Sermon: Easter Sunday

 Sermon: Easter Sunday

4 April 2021 – Archdeacon Mark Long

Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; and Mark 16:1-8; NRSV

 “So [the two Mary’s and Salome] went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”[1] Do you join me in feeling a certain element of disappointment in these words? Perhaps the disappointment lies in the fact that we’ve been immersed in John’s Gospel over the last few weeks – a Gospel that speaks with deep certainty about the purposes of God – and a return to Mark’s Gospel with its deep connection to raw human emotion seems a let-down, especially as all our expectations are suddenly wrapped in terror, amazement and fear; and nothing is spoken of the glory and honour we were perhaps expecting in the telling of the resurrection narrative?

A year ago, as we were forced into an almost complete lockdown in response to the COVID-19 virus, I found this ending to Mark’s Gospel comforting in the context of the anxiety that had wrapped itself around me like a suffocating blanket, with all the fears and concerns it brought upon us as individuals, families, and communities. For the first time in my life I could fully relate to the experience of those early disciples and their complete loss of hope as their dreams and longings for liberation from the strictures of the Roman Empire were shattered by Jesus’ crucifixion and death. In that moment there was no victory on the cross, no hope for the future; just the raw trauma of the moment. And for these three women who had been close to Jesus, as they go about the duties death required, the missing body and the strange messenger at the gravesite was a demand too far, and they flee fearfully. It is one thing to believe in resurrection to this life; it is quite another to be faced with its reality; and completely another to explain this reality to others. I am not surprised they said nothing to anyone in the immediate aftermath of this experience. We all know how the death of someone close to us pulls the rug out from under our feet, and the time it takes to get in touch with the reality, and our hesitancy in speaking to others in the emotional chaos of the moment.

Preceding the disappointment of these closing words of Mark’s narrative there is a promise relayed by the angelic messenger, “tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him … .”[2] We can be thankful that these three women clearly overcame the terror of the moment and the fear that had seized them, and must have eventually shared this news. The promise, and subsequent meetings (recorded in other Gospels) gave reality to this news of Jesus’ resurrection to this life and energised the disciples, and has continued to energise the Church throughout the ages.

Rowan Williams[3], former Archbishop of Canterbury, points to the abrupt, confused, vivid and unpolished nature of resurrection stories such as this one in Mark’s Gospel as a sign of the veracity of Jesus’s resurrection to this life, and while we may easily conjecture that Lazarus – after being raised from the dead – died a second normal death, the Ascension narrative indicates that Jesus was resurrected to this life and remains alive, and is contemporary to the present moment. How do we respond to this? And do we believe it to the point where we are willing to proclaim it? Or like the women, do we say nothing to anyone? This, perhaps, is the essence of the Easter challenge.

What does it mean to proclaim this Easter message? This is an important question in a world that is increasingly consumed by an individualist tenor of our times that translates all to often into a message of personal salvation that allows for faith and life to become disconnected. What Easter does ask of us is that we look death in the face – something that the Covid-19 pandemic has also asked of us these past twelve months – and having looked death in the face to allow all the fears and anxieties of our lives to fall into perspective as variants of our fear of death[4]. Easter asks us to face our fear and move beyond it, finding the courage to undermine the pretence that death, evil, and our human brokenness require our acquiescence; by our attitudes and example, by our actions and our words to proclaim the resurrection reality that change, transformation, renewal is possible, and that we can live differently, creatively, life-givingly in our broader society.[5]

Easter invites us to engage our faith with the often tragic realities of life, and ensure that the promise proclaimed in today’s Isaiah reading becomes the lived reality of all our communities, that “[on] this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.”[6] While the Easter message will hopefully always be a source of personal comfort and courage, may it inspire and resource us as people of faith to engage creatively in the liberation of our society, and of creation itself.

May our Easter greeting, “Alleluia, Christ is risen” and the joyful response, “He is risen indeed, alleluia” be more than mere words: may they be a source of strength and hope for our times!

Let us pray,

Jesus

our dead and living friend,

We walk the ways of death and life

holding death in one hand

and courage in the other.

…

Come enliven us.

Come bless us with your peace.

Because you are the first day of creation

And all days of creation.

Amen.[7]

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[1] Mark 16:8; NRSV

[2] Mark 16:7; NRSV

[3] Rowan Williams, God with Us: the meaning of the cross and resurrection, then and now, Chapter 4

[4] Rowan Williams, Ibid. Chapter 5

[5] Ibid

[6] Isaiah 25:6; NRSV

[7] Pádraig Ó Tuama, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community.