Sermon: Christ is risen! Alleluia!

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Christ is risen! Alleluia!: Easter Day: 4 April 2010: pm: The Very Revd Frank Nelson

• Psalm 66
• Isaiah 43: 1 - 21
• John 20: 19 - 23

Drawing the short straw to preach in the evening on Easter Day is, I suspect, the Dean’s prerogative. When so much has been said and done in the past few days, what is still left to say? I am very conscious that people here tonight are likely to fall into one of two categories – in each case you are here because it is Easter Day. On the one hand there are those who have been at many, if not most, of the services held in this Cathedral, or in other churches, during Holy Week, and particularly over the past three days. On the other there are those for whom tonight is quite possibly the first and only Easter service to be attended. For the first group of people, there is so much still be absorbed and processed, and especially what to make of the Easter greeting: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! For the second, there is little background and understanding with which to cope with the extra-ordinary statement made by Christians at Easter. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Tonight’s 2nd reading, a few verses from the Gospel of John, takes us back to the upper room. We were there last Thursday night, recalling how Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples. We re-enacted the somewhat bizarre actions of Jesus in taking a towel and basin before washing the feet of the disciples. That action is as difficult to cope with today as it was for Peter and his friends.

We left the upper room and went into the Garden of Gethsemane – ostensibly to pray with Jesus through the night. The Gospel records show that the disciples fell asleep. Later, when Jesus was arrested, they ran away. This morning, we heard one of several accounts of people going back to a garden, one which contained the tomb, only to find it empty. It is John who gives us the lovely cameo of Mary Magdalene and her encounter with the gardener – who turns out to be Jesus.

On Good Friday we went to the hill called Golgotha – to witness an execution. We participated in the mockery; we saw the humiliation; we heard and felt the nails being hammered through flesh into wood; we watched and waited and wondered and wept. The music sung by the choir – the series of Kyries and the Lamentations of Jeremiah – helped us feel the agony, the turmoil, the desperation, the desolation.

Some few of us went with Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus – seemingly oblivious to any personal danger to themselves – to beg for the body of Jesus. We laid him in a tomb, and closed it with a stone. As Judas did on that fateful Maundy Thursday night when he went out into the darkness, for it was night, we left the tomb in the darkness, buried deep in our own night time of sorrow and despair.

Last night, in a service similar to one first recorded in the 4th century since the events in question, we gathered in the unlit Cathedral to light a candle. Moving down the dark aisle the candle shed its light, radiating outwards, touching each and every person here as candles were lit and the light glowed. For those in the know, it takes us back to the very beginning of John’s Gospel, a promise made good at Easter, though read at Christmas – the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

As people have done for centuries at the Easter Vigil, seven men and women stood in front of their families and friends and proclaimed their faith in this Jesus, risen from the dead. On being questioned by the bishop as to their willingness to live the Christina life, gathering with others for regular worship, teaching, fellowship and prayer, and seeking to love and forgive as we are loved and forgiven by God, they replied: I will, with God’s help. And so they were baptized and confirmed.

This morning we sang God’s praises, with loud Alleluiahs proclaiming our faith – both those who had walked the week with Jesus, and those who had not been here since the same time last year. And here we are tonight singing God’s praises, with loud Alleluias proclaiming our faith. And the mystery remains, the extra-ordinary claim that continues to challenge and disturb and turn the world – that Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

But it’s not over yet, for we have still do deal with tonight’s reading from the Gospel of John. The disciples are once again gathered in the upper room, doors locked, wondering what will become of them. Into their midst comes Jesus. Listen again to the words John wrote for us. Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Our understanding is that we stand in the tradition, in the feet if you like, of those disciples. We recognize the risen Lord as one who comes to us with his words of peace and his Holy Spirit. To us, you and me, people of this generation, is given the same task - in Jesus’ words: As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Do we believe it? Dare we be sent?

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!