Easter Sunday – 5 April 2015
“She turned round and saw Jesus standing there”
The eclipse four weeks ago had us all at Bishop’s Lodge standing in the garden with our
backs to the sun. We got a glimpse of what was going on, punching a tiny hole in a card
held in front of a blank sheet of paper. As the great event in the solar system unfolded
behind us, we caught a hint of it in a shadow on a page.
Mary Magdalene at the tomb is also facing away from the light. Deep in her grief she goes
looking to be near the place where the one she loves lies dead. Looking for death as
comfort she catches a glimpse of life. In the one word “Mary” Jesus turns her around.
She looks, in spite of herself, into the dazzling light, struggling with recognition, responding
to a voice.
St John tells us earlier in his Gospel that the Good Shepherd knows his sheep and “calls
them by name”. And his sheep “know his voice”. So now this one word, Mary’s own
name, spoken by the most significant person she had ever known, changed her forever.
One commentator has written: “In the second this turn took, history moved from B.C. to
A.D. The human story took a turn towards a responsible hope for the conquerability of
death and so, to the conquest of meaninglessness.”
The Easter Gospel is absolutely clear. Death, once final, has met its match.
The great New Testament scholar, C H Dodd, wrote these words: “I cannot rid myself of
the feeling that this meeting of Jesus and Mary has something indefinably first hand about
it. It stands alone. There is nothing quite like it in the Gospels. Is there anything quite like
it in all the ancient literature?”
This morning at dawn, fourteen new Christians heard their name called and turned around
to face the light – “I turn to Christ” they said – simply the most recent of countless millions
whose lives have been changed by Mary Magdalene’s announcement “I have seen the
Lord.”
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It was she who spread the news around the world rather as the sunlight chased the
shadow of the eclipse across the globe. We can watch it travelling in the New Testament,
as Peter says in Acts: “That message spread throughout Judaea, beginning in Galilee.” It
spread to St Paul on the Damascus Road, also blinded by the light, to the centurion
Cornelius in the Book of Acts and to Peter himself, challenged to face his own denial of
Jesus by the lakeside.
Resurrection faith turns lives around through all of history wherever people, like Mary
Magdalene at the tomb with no clear sense of what they’re hoping for, hope anyway.
Where people wait, despite themselves, for something new to happen beside the silence
of the grave. Wherever people enter with abandon into the life of God by risking losing
their life and through the very act of losing, find it.
This isn’t easy.
The Gospel makes clear that Jesus breaks the power of death and
alienation over human life.
But there is no short cut.
In his book “The Wound of
Knowledge” Rowan Williams wrote thirty five years ago these words when he was a
Canon Theologian of this Cathedral: “Our healing lies in obedient acceptance of God’s will;
but this is no bland resignation. It’s a change wrought by anguish, darkness and stripping.
If we believe we can experience our healing without deepening our hurt, we have
understood nothing of the roots of our faith.”
This is what belief in the Resurrection entails – sensing the promise and possibility of life
through death. When, like Mary or Peter, we hear our name called in the encounter with
the Risen Christ, it is always a moment of seeing ourselves more clearly: coming to terms
with the ways we refuse to be forgiven because we hide from our wounded selves.
But if we can dare to turn towards the light, the Resurrection is the reality that restores us
to life as we can and should live it – without fear of death, without being controlled by
shame, confident that we are welcomed home. For those who take the risk of living in the
Resurrection light there is the experience of newness, freshness and wholeness each
moment of each new day.
Watching the eclipse with our back to the sun we saw but a pin prick of the great celestial
drama – our eyes could take no more. In some ways it is a metaphor of the appearance of
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the Risen Christ in the garden – a moment when the great drama of God’s redeeming love
is intensely focussed into one place, one time, one person, so that we can bear to see it
and respond.
On Easter Day we can look death in the eye with confidence and hope. Easter hope and
Easter faith continue to rest on the witnesses to Jesus – but still we are in the realm of the
unknown and unknowable.
There is much that we don’t and will never understand. Mother Julian of Norwich said we
can only understand what we need to. There is always much that, as believers, we find
hard to believe. But on Easter Day we know it is belief that saves us. We can know
however, that the final horizon not only rushes towards us at the end, as it must have done
for those passengers on the Germanwings Airbus, but passes through us. We are not
crushed or extinguished by death but we are transformed by our going through it, by its
going through us.
Carol Ann Duffy’s poem recited by Benedict Cumberbatch so beautifully for the first time in
this Cathedral last week distils the mystery:
“The end of time – an unknown, unfelt loss –
unless the resurrection of the dead …”
Yet King Richard’s tomb sounds a more certain note – the tomb is deeply fractured by the
cross, as if breaking open it rises gradually towards the dawning sun. It invites us to say
with confidence, in the company of all the Saints and Sinners, the Popes, Prelates and
Pretenders, with all those who visit here down the years and with Christians around the
world today, with those stricken with grief and those borne along by hope:
“Alleluia, Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed, Alleluia!”
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