I’ve been to three deeply moving Easter services here on Holy Island to greet the risen Lord. It’s been a huge privilege to do the story of Holy Week from start to finish in this community where it has been told since Aidan brought Christianity here centuries ago.
Last night we gathered on Cuthbert’s beach round a fire from which the paschal candle was lit. The light of Christ was celebrated and carried into church.
Until I discovered this Saturday service a few years ago, it never occurred to me that Jesus rose at night, in the dark. When the women went to the tomb in the first early morning light, he was not there. I used to find it odd to sing Christ the Lord is risen today at 10pm, but now it makes perfect sense! Resurrection begins in darkness, the darkness of our experience, transformation comes when God meets us in our pain and the things that make life dark.
In the poem ‘Resurrection’ in his book In Search of the Lost, Richard Carter puts it this way.
Resurrection begins in darkness
There is distraction
There is confusion
And uncertainty
In the mind and stomach
The yawn of despair
And I look round
And I cannot find whom I am looking for
And there is fear so caustic that I will never find him again
And then Christ comes
Comes so simply
As though to dispel all fear
He comes like joy comes without introduction
Like healing which has dissolved the pain
He comes
Like rain on dry brittle land
He is simply there
Like light which ends darkness with no struggle
For then it was dark
But now it is light
He comes with his balance and with his beauty
And order returns
Like a bird returning home from another land
Spring comes
He comes with no explanation or reason
And there is song
And a hope
And a future
We are surprised by his love
But he is not
For though he kept us waiting and doubting and trusting
He always knew he would never leave us.
A powerful part of the liturgy last night was a renewal of our baptismal vows. We rejected the devil and his wiles! We committed ourselves to live in the light. The vicar rather enjoyed dousing us with a lot of holy water!!
This morning this lesson of how God transforms darkness into light continued as I got out of bed at 4.30am and joined others to greet Easter morning at sunrise. I was deeply moved when Rev Rachel, the URC minister, greeted me with these words: “Good morning Ian, would you like to be ministerial on this Easter morning?” She invited me to read the Easter Gospel. It was powerful to read it into the silence and as the light began to come.
The women went to the tomb expecting nothing. They went to pay respects to a dead body in a sealed tomb. They did not expect another chapter to the story. We sat mostly in silence watching the colours come in the sky. There was a deep communion between us even though few of us knew each other. We were united in deep worship. Sometimes worship doesn’t need words!
The 10.45 service in church was a joyful and fun occasion. It was another privilege to be invited to sing in the choir. I came here last Saturday focussing on my illness and all our uncertainty. Today for the first time since last August, I believe the healing process has begun. We go back soon to a lot of critical meetings about what form my ministry will take and where we will live. I still haven’t a clue about either but I believe there is a future and maybe the future might be better than I dare hope. I need to trust in the power of God. Jesus goes ahead of me into my Galilee where he will meet me. Anywhere in the Methodist Connexion!!
What is Easter all about and what’s our priority having experienced it? I hope the vicar won’t mind me borrowing a poem she began her sermon with this morning:
On Sunday 28th of July 2002 –
The summer it rained almost every day –
In rain we strolled down the road
To the church on the hill overlooking the sea.
I had been told to expect “a fast Mass”.
Twenty minutes. A piece of information
Which disconcerted me.
Out onto the altar hurried
A short, plump priest in late middle age
With a horn of silver hair,
In green chasuble billowing
Like a poncho or a caftan over white surplicr and a pair of Reeboks - mammoth trainers.
He whizzed along,
Saying the readings himself as well as the Gospel;
Yet he spoke with conviction and with clarity;
His every action an action
Of what looked like effortless concentration;
Like Tiger Woods on top of his form.
His brief homily concluded with a solemn request.
To the congregation he gravely announced:
“I want each of you to pray for a special intention,
I want each of you – in the sanctity of your souls –
To pray that, in the All-Ireland
Championship hurling quarter-final this afternoon in Croke Park,
Clare will beat Galway.”
And the church became a place of effortless prayer.
He whizzed through the Consecration
As if the Consecration was something
That occurs at every moment of the day and night;
As if betrayal and the overcoming of betrayal
Were an every-minute occurrence.
As if the Consecration were the “now”
In the “now” of the Hail Mary prayer:
“Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”
At the Sign of the Peace he again went sombre
As he instructed the congregation:
I want each of you to turn around and say to each other:
‘You are beautiful.’”
The congregation was flabbergasted, but everyone fluttered
And swung around and uttered that extraordinary phrase:
“You are beautiful.”
I shook hands with at least five strangers,
Two men and three women, to each of them saying:
“You are beautiful.” And they to me:
“You are beautiful.”
At the end of Mass, exactly twenty-one minutes,
The priest advised: “Go now and enjoy yourselves, for that is what God made you to do -
To go out there and enjoy yourselves
And to pray that, in the All-Ireland
Championship hurling quarter-final between Clare and Galway
In Croke Park, Clare will win.”
After Mass, the rain had drained away
Into a tide of sunlight on which we sailed out
To St Macdara’s Island and dipped our sails –
Both of us smiling, radiant sinners.
In a game of pure delight, Clare beat Galway by one point:
Clare 1 goal and 17 points, Galway 19 points.
“Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”
Paul Durcan
(From The Art of Life)
We need to remember we are beautiful. We need to stop destroying one another through nasty words and deceitful actions and commit ourselves again to authentic and respectful community. We need to tell others that they are beautiful rather than trying to put them down so we can be on top. The powerful tried to defeat the love of God in this story. Look what happened!
I’ve found being here and living this story really moving. I got tearful in church this morning partly because I wasn’t leading worship today and partly because of an overwhelming feeling of being held even with continuing questions.
I’ve found writing these blogs really cathartic this week and I’m glad to learn some people have found them helpful. I finish them with this quiet assurance: we are never abandoned.
Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
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