Sermon: Easter Day Festal Evensong

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 31st March 2013

Service:

Festal Evensong

Readings:

Isaiah 43: 1-7

John 20: 19-23

The Risen Christ came and stood among his disciples and said, ‘Peace be with you’.

Then were they glad when they saw the Lord. Alleluia.

† In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In my last church the principal entrance and exit was a great north door. It was a door that literally could be barred. A great piece of timber was buried deep in the wall to the side - presumably at the time of construction sometime in the 14^th century - and it could still be slid across into a hole on the other side and the door impregnably and firmly shut to outsiders.

The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews. (John 20.19)

The shutting of a door has consequences for those on the outside and those on the inside. Being inside a locked door, being inside a locked soul, can give a tremendous feeling of security, but essentially when we do that we entomb ourselves, turn in on ourselves and begin the decline into the ways of darkness, coldness and death. Taking refuge behind a locked door for a little time might be necessary, but if we never emerge we die. There is a difference between a womb and a tomb: the tomb is cold and we never emerge; the womb is warm, safe and we will emerge to life.

Easter is about unlocking. It is as the holy icons of the East portray the doors of hell smashed open: hinges and screws scattered around. It is Exodus, the unlocking of the captivity of the people of Israel in Egypt; it is the raising of Lazarus, dead and rotting in the tomb, and yet summonsed out and unbound. It is a tomb unlocked, a stone rolled away, so that life in all its abundance fills the world.

Try as we might we can never lock that life out, or indeed shut it in. In locking themselves in, the disciples had also locked Jesus out. And yet the Risen Christ coming to those disciples on that first Easter evening picks the lock of their collective fear with resurrection peace and life.

Fear is the most powerful lock known to man. The disciples locked themselves in out of fear. It wasn’t just abstract fear, but a fear projected onto the Jews. We have learnt through a long bitter history that the projection of fear onto others, especially God’s ancient, beloved people the Jews, issues in all sorts of fear driven violence. We might imagine that the disciples thought they were safe in that locked room, that they were the insiders and everyone out there was out to get them. Entering from where the fear is thought to exist, the Risen Christ, one locked out, who still comes in and breathes peace into that fear. Jesus recasts what it means to be an insider or outsider.

Speaking in the prophecy of Isaiah God declares a message of the unlocking of fear. In the brief passage of our Old Testament reading we hear twice, ‘do not fear’ (Isaiah 43. 1, 5). ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you’ (43.1), ‘Do not fear, for I am with you’ (43.5).

Being fearful will not make hard things go away; but being fearful does not allow good, life giving things to happen. Sometimes our fears about an event, or conversation or situation are far worse than what unfolds. Those events don’t go away. What God promises us his abiding presence, and the possibility that we no longer have to be locked in to our tombs, but to abide in him to lead us from fear to life. An Eastering.

The opposite, life shut in on itself, is a denial of the power of the Holy Spirit of God and a contradiction of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Living by the resurrection, living life in the Spirit compels us to unlock and to step out to seek out and make known Jesus in the world.

The breath of the Spirit unlocks the Church to be vessels of Christ’s love and life and peace to the ends of the earth. Our tendency to shut up shop, baton down the hatches and carry on our sweet way to death will be conquered despite our fear, our sloth and our desire to have things on our own terms not God’s.

In breathing the Spirit on those disciples, the risen Jesus entrusted us, the church, with something that should fill us all with fear and trembling; he shares with us his power to forgive and retain sins. In forgiving we unlock, in retaining we lock down. This isn’t about worldly power, it is about seeing that when the church forgives, because she is forgiven, abundant life will flow – Easter.

When the church is grudging, retentive, cruel, pompous or mean-spirited life dries up and death reigns. Death comes to the church when she does not offer the forgiveness she has received from Christ.

Martyrdom, death, ridicule, will come the way of the disciple; yet insistently the Risen Christ says, as it were, ‘do not let your fear of those things lock in or lockout my life’. This is the very source of Easter joy, hope and life.

It is captured rather beautifully in a psalm, ‘I will praise God, because of his word: I have put my trust in God, and will not fear what flesh can do unto me…for thou hast delivered my soul from death and my feet from falling: that I may walk before God in the light of the living’ (Psalm 56.4, 13)

Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.