Introduction to eucharist
On Classic FM yesterday Alan Titchmarsh said the room lit up when Prince Philip entered. Despite his sharp side the Duke of Edinburgh had a great spirit and possessed deep Christian faith. In yesterday’s Times obituary there is this quote from him: ‘Religious conviction is the strongest and probably the only factor in sustaining the dignity and integrity of the individual’. On this last of the eight days of Easter Octave we will be making a solemn commemoration of his passing at the end of the eucharist, standing in silence for a minute then listening to the National Anthem. As we begin this Easter eucharist we recall our own sharp side - no one of us is free from sin - and take a moment to entreat God’s mercy, so we also may better light up the lives around us.
Sermon
‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’ (John 20:25).
Thomas’s question chimes deep into lockdown experience. Refusal to believe in the face of tragic circumstances. For us those circumstances are parallel with the death of close friends through COVID and a wave of depression deadening those we love. All of us share this morning to some degree the sadness of the Queen and Royal Family. Though I rejoice to stand with you in Holy Trinity for the first time in months to celebrate Easter my joy is qualified by that reality akin to that of Thomas, bereaved and in that upper room lockdown.
Yes, it is heartening to read evidence of people turning to religion to give shape and meaning to their empty lives. As the Duke of Edinburgh said, faith sustains our dignity and integrity. By contrast cynics see the current turning to faith as evidencing desperation to find escape from an awful scenario. The assumption is that religion is about escape from reality – and, yes, the brutal realities we’re living through seem to demand escape.
What does Easter have to say to cynics and pessimists? Is what I’m about as a Christian otherworldly escapism? How does the Easter good news engage with the reality of human suffering and how can it best impact the loss of hope around us? We celebrate the eucharist this morning alongside the Paschal Candle into which five pins are pressed to represent the wounds of Christ in commemoration of today’s Gospel. ‘Jesus said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!' (John 20:27-28)
How did the risen Lord deal with Thomas’ pessimism? He pointed him to the wounds he still carried from his crucifixion. In other words ‘you can be sure it is I, Thomas, and you can lay hold of sure and certain hope in the face of all in your world that would confound you’. The Jesus raised at Easter is the same Jesus killed through awful suffering upon the Cross. That’s why the Church adorns its Easter candle with nails. As the priest says, piercing the candle with five studs at the Easter Vigil: ‘By his holy and glorious wounds may Christ our Lord guard and keep us’.
The Paschal Candle is a triumphant witness, standing tall, that says God is above death. It is also a reminder that God is not above suffering. That should be very important to us as witnesses to Christ in a world so lacking hope. The God and Father of Jesus, expects nothing of us he’s not prepared to go through himself. This is the ground of hope we cling to as Christians, hope that isn’t just out of this world – though the resurrection is all of that - but hope rooted in human reality. Again following the media coverage of Prince Philip’s death I recall Nicholas Witchell’s observation of how the Queen’s Christian faith would be an important consolation in her loss.
What we are about as Christians IS an engagement with otherworldly consolation, that’s absolutely true. Christianity is a metaphysical religion, it’s beyond (meta) the physical because of Christ’s resurrection. Yet it’s rooted in human reality for God revealed the resurrection by sending his Son to die for us. The five wounds of Christ on his arms, legs and side are the great symbol of this human reality. They engage with our sorrows, for he is and he remains for us, as Isaiah prophesied, ‘a man of sorrows acquainted with grief’ (Isaiah 53v3).
If I am talking about Christian hope this morning I am talking not about a shallow optimism but resurrection faith firmly rooted in Christ as the suffering Saviour from all eternity. Second century Bishop Melito of Sardis in an Easter sermon wrote of how Christ’s sufferings should be seen in the suffering of holy people right back through the Old Testament: ‘He is the Passover of our salvation. He was present in many so as to endure many things. In Abel he was slain; in Isaac bound; in Jacob a stranger; in Joseph sold; in Moses exposed; in David persecuted; in the prophets dishonoured. He became incarnate of the Virgin…buried in the earth, but he rose from the dead, and was lifted up to the height of heaven. He is the silent lamb, the slain lamb, who was born of Mary the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock and dragged away to slaughter’.
In Christ’s sufferings we see human suffering in a new light. I can’t speak too well myself, my sufferings have been slight in life so far, but I’ve been close to women and men of God who say so, who say God in Christ comes close in suffering. I think of Ursilla telling me how important and helpful the holding cross was she’d been given at the Hospice. Or when, the day before he died, as he lay on his bed, Colin welcomed anointing on his head and hands by sitting up and stretching his arms right out, as if on the Cross with Jesus. I think of Tom, of marking the cross in holy oil on him before he died marking this Easter week, like the Easter Candle, with a sorrowful Cross for his family. No wonder Péguy said a Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ. Life is a vale of tears.
In our second reading Saint John the evangelist ‘declares to us the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us in Jesus Christ… who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 1:2, 2:2). Elsewhere in Revelation the evangelist predicts the risen Christ’s return ‘Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him’ (Revelation 1:7). The wounds of Christ are a source of hope to believers, though they will be troublesome to those who pierced him and that includes you and I through unrepented sins. That scripture is the basis of Charles Wesley’s Advent hymn ‘Lo he comes’ that enters imaginatively into the sight of the risen Christ coming to be judge of the world:
Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears;
cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshipers;
with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars!
Indeed it will be - that is our sure and certain hope, which should help us bring all pessimists to Christ’s Cross. We Christians are saddened by suffering but our sadness is saved from despair by that very Cross and by the out of this world resurrection truth we’re celebrating in these great days of Eastertide!
