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The earthquake of the resurrection
Address on Easter Day, St Paul’s Cathedral, April 12th 2009 The BBC News Channel this morning is in no doubt about the top news story. On a holiday weekend which is usually starved of real news, the resignation of the No 10 staff member for sending what are coyly described as “juvenile and inappropriate” emails has come as a relief. There is no need to report that this Cathedral and Christian churches throughout the country are packed and that Christ is risen!We have heard how on the Day of Resurrection, Mary saw Jesus standing in the garden but did not know that it was Jesus. Something had happened. The tomb was empty and in ancient times nobody ever disputed that – although there was argument about why it was empty. It was obvious that the risen Jesus was not simply a resuscitated corpse like his friend Lazarus or Mary would have recognized him instantly, which she only did when the Master called her by name.She replied Rabbouni, an affectionate diminutive of teacher – a word from the old life. Jesus asks her not to cling to him because the transformation is to bring a new reality into being. It is no resuscitation of the old life.There was certainly an event which explained the transformation of the friends of Jesus. They had been so full of fear that they had all forsaken him and fled. After the resurrection they were transformed into a world-converting community. After the empty tomb and the appearances of the transformed body, they were prepared to defy death rather than deny the truth of what they had witnessed.In our day, we tend to ask questions about the resurrection as if it were simply a past event. Even if someone had taken a photograph of the actual moment, it is part of the flatland thinking that is second nature to us, only to be able to regard the resurrection as something past and separate from us. At best we translate it into some inoffensive metaphor describing an inner emotional state in which winter gives way to spring.In divine reality, of course, the world of individual bodies and separate events is embedded in a vast continuum in which body, mind and soul are interpenetrated by the Eternal Spirit. What God creates is not destroyed but is re-created and transformed.The message that Mary was to communicate to the other friends of Jesus is “Say to my brethren that I ascend to my Father and your Father and my God and your God.”The earthquake of the resurrection opened a fissure in the earth’s crust through which God’s future could stream into the world. In the Spirit which makes the risen Christ present to us, we discover that life in all its fullness comes not as we hoard up ourselves and set our hopes of happiness on accumulating things, but when in the power of his Spirit we give up ourselves to one another and so bring a new world of possibility into being.This has been proved experimentally in the lives of the saints. Even to those of whom St Peter said, “they did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.”The day of resurrection has dawned. It is accomplished. But the resurrection is also happening and the resurrection is full of future hope in a world where we have only just begun to learn how to speak the language of humanity as God intends.Being a Christian is not buying into a package of ideas about God; it is not signing up as a member of the churchy equivalent of the National Trust to preserve the memory of Jesus; it is immersing oneself in a new creation.The 40+ people from every continent and background who were baptised and confirmed in this cathedral last night have entered a new set of relationships in a transforming community empowered and energized by the Holy Spirit, who is at work bringing the future that God intends into being.This morning, we come from many different Galilees. We have all been called to be lively members of God’s transforming community.This is a time of great promise and peril. Our very complex world is menaced by natural disaster and lethal hatred masquerading under the mask of religion. Alone, we can feel immobilized. What can we do against such huge threats? But as members of the Spirit-filled, transforming community that the church is called to be, there is nothing that is impossible as we work to together to enlarge that fissure through which God’s future is streaming.As we cherish one another, make one another our work of art without oppressing anyone with our demands; as we own up to our weaknesses and needs – the great community builders – we begin to participate in the great dynamic of the love which is eternally exchanged between the Father and the Son through the Spirit. We become seized by invincible hope.This morning, we are not entertaining some idea, but participating in a living reality. Alleluia – Christ is risen – He is risen indeed!> Return to talks index
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