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.
