Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-15
We have arrived at last after our
long Lenten observance – our long Lent journey – to Easter. The last week particularly has been one of
high drama. The gospels’ telling of
Jesus’ final days are worthy of any great story – friendship, love, betrayal, sacrifice,
court room scenes, a horrific execution, and all culminating in today – what we
call in the fiction trade, the “happy ending”.
As the narrator in Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods concludes: “And it came to pass, all that seemed wrong
was now right, and those who deserved to were certain to live a long and happy
life. Ever after…” It is tempting to see Easter as the
concluding culmination of the events of Holy Week, the day in which we
Christians and the Church find and celebrate our happy ending.
However, if we do, we have really
not made ourselves familiar enough with
the narratives of the resurrection as presented in the Gospels. Take, for instance, the ending of the Gospel
of Mark which was proclaimed last evening at the Vigil. In it, there is no account of the
resurrection at all – certainly no appearance by the resurrected Christ. The women who arrive at tomb to anoint him
are only told of his resurrection by
the angels. After which the Evangelist
relates: “So they went out and fled from the tomb,
for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for
they were afraid.” (Mark 16:8) While
subsequent redactors attempted to soften the abruptly ambivalent ending with
words more hopeful, the vast majority of Biblical scholars agree that the
Gospel of Mark originally ended as we heard.
There is little here of a satisfying conclusion, much less a happy
ending. In some ways this morning’s
resurrection narrative from the Gospel of John is not any more
satisfactory. The two disciples believe,
but do not understand. And while Mary
does see and speak with the risen Christ, and while she goes and tells the “brothers”,
we are not certain of their response.
However, we do know how often incredulity was their attitude and we can
extrapulate that reaction here, most especially perhaps since the news came
from the mouth a woman; after all women were considered not fit to give
official testimony in any public arena. In
any case, there is no definitive ending here either; a questioning inconclusion
is the best we can do. The doubt with
which is shrouded the resurrection in the Gospel accounts, leaves open the
question of whether good has indeed conquered evil, of whether the ending – if
it is an ending at all – is happy or not.
In fact, at the close of Jesus spending forty days with his disciples
after his resurrection there still appears to be no conclusion to the progress
of events, and they ask Jesus “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the
kingdom to Israel?” Jesus says to them, “It
is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own
authority. But you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts
1:7-8) This doesn’t sound like an ending
at, but something altogether different, and hardly a rest from labors in which
“wrong was now right, and those who deserved to were certain to live a
long and happy life.”
But what if we considered Christ’s resurrection
not be an ending at all, but a beginning?
After all, is not this rather what the Scriptures convey? In his letter to the Colossians, Paul
writes that Christ “is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of all creation….He is the head of the body, the
church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come
to have first place in everything.” (Colossians 1:15, 18) Equally, this morning we hear him write to
the Corinthians: “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in
Christ. But each in his own order:
Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the
kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority
and power. For he must reign until he
has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:22-26) Paul here seems to understand Christ’s
resurrection as not the ending of the anything, but rather the beginning of
something completely new. He describes
and looks into a new future made available to all creation by the resurrection
of Christ. In fact, he imagines not just
s renewed creation, but a new creation.
And that is what the resurrection inaugurates, and that is what we
celebrate – that God making a new creation; notice I say “making”, not “has
made”. Easter is only the first day.
I have been asked so many times why
the early Christians moved their principal day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath – Saturday – to
Sunday. Well, apart from Jesus’ being
raised on a Sunday, I have sheepishly offered historical reasons for the shift
– reasons I have never found quite satisfactory. Most recently, I have been struck with the
fact that all the evangelists begin their resurrection narrative with these
words: “on the first day of the week”. It’s
no accident or coincidence, because as Christians we are not celebrating the last day of creation in which God and all
things find their rest. We are
celebrating the first day of the new creation! And we are saying here something
theologically quite important, quite central.
Easter is the celebration of the start, but also the ongoing, new
creation, and as Christians it is that process of continuing creation in which
we are all caught up. When a person
comes to baptism as Kaylee Belle did last night or as Megan (and hopefully
others) will do in a few months time, they are joining themselves to the death
and resurrection of Christ, to the new creation which has begun in Christ, and
thereby are made a new creation themselves.
They, in fact, are becoming both signs of that new creation, but also
the means through which that new creation will continue to come into being and
ultimately reach its fulfillemt when God shall be all in all. (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:28) Easter, Resurrection, Baptism – they are all
the same, and mark nothing like an ending, but a beginning.
Last evening at the Easter Vigil the
Easter light, the light of Christ, shone in the darkness; and our first Vigil
lesson was the telling of the creation of the heavens and the earth with God’s
first word in the Scriptures: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) The old creation begins with light shining in
the darkness, and so does therefore the new, but that light is still only
shining in the darkness and gains ground little by little as God’s new creation
is being shaped and formed according to God’s new order, an order in which we
have not only been invited to share, but which we have been called to
fashion. After all, in Christ, you…“you
are the light of the world”. (Matthew 5:14)
No, there is no happy ending here, not yet anyway; but there is a happy,
a glorious beginning. Alleluia! Christ
is risen and a new creation has begun.
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