Easter Day 2009

‘All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die’.

One of the many privileges of serving my curacy in Portsmouth’s North End was the proximity of the church to Cliffdale Primary, a non-denominational school for children with special needs. I used to come away from taking assembly there with my heart singing at the warmth with which the children greeted their visitors and at the strength of the school community. At Cliffdale children who would elsewhere be treated as different and difficult were treated as unique and wonderful, and teachers and pupils demonstrated compassion for each and nurtured the welfare of all.

Every term they came to church to put on a seasonal performance. One Easter offering featured a young man called Edward playing Jesus. He was deposited unceremoniously in a cardboard tomb; there was a brief pause; and then the teacher continued her narrative: ‘Three days later Jesus came back to life’. Edward got up, climbed out of the tomb, and went to meet his tea-towel-headed disciples.

I was no more present in the tomb on Easter morning than was that Cliffdale teacher, or any other human observer; and dramatists must be allowed to flex their creative muscles. But I have never forgotten that script: ‘Three days later Jesus came back to life’. I have never forgotten it because it cut right across the mutual, collegial atmosphere of the school in which every person was valued and, I believe, misrepresented what happened in the tomb. Had I been asked to write the script I would have written ‘Three days later God raised Jesus from the dead’.

Well, isn’t that just typical? You make the effort to get to church on Easter morning, only to hear the vicar quibbling over the precise deployment of one or two words. It’s no wonder that the institution is dying on its feet.

I’m not about to apologize for my pedantry. To construe the resurrection of Jesus as Jesus coming back to life is misconstrue it absolutely. Jesus coming back to life is Jesus as a species of super-human, Jesus resuscitated by his own latent power or by some anonymous mystical force; whereas Jesus raised by God is the Son raised by the Father.

This is the Christian faith. The resurrection is not the reawakening of a dead god; it is the vindication of a relationship of faith, trust and hope. ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’ says Jesus from the cross. ‘It is finished’ he adds. Jesus goes to his death confident that in so doing he is placing himself wholly at God’s mercy and trusting that at his life’s end he could not have done so more completely. Even in the cry of abandonment ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ he is quoting the psalmist whose despair is heard and answered. On the cross Jesus surrenders himself to God; on the third day God raises him up. Easter is about trust and hope; it is about a relationship.

This Easter faith is not just Gospel for the minority of us who remember it and celebrate it today. In 2009 Easter comes at a time of global crisis. Sharper minds and quicker tongues than mine have piled diagnosis upon diagnosis, digest upon digest, detailing the economic recession in which we live; the international terrorism which continues to threaten; the unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the world’s failure to address the consequences of calamitous climate change.

Is it rash or naive to suggest that each of these crises has its roots in the intellectual tradition which has dominated Western thought since the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment tradition which places the individual, the individual’s reason, and the individual’s needs at the centre of everything. The road from ‘I think, therefore I am’ via ‘I consume, therefore I am’ to ‘I dominate, therefore I am’ is a very short road, and it’s a road that has led us to financial ruin, environmental catastrophe and geopolitical turmoil.

Yet a crisis is an ideal time for fresh thinking and bold speaking. If the Easter faith has nothing to say to the crises then it has nothing to say. If it can mount no intellectual challenge to the tradition which has allowed (indeed endorsed) the reckless speculation of untrammelled capitalism, the unfettered squandering of the earth’s reserves and the morality of expediency in international relations then it has run its course and it deserves to die.

But the Easter faith does have something to say to this tradition. Here I set myself the modest task of undoing three hundred years of thought in one sermon; but this is Easter Day, when anything is possible, so let me try. Easter happens not because of a Master of the Universe armed with red braces, machine gun and oil prospecting machine whose bold endeavours trickle down in benefits for those around him; Easter happens because of a relationship; it could not have happened had Jesus not placed his faith and trust in God. It is a relationship that destroys death; it is a relationship that takes captivity captive; it is the same relationship that gives us hope. God raises Jesus from the dead; God raises us from the dead; we are because God is. We are; you and I are; you and I are only because God is. ‘Do not be afraid’ says the risen Jesus to his friends: in our very essence, at the very core of our being, we are not alone. We dare not behave as though we are.

The poets have long known this. John Donne wrote ‘no man is an island entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me’ only a few short years before Rene Descartes got to work. WH Auden wrote the lines with which I began at the outbreak of war in 1939. Yet Christian faith, perhaps in the West dogged for too long by too-narrow notions of individual accountability and salvation, has too often failed to work at ontology, at the theology of being. Had it done so it might have recalled that community and relationship define human identity. That was the joy of Cliffdale Primary School. Community and relationship must define human identity, for we are created beings, created beings created by a God who is in Godself a community in relationship, a community never more plainly displayed than on Easter morning when the Father raises the Son in the power of the Spirit.

Let the world hear that; let the world hear our joyful proclamation that this day God raises Jesus from the dead; that we are never alone; that we need not be afraid; and that therefore we have hope. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.