Easter Sunday 2015 Evensong
Many, many years ago I studied Classics and Ancient
History for my first degree. There is something about the
disciplines you learn for your for your degree that form
you into the person you are – how you think about things
and how you view life. It is such a formative period in
anyone's life.
Because my degree involved the study of literature from
the Greek and Roman civilizations, and the history of the
peoples of that same classical period, I find that I am
thrown backwards again and again into the world in which
Jesus lived – yes, into that province of the Roman Empire
then known as Syria. My academic studies were rooted in
the writings of authors in the Greek and Latin language of
the very time, before, during and after, a Governor called
Pontius Pilate. You get a feel for how to approach the
literature of this ancient world – how characters,
personalities, and things that shaped society actually were
presented and recorded at that time.
Out of this same period a genre of Christian literature
emerges. There are some letters; there is some history; and
there is some biography. The history and the letters are all
concerned with the same person as the biographies, one
Jesus, son of Joseph of Bethlehem.
Rather like all letter writing of this period some liberties
were taken. Some of these letters claimed to be written
about Jesus, son of Joseph, by a particular author, but they
were lying. They claimed the authorship because it gave
the writing some authority. The history – which in this
case is called the Acts of the Apostles – is not history as
we know it. Nowadays historical research has to be
watertight and evidenced by facts. Acts tells about the
energetic life of the Christian church. But it is not history
as we would recognize it in the 21st century. That is why
historical writing of this ancient period is called
'historiography' rather than history. The writer would put
words into the mouth of various people without any regard
for whether that person actually did say these words – it is
un-evidenced. It was common for classical authors just to
make up speeches and put the words into the mouth of a
famous character.
Biographies are challenging also. The academic rigour is
not there as we would now expect. Our friend Boris
Johnson - I say friend not because I am a Tory, because I
am most definitely not, but because he had the same
student formation in classics as I had – Boris has recently
written a biography of Winston Churchill. As a classicist
Boris would have had to apply a great deal more
evidenced facts in writing about 'Winnie' than any of the
authors whose texts Boris read when he was a poor student
in the Bullingdon Club in Oxford, reading his Herodotus,
Sophocles, Plutarch, Tacitus and Pliny.
Those of us schooled in the study of the ancient world, or
any great historical period always first and foremost ask
the all important question. What do the primary sources
tell us? And how did the mind of the primary source
writers tick? Is it accurate and externally supported by any
other evidence.
Our four Christian gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and
the letters that were written by Paul and some claiming to
be written by Paul, all come from this same period. In
terms of primary sources, they tell us what we know about
Jesus, this son of Joseph of Bethlehem.
But none of these written sources can be verified. I have
tried to give a brief introduction as to why. Not only are
they ancient, and therefore subject to the way the ancient
mind operated in terms of literature, quotation, speech
writing – the whole of our New Testament is infected. It is
infected by a lack of neutrality – because every piece of
literature in the New Testament is not actually writing
about Jesus, the son of Joseph of Bethlehem, but about
Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed One of God. Every author
is already persuaded that Jesus is not only Lord, but the
Risen Lord. Alleluia! Christ is risen! This affects and
infects every piece of Christian literary source material.
So it is when we in 2015 look to the literature of the first
century of the Common Era, we encounter literature about
the person we follow, the central character of our faith
system, indeed a world faith system, a central character
who is followed by over 2 billion people globally.
And what do we look to in order to claim that this Jesus is
our Lord? A set of writings from that ancient period,
written by people who were already convinced followers.
These authors tell us of an event that we refer to as Easter
– not a word that exists anywhere in the ancient texts.
These authors give us in general terms a story of a man
whose birth was surrounded in circumstances that caused
key people to ponder, to be amazed, and to wonder; they
tell us about a man who calmed raging seas, gave
permission to fishermen to have a decent catch of fish,
helped the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to speak,
spoke of forgiveness of sins, challenged the authorities,
claimed that the peacemakers and the meek will inherit a
kingdom etc, etc. And they all tell us – unanimously that
he suffered, died on a cross to save us, and defying all the
normal odds about death, he was raised again to new life
by God.
These highly doubtful (unverifiable) sources tell us that
the tomb in which this dead man Jesus was placed was
found empty on the 3rd morning after his death, and that he
was raised to new life and appeared to all sorts of
individuals at that time.
And folks, we are expected to believe this. We are asked to
accept through these very 'iffy' historical accounts, written
by totally biased authors, that Jesus is alive. Quite
astonishing!
And yet, and yet, without this wholly astounding literary
claim, I am nothing. This extraordinary life of this
extraordinary man, Jesus son of Joseph of Bethlehem,
defines everything I am, who I am, what I am, what I
think, how I view myself, how I view everyone else, how I
perceive very existence itself. He is for me the Good News
of God, the gospel for humanity. And the reason that this
is the case for me is that Jesus, the Christ, the Risen son of
God, my Lord, is not a Lord of the written page, the
historic transmission, the man constrained by his historic
period and what was written about him 2000 years ago,
but because I know he is alive; I see that he is alive; I
understand that he is alive, because I have the evidence of
how my life is transformed and by how many other lives
are transformed by this crucified, living, risen Jesus. All
those verbs of knowing, seeing, understanding, believing –
all these verbs and many more were fully understood by
those who wrote our gospels, who wrote the letters, who
formed the historical detail of the Easter church that we
read about in Acts.
So this risen Christ – who is unconstrained by history,
time, place, literature, claims me as his child, just as he
claims every fragile word that has been written about him,
ever since God became flesh and dwelt among us, was
wrapped in swaddling clothes, was worshipped by
shepherds and Wise Men.
This simply is the Easter Jesus – the Jesus of crib and
cross, the Jesus of swaddling clothes and white linens left
lying in the empty tomb, the Jesus fully risen, yet still
bearing on his body the marks of the nails. Place your
fingers into the woundedness – my Lord and my God!
Gaze into the empty tomb – he is not here! Listen to your
own fragile fear – my peace I give you, not as the world
gives it, but as I give it!
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!