Burning like fire!

A sermon preached at Evensong at Guildford Cathedral on Easter Day Evensong: The texts were Psalm 66; Isaiah 43: 1-13; John 20:19-23. The film Watership Down happened to be showing that afternoon - some comments on Twitter suggested it wasn't an appropriate children's movie for Easter Day. However, perhaps the story of rabbits names the reality of pain and hope in the face of mortality. The Gospel of Jesus' life, death and resurrection brings the good news into our human condition; it reveals the destiny of the whole created order. Sin and death are overcome: Alleluia: Christ is risen! 

Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel is guaranteed to make me cry.

My eyes begin to well up in the opening bars.  Is it a kind of dream?

The words and melody of the refrain are really gut-wrenching:

Bright eyes, burning like fire

Bright eyes, how can you close and fail?

How can the light that burned so brightly

Suddenly burn so pale?

Bright eyes.

It's a favourite song for my sister too. Most of us probably associate it with the film for which it was written - Watership Down.  As eleven year old, it was the book which gripped my imagination - exciting, beautiful, sad, terrifying and hopeful. My copy is dog eared and held together with sellotape.

Watership Down begins with the decision to leave a comfortable warren behind when safety is compromised by a vision of its destruction. Hazel leads them on along and dangerous journey. Snares and threats surround them; the viability of their peaceful habitat is established as a result of courage, loyalty and ingenuity.

The places are real; as are the animal instincts. Yet, the addition of a rabbit 'culture' with its own language and mythology perhaps touch our own hopes and fears. That includes the reality of death.

In the epilogue, Hazel dozes. He dreams. He senses the nearness of a mythical rabbit. It seemed to him that 'he would not be needing his body anymore, so he left it'. He's told not to worry. He slips away - 'running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom'.

Bright Eyes is a fitting evocation of our mortality: how can eyes that burn so brightly close and fail?

Whether or not we read it as a child or discovered it as an adult; whether we're captivated by Richard Adams' words or Martin Rosen's film adaptation: this saga about a motley band of rabbits poses stark questions about life and death. It does so more effectively than the Kinder chocolate bunnies wrapped in gold with neat red bows around their necks!  But it's our scriptures - not rabbits - which speak truthfully about life, death and resurrection.

Our life span is a fleeting breath. For the disciples, caught up in what was a catastrophic cycle of violence, perhaps they too asked, how could one whose life had burned to brightly suddenly burn so pale?  Jesus, the one who'd proclaimed the nearness of God's Kingdom, burned like fire: words of forgiveness and challenge; acts of healing and nourishment.

It seemed to them that all this was undone by their acts of betrayal, denial and misunderstanding. All that might have been was brought to a hideous end by the corrosive combination of power, fear and weakness. They fled and waited; they watched and prepared spices.

Like us, they had words and rituals for grief. Even if death didn't make sense there was a body to tend with love and dignity.  Grief has its own emptiness: the shadows reaching into the night; the habits of relating and quirks of character; the things left unsaid and undone.

The emptiness of a tomb is of a different order.  

The very absence of a body points to a presence that is more real. Resurrection is an expression of abundance not lack. It reveals the transfigured, incorruptible embodiment, to which we move; as we are transformed from one degree of glory to another.

Bright Eyes speaks of a fog on the horizon and a strange glow in the sky; it asks 'what does it mean?'

Locked doors were for the disciples a response to that question. It meant something risky; it meant something new; something that would change them and us, and the cosmos.

Resurrection reveals the fullness of God breaking into our lives. It is something that we cannot contain; but something in which we can trust.

Resurrection declares that God is with us from first cry to final breath: with us with such love that death is overcome; with us to such an extent that forgiveness and peace pour forth. 

Resurrection fulfils the words of the prophet Isaiah: the one who created us says 'do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you my name you are mine'.

To believe in the risen Jesus is to trust that the transformative power of God is active in the sphere of human life; it empowers us in the present. More than that, that transformation and recreative activity is at work in the whole created order.

The disciples in that upper room encounter resurrection in the intimacy of known relationships and in the honesty of their despair and disappointment.

Fears are named in the Gospel of John - in an exhaled breath if you like.

And in response a word peace is expressed - it is breathed out.

They are shown their Lord's wounded hands and pierced side. He has not left his body behind, like the rabbit Hazel. Rather it is transformed in power and glory. The disciples' outward sight kindles in them their inner joy.

The refrain is not: is this a dream?

The refrain of resurrection is: Peace be with you!

Today is not the end of something. It is but the beginning - they are commissioned.

The Son was sent by the Father - to draw the whole world to himself.

The Son now sends the disciples - in the power of the Spirit.

The mission they receive - the calling we share - is to reveal the compassionate, liberating and forgiving love of God.

Oftentimes, as human beings - alone and together - we feel just as frightened and confused as those locked behind physical doors. Perhaps our constraints are the fears of our hearts; the memories of hurt and failure we lock down inside ourselves.

Our risen Lord stands alongside us - just as he stood alongside those first disciples, without reproach for their shortcomings. He breaths his Spirit on us. Our life is but a breath; but it is to be a breath of peace.

In Watership Down, the rabbits were motivated by their fears and hopes - and by trust in a dream of a better place. In Christ, we are motivated by hopes and new realities - and by trust in God, working his purpose out in and through us, by the power of his Spirit.  

Fictional rabbits journeyed across a real landscape. In the reality of our lives, across the tangible landscapes of work, relationships, places and circumstances, we are to show the same courage and perseverance; the same hope and resilience.

That means we are to live love; that means we are live forgiveness.

Sometimes that means naming, challenging and freeing others from the human equivalents of 'snares' or 'dictator-state warrens'.

Love and forgiveness of the Spirit's work within us. As Rowan Williams puts it in his book Resurrection: 'Forgiveness is precisely the deep and abiding sense of what relation - with God or with other human beings - can and should be; and so it is itself a stimulus, an irritant, necessarily provoking protest at impoverished versions of social and personal relationships'.

The one who died has risen in love.

That power is at work in us enabling us to rise in hope.

This is our faith: to witness in the power of the Spirit, to the compassionate and liberating love of God.

Resurrection light that burns brightly, does not burn pale; it burns brighter still.

Resurrection is cosmic in scope: with deeply personal impact.

God's Kingdom embraces non-human animals: God's Spirit refines our smallest gestures. 

As the psalmist puts is: be joyful in God, all the earth... say to God, 'how awesome are your deeds'.

Christ is risen: flame of love burns within us!

Christ sheds his peaceful light in all the world!

Live that love; share that peace.

I shall not die, but live!

During our Easter Vigil, we waited beyond the evening  and into morning hours; until the breaking in of dawn. We wait for fires to be kindled; candles to be lit; for bells to ring and for the A-word to be sung. The glory of God rings out because the tomb is empty.

We remember on this night the story of liberation; a story known by the psalmists – recited by them time and time again. Psalm 114 describes power of the LORD leading Israel out of from Egypt and the ‘house of Jacob from a people of strange language’.

‘Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water’. The God who delivered a people long ago, still delivers us. 

And on Easter Day, we repeat again the words of Psalm 118: ‘I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone which the builders has become the chief cornerstone’.

We say and sing these words in the assurance that this is the Lord’s doing; that it is marvelous; that this is the day that the Lord has made.

 

But rejoicing is far from the lips of the women when they arrive at the tomb – bringing with them the aroma of spices to the coldness of death. They are afraid. He is not here. He is risen. 

Rejoicing is far from the lips of Peter and John when they hear the news; when they hear the Mary Magdalene tells them the stone has been moved, they run, trying to outdo one another in haste. They look in and see. They go in and look. One sees and believes. 

 

‘I shall not die, but live’ says the psalmist as he writes of glad victory songs.

‘They did not yet understand the scripture’, wrote John, ‘that he must rise from the dead’.

‘He did not give me over to death’, says the psalmist, rejoicing with his people after battle is done; threats have subsided.

‘But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb’.

 

She stands alone in what my supervisor Dan Hardy called ‘cross light’: the mystery, agony, glory and redemptive power of the cross. She stands where the sting of death becomes the life abundant. She cannot see it yet.

She knows what she sees – an empty tomb. Her instinct tells her that she must find out where her Lord has been taken. She does not recognize him; she assumes he’s the gardener.

 She hears here name; she knows her Lord. Her instincts tell her to reach and hold him. ‘O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever!’

But she can’t cling on; it’s a very human moment. Embracing new life means letting go. It’s lesson perhaps we all need to learn. 

One of the reasons I think this story so affects me is that I recall hugging my father the night before major surgery and he said ‘don’t hold on to me too tightly, Ju’. 

And I thought how absurd because I wasn’t. Not physically. But perhaps he had a better grasp of letting go than I did. Perhaps he had a level of trust I the face of death that meant for him it was the beginning of life.

Weeping and naming; letting go and being sent. 

‘The LORD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation’.

Where does it come together? Where does it make sense? 

For me returning to the beginning – hearing the words of Palm Sunday ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ as we remember the Last Supper; as in the power of the Spirit we encounter Christ in bread and wine. 

There psalmists and saints, with Dan, my dad we tell of God’s marvelous works.  As we hear in psalm 66: ‘make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise; say to God “how awesome are your deeds!... All the earth worships you’.

On Easter Day, the psalms resound with that vision: ‘Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals’. Yes, in psalm 66 this refers to passing through the red sea on dry land.

But now we rejoice in liberation for all people.

We are called and sent to be a people of praise and prayer; to be a people living in reconciling love; to be a people witnessing to that in word and dead; to be a generous pilgrim people.

  © Julie Gittoes 2016