Radio 4, Monday morning, the ‘Today Programme’, with its
7.18 million listeners: “Yesterday I went to a church near Huddersfield to
dedicate a new font… when we put water into it, it dripped straight through the
bottom onto the floor. The plug didn't fit”.
Bishop Nick made good use of his visit last week – and our hiccup with
the font.
Last Sunday began for me with a great service full of joy
and people but how quickly things can change.
Last Sunday afternoon, back in church, I was with a bereaved family as
they remembered someone very special to them.
From the many and the joyful, I was with the few and the
mourning. We live lives threaded through
with all these different experiences – often without much time between them.
It’s hard.
Last week pulled all these themes together, moving from the
joy of Palm Sunday to the desolation of the cross. It’s hard to imagine the roller-coaster of
emotions Jesus and his followers went through.
To be the object of popular approval; to be sharing a meal with your
closest and dearest friends; to the public ridicule of a shameful death – with
your mother watching it all.
Then there’s today.
Friday was supposed to be the end of it all. As Newman puts it in his prayer: “the fever
of life is over and our work is done”.
Despite its horror, at least Good Friday was an end. The disciples could return to their normal
lives, friends could mourn and life would once again become routine,
ordinary.
Not today.
Today is
the day that changes every day. The
appeal of Jesus had been that he was larger than life – and now we discover
that he’s larger than death.
Crucifixion; a sword in the side; a stone sealing his body in the
darkness of a tomb. God seems to smile
at our puny efforts to decide that his Son is dead. None of it matters. God calls Jesus back into life – to bring his
life and new possibility to all who put their faith in him. With God, everything is possible.
What we celebrate today isn't a ‘get out of jail free’
card. It doesn't allow us to skip past
pain or be sheltered from suffering. But
when we've had enough, and would rather stay in a tomb of our own despair, God
tugs us back into life. God asks: “Bring
me whatever you have – even if it looks and feels like death: and I will call
it back into life”.
We only have to look down the long centuries of Christian
history to see how time and again God has taken what the world has written off
in order to breathe new life into humanity.
People discarded by the world have wept and battered at the doors of the
powerful and demanded justice.
Every Easter we find ourselves at a particular moment in our
lives. I hope, for many it will be a
good and hopeful place. But for others
it won’t be. For many today will simply
be a grim repeat of yesterday – and a fearful taste of tomorrow. God knows.
And God says to us: ‘bring what you have – bring who you are, and I will
give it life’. Because today God doesn't let death have the final word.
Alleluia Christ is Risen!
Maggie McLean
Vicar of CTK
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