Do you remember that
wonderful Vicar of Dibley scene where the Christmas Eve Communion is imminent
and she is in the vicarage panicking, staring at a picture of Jesus and she
says to Jesus, “biggest gig of the year, absolutely no ideas at all.”
I needed to prepare some thoughts to share at a Circuit Service tonight. I have introduced a Circuit Service once a quarter and have challenged people to come out tonight. We shall see!
After lunch, I
went out and bought three things – a radio times, and two Sunday newspapers –
to get a balanced view of things. In one Nicola Sturgeon is going to get us a
Labour and friends government. In the other she is going to get us a
Conservative and friends government. Or something!
Reading the papers and
looking at write ups in the television listings about soaps, we don’t know how
things are going to end. Take your soaps – you know I love my soaps –
Coronation Street, which I dip in and out of, teenage Faye giving birth,
frightened. We don’t know how motherhood will affect her and those around her.
Neighbours – Amber and Daniel, about to get married. Daniel has fallen down a hole and to make it
complicated he is down the hole with Imogen who is secretly in love with him
and jealous of Amber (I missed the episode which told me how they fell down a
hole so it’s a bit confusing!) We don’t know how it will all end. Wedding or no
wedding?
Eastenders – Kat has
taken an overdose as life has become too much. Alfie, her soul mate and
husband, has come to her aid and the paramedics have been called. Will they get
back together? They’ve been separated since he set fire to the house for an
insurance scam not knowing she was in it. Emmerdale – I don’t do Emmerdale, but
I know Laurel has a drink problem. Is that right?
Then there’s Mr Selfridge
which ended last week, where nothing much happens apart from someone moving
from accessories to haberdashery, but last week Miss Mardle and Mr Grove
finally got it together and Mr Selfridge finally found out he’d been tricked
out of all his money investing in what was never to be a real scheme of homes
for returning soldiers from the war. What will happen next? We don’t know.
Easter begins with a not
knowing what will happen next. We know the end, and we’ve celebrated the end
this morning with Easter breakfasts and praise services and dressing crosses
with spring colour. We know the end – Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.
Alleluia. But despite Jesus telling them some time before all the events that
they had been caught up and had fled from, that it would end on the third day
with him rising, they had forgotten that, and the Easter story begins for the
disciples in uncertainty and in confusion and fear.
I want to suggest tonight
Easter is a process. Easter is a pastoral journey we all need to take. Easter
can transform us as Christians, as churches, as a Circuit, if we relive the
emotions of it, maybe as though we do not know how it will end. A journey out
of darkness and uncertainty, towards joy and assurance, and then to a sharing
of it with others.
I see a journey of three stages in John 20: 19 - 23
First, let’s say before
we get to the end, it begins in utter devastation does Easter. Imagine you were
one of Jesus friends gathered in that room described in John’s Gospel. How is
it going to end? You’ve chosen to run, to hide so it didn’t end bloodily for
him like it did for him. Jesus has been your hero, guide, mentor and lord but
now he is dead. You are distraught as you try to come to terms with what has
happened. The events surrounding Jesus’ arrest and death were so traumatic,
that there is a good chance that the disciples were in shock.
There is no evidence from
the gospels that they expected Jesus to come back to life and so that room must
have been one of absolute despair.
There are days, and
longer periods in life sometimes we feel like the disciples. Maybe we have had
to walk away from a project that has failed; maybe we had to leave something or
someone because it was bad for us but we have now no idea what will come next
for us; maybe we have had a long period of illness, or have cared for someone
not knowing what the future holds; maybe someone has left us and life feels
very empty as we adapt to being alone, in shock and confusion. Maybe we have,
and people we share in our churches week by week have, but never tell us, days
of sorrow where hope feels far away.
And all we can do is hide
away, retreat into a safe space to recover and to think.
Remember on Easter evening they
did not know the end, they were in grief, trying to work out how life would be
for them. The end of the project they had left everything for, was failure.
We have sung today hymns
that tell us Jesus’ death opened the way for us to know God. God has won and
death is defeated but from the disciples perspective it looked like God had
lost. Sometimes, life feels like that as we look around us at the chaos in the
world and wonder where God is and what he is doing. Sometimes when we are
really going through tough times, we can also wonder where God is.
Easter healing and hope
starts there. We begin to reflect on what God is doing with us and his world as
he redeems in Christ the sadness, the darkness and the pain. The death, the
tomb, the abandonment is real, but God comes into those things and conquers
them. It is God’s greatest act, and God’s greatest surprise. Step one of the
Easter process, moving out of devastation. It is into devastation the risen
Jesus enters.
Secondly, Easter is about
receiving peace. In the Bible there are two permanent outpourings of the Holy
Spirit.
The more famous one is in
Acts chapter 2, which is outside and very loud.
The one in the Gospel for
tonight is inside, to a group in dire need of pastoral sensitivity and much
quieter. I warmed to an article about this called “Pentecost for Introverts” as
I am one of them myself and I don’t like noise or huge gatherings.
Revisit the scene. How it
is going to end?
The door is locked
because they are scared that the same people who put their Lord to death will be
after them also. The doors are bolted shut…the shutters are pulled over the
windows. They are nervous at what the next knock on the door could mean.
Suddenly Jesus is in
their midst. He says to them, “Peace be with you.” They are still not sure who
this is standing before them.
But then Jesus shows them
his hands, where he had been nailed to the cross. He shows them his side where
the spear had pierced him. They recognize him and are glad, saying, “It is the
Lord!”
Then Jesus says it again,
“Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, now I send you.” In other words,
“What I have done in my
life is now up to you to continue; it is up to you to carry forth the work I
have started.” And then a strange thing happens—Jesus breathes on them. He
breathes on them and quietly says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
There is no big, violent
wind… no crackling tongues of fire… no babble of foreign languages. There is
just Jesus breathing on his followers. “Peace be with you.”
Do you need that peace
tonight? Do you need that quiet breath of reassurance and confidence that Jesus
is here? Our churches cannot do anything unless we have that peace and that
commissioning. We need on Easter Sunday to take in and let Jesus come and
minister to us. We need to receive before we plan and we give. The beginning of
how it will end is the receiving of the gifts of Jesus coming into our
situations.
Perhaps each of our
churches needs to have a more regular commitment to gathering together in
expectation that Jesus will come into our room of uncertainty and he can help
us. He gets what we are going through, he understands our problems, he comes
and wants to get involved with us. We need to let him in far more, else we
become merely a club which doffs its hat to him now and again but most of the
time struggles on stubbornly on our way. How will it end? The end is more
assured if we receive what he can offer.
And finally, Easter comes
with a commission. Gerard Manley Hopkins in one of his works has this phrase
“Let him Easter in us” – Easter is a verb, something to do. Perhaps this is the
test of how well we receive Easter, can it be seen in our attitude and in our
willingness to share it in the places we are called to be. The biggest thing
people outside the church want to see is a church that makes a difference and
actually practices what it says it believes.
Two things on Good Friday
hit me really about this. An unfortunate lack of punctuation in the Rye News on
line report about our walk of witness suggested that we were remembering Jesus
death which was organised by Churches Together! Churches causing Jesus death.
Then during Olivet to Calvary, one of our local friends, rather the worse for
wear after a few cans, enjoying singing Just as I am rather loudly, but what
really was good for the sermon illustration box was when Maunder’s piece has
the choir sing powerfully about crucify him, crucify him, he shouted at these
good Christian people in the choir, “whose side are you on?!” Confused that
inside the church we seemed to be wanting to contribute to Jesus suffering.
But you know the end of the story can be just
that if we don’t receive him, we don’t believe him, we don’t share him. When
Jesus says receive the Holy Spirit he is giving his friends the power and
energy of which he is the source, a continuance in them of the life he brought
to people in the same state as they began Easter, confused and bewildered. And
remember that the commission might mean sorting some things out – read the end
of the passage again.
In that house in
Jerusalem, they received the Holy Spirit.
And that group became the
church—yes, they became the church…worshipping God, studying scripture, praying,
and seeking to do God’s will. They became the church, going out and serving
other people — weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice, sharing
one another’s burdens, emptying their pockets for other people’s children, sitting
up all night with a distraught friend, providing shelter for the homeless, praying
faithfully for the helpless. The church of which we are a part tonight. You
know we are asking over the next few months each church to think seriously
about what it is going as a response to Jesus. List what you are doing. What is
your mission and your vision? Then we will think about what help you need to
achieve it, and we will together become a supportive unit as a Circuit as we
celebrate God’s work here as a partnership and as a team, supporting each other
where some need support and celebrating with others who are doing some
wonderful things. What is our Circuit about? It is about rejoicing together the
new life of Christ, breathing peace into our communities, and celebrating a
positive end to the story.
Only when the breath of
God breathes into us can we be the church Jesus created us to be.
Let me end these thoughts
about how it will end with some words from Tom Wright, who when Bishop of
Durham visited in Holy Week one week, the parish of Easington Colliery, one of
the most deprived parts of Britain following the closure of the pits. He
preached a Holy Week series which was then put in a little book called “The
Cross and the Colliery” – words about how we contribute to a good how it will
end up. “Jesus began his work of new creation with one or two very puzzled
women and a few frightened fishermen. God seems to take special pleasure in
doing things despite the fact that the human resources seem slim, not to say
grossly inadequate. What matters is, more prayer and more parties. More
knocking on God’s door to see what he wants us to be doing, and more
celebrations of God’s new creation, both here in church and wherever else you
can. We plant seeds of hope, and the point about planting seeds is that you
have no idea what they will do when they come up. What we do know is that Jesus
Christ has risen from the dead, and that God’s new creation has begun.” It begins in a room, and it still transforms
today, even, right here, in us and through us.
Only when the breath of
God breathes into us can we be the church Jesus created us to be.
The Easter process, from
hurt, to healing, to hope and healthy churches.
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