Easter Day all age eucharist 31st March 2013

This morning we reach the last of our series on the Apostles’ Creed as we look at belief ‘in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting’. All through Lent we’ve been looking at the Creed in Church and in school collective worship as a build up to what happens on Easter Day.

What happens today? You can see on p5 that we renew our baptismal vows. This includes being asked whether we really believe in the Christian creed and whether we really turn to Christ, repent of our sins and renounce evil. We’re invited to say the equivalent of ‘yes we do’ and get a special sprinkling with holy water to wake us up to being baptised Christians that are really alive.

Turn back though for now to the front page of the service booklet and Mrs Mowforth is going to explain why on Easter Sunday, of all days, we’ve got a picture of a train!

HM to summon the children forward to explain the way the Bluebell railway has ‘risen again’ through the opening of the northern extension. The children continue quietly playing with the train set after making it up.

The history of Bluebell Railway was its creation 150 years ago, partial closure 55 years ago and full re-opening at Easter 2013.  In the same way the history of the world is its creation 14 billion years ago, partial spoiling by the evolution of human life a million years ago and its being redeemed by God’s coming 2000 years ago.

The Christian interpretation of world history is less agreed than that Heidi gave of the Bluebell Railway but the most brilliant human being, Albert Einstein said for someone to say life on earth evolved without the help of a greater being than ourselves is equivalent to saying a dictionary was the product of a print shop explosion! Faced with the 3 billion components of the human genome, how can people be so blind to the obvious evidence for divine intelligence?

Just as the reopening of the Bluebell was achieved by years of planning, fund raising and hard work removing the tip so Christianity’s greatest achievement at Easter was made possible by God’s forward planning and bitterly hard work in sending his Son Jesus Christ to remove the barriers of sin, doubt, fear, death and the devil.

At the heart of Christianity is no theory or doctrine but a happening – Christ’s resurrection. This happening is moreover a first instalment for made like him like him we rise. The whole point of Christian faith is an opening of humanity to a dimension of life beyond this world that’ll be finally revealed in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

It’s beyond our imagining but not beyond our believing. Centuries of critical scholarship by historians have brought no evidence to undermine the resurrection of Jesus. Some would say this happening is the more confirmed by this process of enquiry. And then – a big ‘then’ - if the resurrection of Christ is true it can’t be separated from the promises of Christ which include resurrection for his followers.

Forty years ago I submitted a Doctoral thesis on ‘the molecular dynamics of polythene and Teflon by neutron scattering spectroscopy’. My thesis involved testing theories about the forces between the chains in both polymers by seeing how these forces affected a flow of neutrons I blasted them with at Harwell’s then nuclear reactor. Testing theories by Japanese theoreticians gave me insight into how our life as Christians tests God’s faithfulness and into belief in ‘the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting’.

In my research I tested calculated theories such as this smooth so-called dispersion curve with experimental measurements on samples such as these put under a neutron beam that are put on the curve with their error margins. I was able to extrapolate from my experiments to the best theory.

The faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ is something we can experience on earth through answered prayer, guidance given, healing received and so on. These experimental observations, if you like, test the bible and the creed. We can measure answered prayer, guidance and so on but we can’t evaluate our future resurrection nor the life everlasting before we attain to it. Belief in the last sentence of the creed is built on a promise from a God who’s delivered on promises to the human race for 14 billion years and to you and I for one, two, three or four score years. It’s an extrapolation of our experience of his faithfulness to hold faith with him to provide for us, as his beloved children, when our earthly bodies expire. 

Our Lord’s resurrection is the first fruits of a great harvest to come.  ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone,’ Jesus says, ‘but if it dies, it bears much fruit’ (John 12v24).  Jesus is that grain.  The righteous will be his harvest.  ‘Christ has been raised from the dead’, St Paul affirms, ‘the first fruits of those who have died’ (1 Corinthians 15v20).

Christianity centres on the body of Christ. Believers are part of that body. They are incorporated by baptism and in an ongoing manner through Holy Communion. The resurrection body is a fulfilment of this incorporation. Jesus promises that ‘those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day’ (John 6v54). In the same way Paul teaches that ‘if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you’ (Romans 8v11).

The joy the Lord gives to our spirit is destined to expand and fill the universe in the resurrection of the dead at his return.  Jesus spoke of joy in heaven over every soul that opens itself to him.  The Easter liturgy resounds with joy as an anticipation of what is to come, as we have sung:

‘Now let the heavens be joyful! Let earth the song begin!
Let the round world keep triumph, and all that is therein!
Let all things seen and unseen their notes in gladness blend,
for Christ the Lord hath risen, our joy that hath no end’.

Bluebell railway carol service short thought 5th December 2009

I’ll tell you what I like about steam trains. They’ve got soul.

Do you know what I mean?

They don’t run with diesel. They run from a burning furnace!

That’s a soul.

There’s soul in all we represent here at Bluebell railway. We even name our engines and talk about their personality.

Human beings have souls. It’s the bit inside of you that makes you you.

Some people have colder souls than others. Oh yes, you may be feeling the cold tonight in your body, but many of us feel warm in spirit. Cold hands, warm heart – you’ve heard the saying!

If human beings have souls it’s because we’re more than an assembly of molecules.

In some ways humans have become like giants.

Through jet engines we can fly faster than sound.

With radar and sat nav we’ve got giant eyes powerful enough to see through fog and darkness.

Electronics has given us giant ears to amplify the slightest whisper, turn it into a shout and hurl it round the world.

Our harnessing of nuclear energy has given us giant fists with which we can wipe out whole cities with a single blow.

God sees all of this.

He’s given us Christmas because he knows human beings with giant eyes, ears and fists won’t remain giants for long without giant souls.

God gave us life so we could have his life and have it in our souls.

A steam engine slows when the furnace burns low. Though God made us we soon run down. We all too easily grow cold and dark inside.

To use another image, human beings are like computers with infected hard drives. We’re the victims of forces that depress us and make us do damage to others.

The forces of sin work inside of us like a virulent computer bug, slowly and methodically reducing the order within us until, sometimes, all that’s left is a dark screen.

The Christmas gift of Jesus is given to light up our lives, just like a computer buff sees to lighting up a closed down computer.

That’s why we’ve come tonight to carol with Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds and kings!

Because God who gave us life gave it so we could have his life - and have it in our souls by the gift of his Son.

In a Channel 4 documentary last April there was a fascinating presentation of everything consumed, produced and to some extent experienced by the average British person in a lifetime.

We walk 15,464 miles. We speak 123,205,740 words. We earn £1,537,380. We drink 15,951 pints of milk. We dream 104,390 dreams. We’re drunk 0.7% of the time. We smoke 77,000 cigarettes. We make love 4,229 times. We eat 4 cows, 21 sheep, 15 pigs and 1,200 chickens in our life time.

Makes you think! Christmas is a time for reflection - hence this short thought, which has almost run its course.

As we reflect in a Christian country the figure of Jesus is rightly set before us at this season.

Tonight we read again of his birth and its foretelling by Isaiah who said this: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined.

St John starts his story of Jesus with similar words: the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it.

When this station was built Sussex churches were packed compared to today. Yet in Africa, China and South America nowadays you’ve got to almost fight your way into many churches.

Over all the earth, down through twenty centuries the warm light of Jesus has continued to shine.

It’s given to lighten our minds, warm our hearts and energise our lives - if we will welcome it.

Just as the light of the coal and its heat energises the cylinders of our trains the Christ Child is given to energise our living, warm up our souls and to get them moving in worship and service.

Bluebell is a voluntary association with a corporate vision.

So’s the Church of England, so’s Christianity – and both visions link to a burning furnace!

Over Christmas there’ll be opportunities for many of us to stoke our inner furnace.

God has given us life – that’s a statement you can argue about, but, either way, you can’t alter the claim.

He wants to give us his life – here’s where Christianity helps break new ground in human living.

There’s a refuelling possible in life. There’s a warming of the heart. There’s a joy from outside of ourselves waiting to come in if we’ll but welcome its source.

Joy to the world! The Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; let ev’ry heart prepare him room.

Let’s sing again and warm our hearts as we do so!