Easter Day
By Bishop Frank Sergeant, Sunday 12th April, 2009
“The other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed”. St John 20:8
Introduction
Those of us who have reached this stage know that as you grow older the long memory gets sharper and the short memory gets weaker. We remember vividly important people places and incidents of our younger lives but don’t know where we have left our spectacles and can’t see things that are staring us in the face.
Now this long memory is important to us today, Easter Sunday 2009.For one thing, we who celebrate it have lived another year of resurrection, for which we are grateful, but there are at least three ways in which it is more important in the long memory of the Church.
The Three Ways
The first is that the long past has been brought into the present, as what was foretold by the Prophet Isaiah in his Suffering Servant songs written some six hundred years before Our Lord’s ministry had proved to be true in the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus was the suffering servant.
The second long memory is that we enter into the Church’s celebration of our Lord’s resurrection as she has kept the Feast of Easter from its earliest days. In this case, we enter into its history because without the memory of significant events there can be no story to which we can relate our own experiences.
The third is the specific memory of the Community of St John. Even if the author of the fourth Gospel should be regarded as anonymous, at least the memories of the “disciple whom Jesus loved”, the young man at the cross and in the Garden of Resurrection, are recorded powerfully. What can be said is that this account of the Good News was written between eighty and ninety A.D., fifty years after the events of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The long memory was at first intensely personal and then the events were so significant that they remained in the memory of the Christian Community to be treasured and passed on from generation to generation. So what were the memories and how are they significant for us today?
The Three People
The first memory was of the faithfulness of Mary Magdalene. She was there at the tomb early. She had been at the Cross and she wanted to be close to Jesus, living or dead. She was the one who came to Peter and John with the news. It was that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. She had run to them and was breathless with her message that the body of Jesus had gone, and she didn’t know where they had taken it. Furthermore she didn’t know who the “they” were, but probably the Roman police force because the Jews were unlikely to touch a dead body.
The second memory was that the two male disciples ran off to see for themselves. John being the younger left Peter behind. He reached the tomb first and what struck him as he skidded to the entrance was that he saw the grave cloths in which Jesus had been wrapped and he was pondering what this meant. Surely if the body had been stolen it would have been covered. Then Peter came hurtling up and lumbered impetuously into the tomb as you would expect him to do.
The third memory was that Peter did make a significant discovery that the cloth which had been wrapped round Jesus’ head was separate from the rest of the cloths, as though Jesus had removed it himself. When Lazarus came out of his tomb he was wearing the cloth bound round his head. John went in to see for himself and while Peter remained perplexed, for John the penny dropped. It was the moment of understanding that Jesus had raised himself from the dead. As the new light of day broke so did the truth of the Resurrection dawn on St John.
The Three Reactions
The reactions of these three actors in the opening drama of the resurrection of Jesus were found in the Christian community of St John and I suspect are found in all Christian communities. Like the faithful Mary, one reaction is to get the wrong idea – to get the wrong end of the stick, as we say. Here she was, wanting to do something for Jesus. In her disappointment, she thought the worst had happened; she took a pessimistic view of things. Perhaps she thought that you have to work for your salvation.
Perhaps like Peter, with his puffing and blowing, another reaction is to be completely flummoxed, perplexed. The chances are that those who feel like that will remain so unless they try to understand the Scriptures and let the Holy Spirit make the resurrection experience their very own. I don’t know if it is your experience, but it seems to me that eulogies take up too much space in funeral services. Sometimes the hope of the resurrection, both Jesus’s and our own, finds no place. There is much looking back and little looking forward. It is not without purpose that there is no provision for a sermon in the funeral service of The Book of Common Prayer. There the service emphasizes forgiveness won for us by the Cross of Jesus and the hope of new life.
The third reaction is to be optimistic. That is the one the Gospel of John encourages us to have. It is the reaction of the young John born from experience – the experience of the friendship and love of Jesus before he was crucified. He didn’t have much evidence to go on but he hoped for the best. He saw the headcloth on its own and believed. He was not disappointed and his reaction enabled him to recognize Jesus again later at the lakeside.
Conclusion
Some twenty years ago Sally and I were at the Garden Tomb. It was the Garden tomb in Jerusalem. A large party of Spanish Christians arrived at the tomb and began wailing and banging their heads against its walls. Whilst I admired their devotion, I thought they must have got it wrong. Surely they should have being singing songs of joy that the tomb was empty and that Jesus had been raised from the dead.
That is where we are today, by the invitation and the grace of God. Let’s be optimistic. Whatever our age or gender, let us be young Johns. Let’s see and believe and enter joyfully into the long memory of the Church and make it a personal experience.
