Easter Day 2007

Many years ago I went to a service like this on Easter Day at a church in Essex. The preacher began his sermon by saying ‘if you don’t believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ then you may as well be at home mowing the lawn’. It was touch and go, but I’d already mown the lawn so I decided to stay to see what else he was going to say.

I wondered as I prepared this address what Mary Magdalene would have done. Would she have gone home to mow the lawn or would she have stayed? As she bent down to look into the tomb Jesus’ body was not there. In its place were two angels. Are angels physical? I suspect not, but they were real enough for a conversation to be recorded. Then she turned round and saw Jesus. Saw him, but did not recognise him. Physical perhaps, but definitely not the same. Not the battered, broken, bloody, crucified body that had been buried three days before but someone she mistook for a gardener. Only when he spoke, called her by name in a way that only Jesus would, did she recognise him. At that moment we imagine her experiencing a flood of relief. Her life was being transformed, resurrected. Hope replacing hopelessness. And she immediately followed Jesus’ command and announced to the disciples “I have seen the Lord”.

Mary was not the only one who did not recognise the risen Christ. He walked and talked with two of the disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a good two-hour journey, but they did not recognise him. Only when he agreed to have supper with them and broke bread did they suddenly realise it was the risen Jesus. And as soon as the truth dawned on them he vanished from their sight. Jesus suddenly appeared to other disciples who were in locked rooms. He appeared to Peter and others on the beach where they were fishing and they did not recognise him. Would the disciples have agreed it was a physical resurrection? We don’t know.

What we do know, the whole reason we are here this morning, is that Jesus definitely reappeared to Mary and, by John’s account, three times to the disciples. Is it so strange though that they did not recognise him? We have a natural desire to understand what happened, to be able to describe accurately the physical nature of Jesus’ resurrection. But it is an uncomfortable fact about our Christian faith that we do not understand everything.

The way in which God works and moves in the world and in the lives of individuals is often mysterious and uncertain. But there is a common thread to all of Jesus’ appearances after his death. A thread that can be a real help to us in our lives of faith. It is that in his resurrection appearances Jesus was present but was unrecognised. Each time he had to make himself known with words, such as ‘Mary’ or ‘Peace be with you’, or telling the disciples on the shore to recast their nets, or with actions such as the breaking of bread.

The risen Christ is constantly in our midst. He is in our midst in our relationships with other people, in our expressions of love and care for each other, in all the words spoken and actions taken faithfully in his name. Do we realise it? Jesus only needed to appear three times to the disciples for them to realise that he truly had risen. He had overcome the sin of the world that had led him to his death. In his final appearance Jesus asked Peter three times: ‘do you love me?’ Peter’s final reply was what ours should be, ‘Lord you know everything; you know that I love you’. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, then handed to Peter the task he gives to all his disciples ‘feed my sheep’.

It was the same task he had given to his mother Mary and the disciple John in his final words to them from the cross. He said to Mary ‘woman, here is your son’. And to John ‘here is your mother’. Jesus would no longer be physically there for them. But he would be there for ever as a risen presence that took them into a new relationship of compassionate concern for one another. A relationship of unconditional love that would give them the strength and the understanding to cope with their grief at Jesus’ death.

In a moment we are going to renew our baptism vows. We renew them on Easter Day because Christian living involves us in dying with Christ and rising again. Living as a Christian is learning to live as a renewed human being. But because we are all too human, it is inevitably life-long learning. Jesus is in our midst but often, like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, we are blind to his presence. In baptism, in the renewal of our baptism vows, we die to all that is wrong in our world, and all that is out of line with God’s will in our lives. We prepare ourselves to recognise Christ’s risen presence in our midst. Jesus speaking to each one of us and encouraging us to respond ‘Lord you know everything; you know that I love you’.

The painter JMW Turner began his artistic life painting wonderful landscapes and seascapes. But as he grew older he cared less and less about ‘form’ or drawing, and more and more about light and colour and atmosphere. He stopped painting recognisable scenes that conformed to people’s expectations. The other artists and the public of his time did not understand his later pictures. They were laughed at, and he was called a madman. But Turner did not care what anyone said. He went on studying light and colour, and inventing a new ‘language’ to express what he wanted to say. Today it is recognised as a sign, not of madness, but of his extraordinary genius.

Recognising the presence of the risen Christ when all around can’t see it is not madness but recognition of God’s genius. Faith is not a delusion; it is just that the language of God is different to our language. It is a language that allows us to share in the risen Christ through the bread and wine of this holy communion. It is a language that frees us to live lives that are measured less by what others might expect and more by what Jesus might expect. Lives where despair and fear can be transformed into hope and peace. Lives where the people we love include the marginalized, the poor, the suffering and the weak, wherever and whoever they may be. Lives where we are given the courage to accept that we too need to be loved and cared for and worried about – where we can receive as graciously as we can give. Lives filled with the light and colour and atmosphere of God. Physical it may not be, real it certainly is. Alleluia. Christ is risen.

© Robert Jenkins April 2007