“If you came this way… at any time…” A sermon for Easter Sunday
This is my sermon this year, for Easter Sunday. My readings were: Jeremiah 31:1-6, Acts 10:34-43, and Matthew 28:1-10
“If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same:…
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words…”
Some of you may recognise these words from T.S Eliot’s poem Little Gidding, the final part of The Four Quartets, which is a piece whose fragments have been coming to my mind all week, as I’ve been thinking about what to say this Easter. And for me, there are two deep truths in this fragment, which I want us to think about this morning.
·The first is that all time leads to this moment—this triduum, these three days of the Holy weekend of Easter.
And the second is that this moment—this event—asks for a response from us. And so we might think about that response.
I.
But first, time.
If you came this way… at any time or at any season / It would always be the same.
Time is ~funky~ when you really start to get into it (I think that’s the technical scientific term). The way humans live and mark time in a linear, chronological fashion, with a start and an end, is only one way of seeing it. Only one way of understanding the things that happen in relationship to each other. But time is, actually, very ‘timey-wimey’ as Doctor Who might say. And so while we celebrate the triduum—the three days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter—on consecutive days (because some churches will have begun celebrating Easter after sunset on Saturday) and reflect on them individually in our services; they are also, from a different perspective, one event. Not three. And while triduum might sometimes sound like fancy-pants church Latin, it’s really just a word that helps us to remember this.
The crucifixion has no meaning without the resurrection. We might learn many good moral lessons from it, but its transformative power comes from the resurrection.
And the resurrection needs the crucifixion. Not just logically, because there needs to be death before resurrection. But because there is something vitally important about the power of divine life’s overcoming the worst that the world can throw at it, that is summed up in the cross
It is one cosmic moment. And, to quote the Orthodox priest and theologian, Fr John Behr: Jesus Christ’s death is the end of all things—of everything that has come into being, but also the beginning of our true beginning.
For God, who sees and knows all things, Christ’s death and resurrection is the end of the old and the beginning of the new. The unveiling of the ultimate truth of God’s kingdom of love and justice.
For us, who live within chronological time, this moment of unveiling somehow stretches out alongside our temporal experience of life and the world. We are somehow enveloped in it, able to see and experience it breaking into the tick-tock of daily life.
It is tangible, but not graspable: in the way that the promise given in Jeremiah’s prophecy is tangible; real; but not quite there. Not yet.
And we experience this tangible in-breaking in the regular celebration of our feasts. Of Easter Sunday, every year; and of the Eucharist, every Sunday.
However we come to this table, this celebration, from wherever, whenever: it is always the same moment
When Christ’s body is broken and given for us
When the power of the life of the Spirit triumphs over death
When God invites us, arms wide open, into the fullness of new life
It will always be the same, and always new to us in some way, as step into this waiting embrace and into the new life of the resurrected Christ.
II.
We might think of this step as a movement in response to the event of Easter. And the words of Eliot’s poem invite us to think about our response. About why we are here and what this will mean for our lives.
“You are not here to verify, / Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity / Or carry report. You are here to kneel”
In our Acts reading, Peter tells the story of Jesus, culminating with the Easter event. But in some ways, the details of the story are not the point — the point is that Peter will sit down and eat with Cornelius and his family, and that they will respond to the event they have heard described as they are baptised.
The story is not the point—in that checking the details, excavating the facts, finding proofs of the story is not the point. The story is not told for verification, instruction, or to satisfy niggling questions. The point is that the story speaks to us; that it always makes us curious; inviting us to respond.
In the morning of the third day, the women come to the tomb. In Matthew they come simply to see it. And they encounter resurrection and an invitation:
See where he lay
Go and tell the disciples where he is going
As they respond, turning to follow, they encounter Jesus himself and they worship him. The word, in the Greek, is proskuneo—the root of our word prostration. They kneel.
Where prayer is valid.
And prayer is more than an order of words
The response of the women in the garden is worship and following.
And in Matthew, when they tell the disciples, the group returns to Galilee. Those who scattered in the garden come back together in the place where they first followed Jesus.
Where they will meet him again
Where they, too, worship him, and are sent out into all the world—invited to go, the Spirit before them and Jesus with them
Not just to inform, or instruct, or to verify… but to invite. To make this moment known again and again.
To make an end is to make a beginning. So says Eliot, later in Little Gidding.
The ending doesn’t stop being an ending: we don’t turn away from it or go around it. We go through it, into a new beginning, with the resurrected Christ. Called, welcomed and loved. Into a world and a time that envelops our own and insists on being made known. And we, too, are invited to worship and to make known the invitation to others.
Jeremiah’s promise of a new beginning is for a people in exile.
And it is a promise for a people awaiting a messiah.
And it is a promise for a people waiting the full and final unveiling of the good news of that Messiah.
It is a promise for different people and different times. From wherever. Whenever.
At any time and any season.
Christ lives and reigns forever. Hallelujah