EASTER DAY – 1017
16 APRIL
Acts of the Apostles: 10. 34-43
Psalm 118. 1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3. 1-4
Matthew 28. 1-10
One of the strangest things as a minister is making a pastoral visit to someone in hospital
and getting to the hospital bed and sitting down and asking: How are you? And then getting
a full run-down of the medical complexities of what’s going on for them. Sometimes people
can explain in the greatest technical detail what’s happening to them and how it’s being
treated. I suppose, maybe they think, that this is what I want to know. Really I’m interested in
how they are; I can see that they’re propped up in a hospital bed; and yes, I do have some
interest in their physical well-being. But how are they? How do they feel about the
predicament they are in? Frightened? Relieved that, whatever it is, it has been nipped in the
bud. That dropping dead from a heart attack on a bush track had been averted. How do they
feel? What difference is their illness and their being in hospital making to them as a person.
We had a friend who died 20 years ago this year from AIDS. He and his partner could
always describe in the greatest medical and pharmacological detail the advance of the
condition and the treatment which was being undertaken. But he couldn’t say how he felt
about it. What difference it was making to how he felt about his day to day existence and
how he felt about the slow and torturous and inevitable, ebbing of his life.
But our need to know the how of what is going on, or thinking that the detail of the condition
is important, often veils the question of what difference this is making, and the question of
what is becoming of my life. We are too often preoccupied with the data; and veil the
condition of our souls. As though we are just the sum of our medical condition.
I say this because we can get caught up with the how of the resurrection; argue and obsess
over the technical and material detail of what is described as taking place all that time ago,
and overlook the question of what does it mean; what difference does it make to our world.
What do we know of the mystery of a life that is beyond our living deaths?
For Matthew the effects of Jesus crucifixion and the events of this morning of the first day of
the week are cosmic. As Jesus is crucified the sky darkens, the earth shakes, the dead are
liberated; the world seems to return to the chaos before creation. This crucifixion has cosmic
implications, Matthew is saying. And as morning dawns on this first day of a new creation
the foundations of the world are shaken again; the firstborn from the dead is raised.
Matthew gives us very little to go on; barely anything of post-resurrection appearances of
Jesus. There’s no walking through walls or fingers in sides. No bbqs on the beach and
eating of fish and bread. Matthew is very sparing. After this appearance at the tomb Jesus
then appears on the mountaintop with the disciples, gives the great commission and
ascends to heaven. While Luke and John have Jesus appearing and saying much more.
And Mark has no appearances at all; although later writers thought resurrection
appearances needed to be written in, so another 12 verses were added in later centuries.
What does it mean for Matthew? Matthew, we must remember, inhabits a three-tiered
universe and we need to enter his imaginative world to understand what he is trying to say to
his readers. We don’t need to believe in his imaginative universe but we need to enter into
his imagination to comprehend what he is trying to say. The earth at one level, heaven
above; Sheol below. And earth is supported on foundations, like some sort of temple. We
have to enter Matthew’s imaginative universe to see that as Jesus is executed and as he is
raised from the dead the very foundations of the world are shaken and in these events of the
first day of the week, as yet again the foundations shake, a new creation is ushered into
being. And a new Adam is born from the dead and invites his disciples to be born again
through the waters of baptism. A new world is beginning.
Peter describes to his audience in a different way what he sees as the effect of Jesus’ death
and resurrection. We hear Luke, the author of the Acts, imagining Peter talking to the family
of Cornelius, a Roman centurion. He is an officer of the occupying army, leader of 100 men.
It was a centurion who oversaw the execution of Jesus. And to the potentially loathed officer
of the occupying army Peter says: I truly understand that God shows no partiality. Peter, who
should shun this officer and his family, embraces them, remains with them and eats with
them. The barriers are broken down. A world based on mutual loathing, on retribution, on
escalating violence is broken down in the resurrection.
Peter also describes a cosmic change which Jesus has ushered in. For those who expect
that there will be final tallying up of good and bad deeds, Peter says no, this is no longer so.
God in Christ has ushered in a new world; and the measure of justice is mercy.
Peter says to Cornelius’ household: Jesus commanded us to preach to the people and to
testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the
prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins
through his name.’
The basis of justice is forgiveness. Not punishment. Not law and order. Not retribution
cloaked as justice. The basis of judgement is forgiveness. The basis of judgement is
compassion. The basis of justice is tenderness.
This is a change to the foundation of the world; the end of a world built upon an unending
cycle of violence and retribution. As our world bristles yet again on the verge of war, at the
behest of two quite unhinged men, we need to hear again about this kingdom of peace and
mercy and forgiveness.
In our baptism we are inducted into this cosmos and we are called to live by a new
imagination; to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, says Paul. We are invited to live
by mercy and compassion. To die to the cycle of violence and victimhood. To be raised to
new life in Christ. To be a new creation. And the church is called to be sign of this new
creation. To be resurrection people who live in a way which embodies this new creation and
to show that this resurrection in real and bodily ways. That, in Paul’s vision, we continue to
be the body of Christ by embodying the Spirit of the living God who Jesus showed to us.
We wonder about the future of the church. What will become of it. We are under great
scrutiny from our society now. And rightly so. The sexual abuse scandal which has infected
all our churches; and more deeply in our roots our justification for wars for too long; that
violence will settle our differences has meant that w
e have been on the nose and like Peter betrayers of our Lord. We are being laid low in death
and we may yet be raised up to be able again to embody the spirit of God found in Jesus.
We are called to be resurrection people. To practice our faith in real and tangible and visible
ways which can be seen and felt and touched.
Over the Easter season, until Pentecost at the beginning of June, we are going to explore
what it means to be resurrection people and explore what the practices of being resurrection
people are. What is the essence of practicing our Christian faith. Some people will be
reading the book Practising our Faith, edited by Dorothy Bass. And David Baxter and I will
reflect on these practices each week in our preaching. We are in state of transformation
where we are coming to new life – transition from the Christendom way of being church to a
lighter, more nimble, spirit led church. This requires us to explore together and seek to
understand who we are becoming. This is a joint task, one of mutuality; not a case of me
telling you what’s going on. A task of listening to the spirit in ourselves, in each other and in
our midst.
As we do this may God raise us up and Christ be seen here too.