Easter 3 22nd April 2012

As I looked through today’s scripture, thrilling as it does with the resurrection, I was thinking about Tuesday’s annual church meeting and our aspirations for church growth.

Don’t we need to be more of a community of the resurrection, I thought, an Easter People?

When you come as I hope you will come on Tuesday night to own your church and elect its lay officers I hope that in the reports you’ll receive you’ll catch more than a glimmer of the resurrection.

People get intrigued into church more than they get persuaded by good fellowship, intelligent preaching and sound liturgy – and there’s nothing more intriguing than what is seen to conquer death.

Let’s look back into the pew sheet and have another look at the readings. First that passage from Acts 3. It follows on from the healing of a lame man who went leaping and bounding into the Temple. How intriguing that must have been! Something worth following – someone worth following! Let’s read v16 aloud together if you can find it: To this we are witnesses...by faith in the name of Jesus, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.

When God is at work people get drawn in! Is God at work here at St Giles? Listening to Vicky Spencer on Easter Day might have made you think so. Where people, lay people especially, speak of God at work and demonstrate it people sit up and listen. And they are sitting up and doing so– even in Horsted Keynes!

Then the second reading from 1 John 3. This celebrates what the resurrection does for us. Let’s read v2: Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 'We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.’

We don’t lose our members when they die – we’re the only body in Horsted Keynes that doesn’t! Daphne’s funeral on Friday at the eucharist and on Saturday recalled her desire for God all through her life expressed in steadfast attendance at the eucharist. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In the bread and wine of the eucharist we behold Christ veiled – we could not face him if he wasn’t – but then, on that day of universal resurrection when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

As a church we need to build more of the eager longing for the Lord 1 John 3 speaks of, a longing that is infectious and that leads beyond this world. In our monthly St Giles night we’ve been trying to infect one another with it. How blessed we are as a church to have members who long for the word and the sacrament and for Christ in one another. How much we’ve got to learn from one another spiritually! May Jesus intrigue us through one another!

Lastly the Gospel reading, exceptionally from Luke since only by supplementing from the other Gospels can St Mark’s year B make an actual year. In this passage from Chapter 24 Our Lord emphasises the physicality of the resurrection, showing his wounded yet glorified hands and feet. Those who were at the Easter Vigil will recall that when we blessed the Pascal Candle we placed five nails in its side to represent the physical crucifixion. Then to further make his point Our Lord eats a piece of fish. The point he makes is – well let’s read it together in verses 46-47. 46and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. The point Our Lord makes is the same point St Peter makes in the first reading: it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer.

The atheist writer Albert Camus once debated the resurrection with French Dominicans. He complained that the resurrection was an unreal and unsatisfactory happy ending. They answered by pointing to this text. God came to share our suffering which served to expiate the sin of the world. No suffering we have to endure is now strange to God.

As one of Wesley’s hymns puts it: Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears. Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers. With what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars.

Is there something of this intriguing paradox around in St Giles? Ask Peggy Diss – and do pray for her as she faces cancer treatment. Ask anyone of our church members who has suffered knowing Jesus beside them. So many suffer without faith nowadays!

How intriguing it can be to them to see how resurrection faith both lightens our tread, under the heaviest of burdens, and spurs us on towards the vision of God beyond death that St John speaks of. It is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name.

This morning the risen Christ invites us once more to repent, to turn to him for forgiveness, so that his light may shine in us and through us. St Giles as a light house? Maybe, if you and I become lighthouses, little candles lit from the Easter Candle? Lit with this faith – that the only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, and now what but who!

In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but Life - and where that life is to be found – as I believe it is more and more at St Giles – people who’ve it will infect others who’ve yet to find it!

‘The source of false religion is the inability to rejoice, or rather, the refusal of joy, whereas joy is absolutely essential because it is without any doubt the fruit of God’s presence.’ So writes Eastern Orthodox writer, Father Alexander Schmemann. He continues: ‘One cannot know that God exists and not rejoice...the first, the main source of everything is “my soul rejoices in the Lord...”. The fear of sin does not save us from sin. Joy in the Lord saves’.

So our focus this Easter Sunday morning is on rejoicing for eucharist and Christian life itself means no less than thanks and praise. Christ is risen! ‘In his, in God’s presence is the fullness of joy and at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore’ says the Psalmist.

Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!