marries his childhood sweetheart, manages the family business, giving loans to working folk to buy their own homes brings up his kids, and is an all round good guy. Because of a failed deposit, he is virtually bankrupted by the evil bank manager Mr. Potter. He contemplates suicide, but his guardian angel, in the form of Clarence, tells him that life would be poorer without him, and in fact it is – A Wonderful Life.
On the surface the whole thing seems a bit sentimental, but as the reviewer observed, it is a film about commitments that still have the capacity to inspire: generosity, compassion and community. If we are to be those who live in the power of the resurrection seeking to join in God’s vision of ending injustice, poverty and death, then such commitments as generosity, compassion and community are essential to such activity.
Pope Benedict observed that ‘the work of justice in a free society is the work of politics.’ In our society that means democratic politics. But it is not something that is to be simply left to politicians. We know that many people of faith and no faith are concerned with the environment, saving the planet. We know that many too seek an end to the ending of poverty and the making of a more just and equal world. Many too share the vision of a society in which market capitalism is balanced with the need for the common good and concerns for justice.
Our politicians talk of family values, but squabble over the meagre resources given to the most vulnerable. All of these situations invite a new energy, a resurrection energy, where new coalitions are formed between peoples of faith, and no faith. We need to recognise that the great movements for justice have often been the work of religious people, inspired by their faith.
We need to acknowledge that while religion can promote bigotry it can and does also promote justice and the cause of the needy. We need a passion to move from the spirit of despair, and the culture of fear, that says our problems cannot be solved, to one in which we strive together for the common good.
The common goals of common good, are the common goals of the God who inspired Mary the Mother of Jesus, witness of the crucifixion and resurrection, to lift up the poor, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and challenge injustice. And why should this be for us more than anyone else? Simply, because we know the Christ who can easter in us; point us towards the light.
We believe in the resurrection, which vindicates the Christ who lived and proclaimed God’s saving justice. That because we believe in life after death, we can bear injustice and unfairness for ourselves now, knowing that we will be vindicated by God. We can enter into imaginatively and responsibly thinking about what can be done to find solutions to the world’s problems, because God gives the courage to face whatever –and he easters in us – pointing us towards the light.
Happy Easter. +Peter
Bath and Wells
A sermon preached by the Bishop of Taunton in Wells Cathedral: Easter Day 2008
Hans Scholl was executed by the Nazis when he was just 25 years old. He had served on the Russian Front, but became a member of the White Rose Society with his twin sister Sofi. This society founded by a group of university students in 1942 circulated leaflets, as a courageous act of resistance, criticising the Nazi regime.
Some time before that, on his way to the Russian Front, his train was stopped in Poland. Along with other soldiers he climbed down from the train and wandered along the track where he came a cross a group of young women engaged in hard labour. He could tell from the yellow stars on their uniform and by their emaciated condition that they were Jews from a concentration camp.
Approaching the first woman, Hans reached for the ‘K’ ration bar of chocolate, nuts and raisins in his bag and slipped it into the young girl’s pocket. Immediately she grabbed it and threw it back at him. Somewhat taken aback Hans responded, ‘I wanted to give you just a little pleasure.’ Refusing to give up on her, he bent down by the side of the track and picked a daisy and placed it at the girl’s feet and then he ran for his departing train. As he looked back, he saw the girl standing tall with the daisy in her hair.
The ‘K’ ration bar, even with its promise of pleasure in chocolate, nuts and raisins could only have met Sofi’s immediate need to stem the hunger in her belly and in the hopelessness of her situation she knew that was not enough. It could only be a temporary release from the hell she found herself in, and maybe that’s why she threw it back, whereas the daisy was a symbol of the continuing cycle of life, the hope that even if nothing changed for her, she might dare to believe that there was hope for the future. So, for the sake of the future, she would wear the daisy and stand tall against all that the worst of humanity could do to her.
John Cleese in the film ‘Clockwise’ remarks, ‘It’s not despair I mind, it’s hope I cannot stand.’ Hope challenges our fatalism which is why it is so unsettling, but today, Resurrection day, we are called to hope, to dare to kindle and fan an extravagant hope for the future of humanity. Of course, at one level, Easter Day changes nothing. Today, as yesterday, one sixth of the world continues to live in extreme poverty. Today, as yesterday, the Aids pandemic continues to decimate communities in different parts of our world. Today, as yesterday, the people of Gaza, Tibet, Iraq, Zimbabwe and many other places fear for the future. Today, as yesterday, even in our own society the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Today, as yesterday, there are people we know and who are very close to us, who are living with the cruel reality of suffering. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed.
It was Mary Magdala, the gospel reminds us, who is there, in the garden at the dawn of this new day. She has not left Jesus’ side in life or in death. Powerless to help, nevertheless she stays. It is her faithfulness and courage that has brought her to this place and keeps her there. She has endured the loss of all hope and knows there can be no consolation, but because she stays she is still there on Easter Morning, the first to meet the risen Christ in the bright dawn of his resurrection.
I suggested on Good Friday that ‘holy’ is too religious a word for this week that we have been through. Instead we should call it courage week because that is what resurrection calls us to, the courage to insist, with Sofi all those years before, that even in the midst of suffering that nothing is lost, nothing is lost, the courage to cling to God’s warmth when we are in the grip of an icy meaninglessness, the courage to hold to the hope we have in Christ no matter what. All the talk about whether there was an empty tomb or not is really not the point. What really matters is what difference Easter Day makes to the way you and I live our lives today and tomorrow.
Will the truth of Easter enable us to live more courageously, standing in solidarity with all that is life giving in our world, but standing against all that is death dealing? Will the truth of Easter give us greater capacity for kindness and compassion in our day to day dealings with one another? Will the truth of Easter encourage us to live more in hope than in fear, resisting safety and security and embracing the risk of the adventure of life that God is inviting us to make?
On television last week, I happened to catch sight of an interview with Colin Parry, the father of the teenage boy Tim who was killed by an IRA bomb in Warrington some years ago. Colin refused to give in to the grief and despair that accompanied Tim’s death and instead travelled to Northern Ireland to discover for themselves the roots of the conflict there. That journey led him and his wife to create a charitable trust in memory of Tim that has developed centres of peace and reconciliation in trouble torn communities. ‘It is about looking forward more, and looking back less’, he said. Looking forward more and looking back less, a good enough description for me of the reality that lies at the heart of what resurrection means.
The clear directive that Jesus gives to Mary in the garden and to us now is, ‘Do not cling.’, and yet cling is so often what we do. As Richard Holloway observes, ‘We want the settled life, the life of the graveyard, where little happens, but where we can water the flowers and gaze at the gravestones and remember the past with affection. But our God is a grave buster, a tombstone roller, a wandering God, calling us to leave the graveyard and follow him into Galilee. To be Christians we have to resign ourselves to an exciting life. The real question is, ‘Are we up for it?’
+Peter
Taunton
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