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Organ music from Holy Trinity Cathedral,
played by
Eugene Lavery,
Assistant Organist |
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Sermon for Easter 2007
The Rt Rev’d Richard Randerson, Dean
8th April 2007
There are places on Earth where life is tough:
- Baghdad, where you live in fear your child might not return from school
- Africa – no food, polluted water, AIDS
- The Solomon Islands, after the tsunami
- the many homeless than 10kms from here with inadequate housing, food, education or health care
- being part of a family experiencing serious illness, bereavement or broken relationship.
None of us can avoid all of these things in life, but some have more than their fair share. Through Holy Week we’ve seen Jesus’ disciples experiencing traumas of their own:
- the joyful Palm Sunday crowds which turned septic and demanded Jesus’ death
- Peter, who three times denied Jesus : how could he forgive himself?
- the disciples, who fled for their lives
- and now after Good Friday their total devastation over Jesus’ death
- all they’d lived and hoped for destroyed
- a future uncertain and deeply worrying.
Their experiences of failure and despair are also part of our experience of life, causing us at times to be overwhelmed by the suffering and evil around us. But while we know the suffering of Good Friday, we are also Easter people who know that suffering and evil are not the end. Yet where do we look for evidence of Jesus’ resurrection?
- the empty tomb led only to more distress
- nor did they know what had happened to Jesus’ body.
History does not provide us with evidence or explanation about either tomb or body. The disciples’ conviction that led them to say “Christ is risen” arose in quite a different manner. The Gospels record in several places the desolation and fear of Jesus’ followers, yet they also record how in the days that followed those followers at different times and in different places had experiences of Jesus’ appearing to them:
- Mary in the garden near the tomb
- two disciples on the road to Emmaus
- several gathered on the lake-shore
- others sharing a meal in a locked room.
The nature of those appearances cannot be determined. Jesus came and went, and was not always recognised. But what is certain is that his followers were transformed by the conviction that the generous life and love of God that was seen in Jesus could not be extinguished by his death on the Cross. As the hymn says:
Death’s mightiest powers have done their worst
Yet Jesus has his foes dispersed.
That’s why I believe the resurrection is an historical event : the love of God changed the lives of the disciples, and it continues to change ours today. You see, as Christians our faith is not that God will spare us from the suffering which is our common human lot, but rather that in whatever circumstance we find ourselves, we are not alone. God is with us, God’s love surrounds us. God gives new hope and purpose.
On Good Friday our Archbishop, David Moxon, spoke of Jesus’ words from the Cross to his mother Mary and his disciple John, bidding them to care for each other. God’s love spreading out to all people began at the foot of the Cross. God’s love sustains each one of us. God’s love enables us to sustain each other.
That love reaches out to all God’s family, be they in Auckland, the Solomons, Baghdad or Africa. Our reading from Isaiah 65 paints a picture of a new heaven and a new earth where people will build houses and live in them, plant vineyards and eat the fruit, and no longer bear children for calamity.
It is a resurrection vision: a world where the love of God has become so pervasive that peace breaks out on all fronts, and no one lives in want. It is a world which is ours to create, as we know God’s love for us, as we allow that love to transform our lives as it did for the disciples on that first Easter Day, and as we reach out in love to transform the lives of others.
This is Easter, and this is why we say “Christ is risen : He is risen indeed”. He is risen in our hearts, in our lives, in our world.
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