andygoodliff

Together: a sermon for 4th Sunday of Easter

If we read Acts 2.43–47 I wonder what word is most important after God. This is a short description of the church or perhaps we might say this is a short prescription for the church. It’s full of important words. Here are some potential ones: devoted, teaching, fellowship, bread, prayer, awe, signs, believers, give, home, praising, added.

We might say what’s most important is being devoted, its about being committed, being dedicated, being faithful. Your heart’s got to be in it, your body’s got to turn up.

We might say what’s most important is teaching. The most important thing is the Bible, reading and understanding it. This is the source of our faith, this is where we find truth and wisdom.

We might say what's most important is fellowship, lives being shared, supported, friendships being made and strengthened. We pray for the fellowship found, received and shared in the Holy Spirit.

We might say what’s most important is bread, the bread of Communion, the receiving of the bread broken for us. Jesus is the living bread who feeds our faith and nourishes our hope.

We might say what’s most important is prayer, the most important thing is a people who pray with energy, expectation, and enthusiasm. Nothing happens without prayer, it’s like breathing, we wither without it.

We might say what’s most important is awe, being taken beyond this plane into a higher plane, into an experience of the deep presence of God. We want the Transfiguration, Jesus in glory and us being there. We want to experience a vision of the throne of God like John of Patmos.

We might say what’s most important is signs, miracles, wonders, tangibles acts that point to the existence, the power, the heart of God to save, heal and transform. It's about evidence to a disbelieving world, it’s about the kingdom of God now.

We might say what’s most important is believers, it’s about people with faith, belief, trust, who can declare that Jesus is my Lord and Saviour. What changed the disciples, what changed the church was its faith, a faith worth dying for, a faith that trusted through fire and storm.

We might say what’s most important is the word ‘give’, it’s about sharing what we have received. Its about generosity, its about taking what we have and making sure no one goes without, its about fairness and justice.

We might say what’s most important is ‘home’, that place of living, eating, resting, playing, that place of warmth and safety, where we are surrounded by memories, and people we love.

We might say what’s most important is praising, its about worship and song, its about giving thanks to God for his mercies, its about being ‘lost in wonder, love and praise.’

We might say what’s most important is the word added. It’s about growth, about seeing people saved, lives changed, higher attendance, regular baptisms.

All those words are important, they all tell us something about being church. They are perhaps a checklist, a set of ingredients. In the church of your imagination is there somewhere for each of these words? If this is our checklist, our set of ingredients, I wonder how we are doing in lockdown, are any missing? Are we struggling anywhere? Are we doing better on any? I wonder how we were doing before lockdown? I wonder how we might do after lockdown?

There’s one other word I think might be important, it’s the word ‘together’, it crops up twice: 'All the believers were together' and 'Everyday they continued to meet together.' It's the word that connects — teaching, fellowship, bread, prayer, awe, signs, belief, giving, home, praise, growth is the result of this new community that is together; a community that is a response to the resurrection, a community that is being gathered by the Holy Spirit.

The whole story of the Bible can be summed up in the word together. The story begins with God, humanity and creation together, there is life and joy and friendship, and then they come apart, they become separated, when humanity turns away, we refuse the togetherness. We seek a togetherness without God, a togetherness without creation. We see only competition, power, scarcity and that threatens the possibility of togetherness, it creates the concept of the other as stranger and enemy, rather than friend or neighbour.

The rest of the story is how God acts to bring us back together again with Him and with creation. At the right moment God comes Himself in Jesus, to be with us, to be joined together to our life, our condition, in order to heal, liberate and transform us into those who know what it is to be together with each other, together with creation, together with God. The gospel is God’s togetherness plan, Jesus is God’s togetherness plan. In Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection we are invited by God to be with Him as God comes to be with us:we are adopted into God’s family, we are befriended into the Spirit’s community, we are made citizens of the kingdom, we are given a place in the body of Christ.

What is the church? It is a people who have been grafted into togetherness with God, with one another, with creation. God did not create us for isolation, separation, individualism, nationalism, but created us and creation in a story of gift and grace. At the heart of the story is God’s gift of grace Himself that creates a community of gift and grace, where we see we need one another, that we are given to one another for our shared health and flourishing, where we receive grace, but we don’t hold it tightly, but share it, we pass it on, knowing that it is abundant, that we are together in worship and prayer, in fellowship and mutual support, in faith and growth. This community of resurrected people described in Acts is a vision of a community together not just in worship, but in all of life, economic, domestic, social, cultural. This is what happens when Easter is joined to Pentecost, a community of hope and faith and love is born.

We are at the moment rediscovering what togetherness means. We are not together as we knew it, and we long to be again, but we are together in new ways and I don't mean just on zoom. I don’t want to idolise this current time, we’re too in it to see it properly; though I do think let’s be open to how God might be using this time to reveal, to renew, to resurrect something new or something lost about togetherness.

I am finding myself caught between two moods. The first is a longing to get back to being church like it was now eight weeks ago. The second is a wondering if this is a time to ask the question about what being church is. We are in this place where we are being church but not as we have known it. We are being church through zoom, through the telephone, through social media, through helping with shopping, through a brief conversation at a window or front door. Something has definitely been lost, we are grieving from being able to gather. But in that we are perhaps discovering (or might discover) being church as something more church than it ever has been. The first Sunday we can be back, will it be back to what was before or will it be forward to something new?

For Israel exile was the biggest low point, it was a deep trauma, an open wound, the promise to land, to monarchy, to temple, to people was unravelled as Jerusalem was destroyed and many were carted off to a foreign land. But it was also a renewal of its faith and life that never would have happened otherwise: dry bones lives again; a new covenant is promised, a new understanding of the uniqueness of God, the Creator and Redeemer, a new vision of social justice. For the disciples the cross and the resurrection was loss and gift mingled together, was pain and hope joined anew, it was a renewal of everything they thought they knew from Jesus, into something in which the future now was even bigger than the past.

Is this an opportunity to dream church again, to say in what does the church consist and how do we live that together? At the moment we are having to improvise, but is this all temporary? Or could it be a renewal? Is this time a catalyst to birth a new vision, a new understanding, a new conviction about what matters and what matters to God? Today is an invitation to lift our eyes up, to look around, to start imagining what we might learn in this time that we can carry forward into whatever will be after this. Israel was in Exile for 70 years, I don’t think we have that long (I hope not!), so lets not hang about. The God of Easter, the God of resurrection is into resurrection, into giving new life.

A Short Word for Easter Sunday 2

I wonder what kind of week you have had. I wonder how quickly the songs of Easter joy died away in your household. I wonder if Easter itself has felt like no more than a brief interlude in the present difficulty. Easter is a season and yet we often treat it as if it was only a day. The shops start selling off their Easter Eggs and we go back to whatever is normal and carry on as if nothing remarkable happened. Except this year of course for lots of us we don't. In the Easter narrative there are 50 days during which the risen Jesus appears to his followers. And 50 days are only the beginning for these disciples working out how the world has changed and their lives have changed. But we can tick it off in a day.

In the church the Sunday after Easter is traditionally called Low Sunday. The exact reason for this is unclear but it seems in part to be a recognition that the highs of Easter celebration couldn't last. It probably fits very well with where we are at the moment. We are still in Easter, we are still a people who believe that Christ is risen, but after all the drama that began with Palm Sunday and ended with Easter Sunday, this Sunday we are struggling to keep it all going. Every year I find myself asking what difference does Easter make, even more so this year. What does it mean to proclaim the Easter news that Jesus lives?

At no point in the resurrection narratives is anyone looking for the risen Jesus. They expect him to be dead. Mary and the women going to find the body. The rest of the disciples are in a locked room. Cleopas and friend is skipping town for Emmaus. Later Peter and friends are off fishing on the Sea of Galilee. There is never a point where anyone says, ‘ah, I’ve been expecting you Jesus.’ When Jesus dies everyone thinks, ‘that’s it.’ And so when Jesus turns up there is shock, fear, disbelief, and joy.

I read something this week that said the resurrection of Jesus is like a wound,[i] a wound than never quite heals, its something we live with, and we might say also we live from. It’s like Jacob got his limp after wrestling with the angel of God. If wounds can be ever considered good, this is a wound of the best kind, but it is a wound. We live with this reality that Jesus is risen; it accompanies us, comforts us, challenges us, astonishes us. One poet speaks of seeing Jesus’ body as the ‘wound of knowledge.’[ii] Easter is a reminded that Jesus is both the crucified and the risen one, we know Christ in both the cross and the empty tomb: a wound of knowledge. We know and we don’t know, we understand and we don’t understand. The resurrection of Jesus stands as the marker in which all hope and joy is found, but we never grasp the fullness of its implications, we never embrace the totality of its newness, we never comprehend wholly what it is say ‘I have seen the Lord.’ Easter is a wound that marks our lives, the world is not the same, we are not the same, but we live in what feels too often like an untransformed world; we might say we are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.

We receive this wondrous wound that Christ is risen amidst the wounds of our current time, which we are living with and we want to be over. These wounds which are a continuing source of pain and anxiety. Life is always carrying its wounds, its pain and suffering, but where we can perhaps overlook them, they are more visible this year jarring with the Easter alleluias that we are meant to be singing and feeling. As I said this is Low Sunday.

‘You, Lord, keep my lamp burning, my God turns my darkness into light.’ (Ps 18.28) That perhaps is a verse for now. The God of Easter, the Risen Jesus, keeps our lamps burning, keeps our hoping living, keeps our faith breathing, keeps our alleluias ringing. The shadows are near, but they do not totally envelop, because God shines his light, the light of Christ. ‘Easter is the promise that the absence of God has been penetrated with light, and the silence of the early morning is no longer hollow, but hopeful.’[iii] As we wrestle with the glorious wound of Easter and the wounds of our current lives we hold on to the Light, the light that filled the tomb, the light that filled the world, the light that God has shone on us: the light we name Jesus; Jesus wounded, crucified and risen One. The light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not put it out.

The good news about the risen Jesus, is he can come to us. Today light a candle, say a prayer, share bread, give thanks, read the gospel, make a phone call, be patient, take courageand trust in God, and then repeat it again tomorrow. Let this be your Easter routine.

 

[i] Benjamin Myers, Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams (T & T Clark, 2012).

[ii] R. L. Thomas. It was the title of Rowan Williams first book (1979).

[iii] Maggi Dawn, Giving it Up (BRF, 2009), 211.

Seeing the Other Side: A message for Easter

I wonder if you can remember a time when you were not tall enough to see. In front of you is a wall, and perhaps a parent or an older sibling is able to see over it, they can see what’s on the other side, they can tell you about it, but you want of course to see for yourself, so you say, hey can you lift me up, I’d like to see too?

Our lives might be thought of as a series of walls that at one point or another we can’t see over, and either we need someone to help lift us up, or we just have to be patient, never easy, and wait until we grow tall enough. Some of us perhaps feel like we’re still waiting! As we get to see over each wall, we find we can get to a point that we can climb over, and then at some point there is another wall and we’re back needing help or having to wait. Some of us find some walls impossible, some of us will always need help, and so sometimes we have to find another way round.

Eventually we all meet a very big wall. This wall is bigger than all of us. None of us can see over it. None of us, even when lifted up can see the other side. This wall feels permanent, fixed, solid, but we know, we feel, that there is something over it. We might call this wall Death. We know about Death, some of us learn about it fairly early on but most of the time the wall is in the distance far off, and we don’t have to think about it, and there are lots of other walls to try and see over, climb over, cross over, to distract us.

Right now the wall called Death feels close, it feels very near. For some of us it feels like it’s surrounding us on every side and it’s all we can see. We are overwhelmed by Death, to the extent that we are trying to find ways to protect our children from the news, and perhaps also ourselves, because its all too much to take in. We are confronted by Death, standing over us, casting a shadow over our days. We don’t want to die. We don’t want those we love to die. The shadow of Death though is not shifting. I don’t say this to add to our overwhelmed–ness, but to name the reality, the usually half-whispered reality, which is currently becoming a louder reality. We cannot get away from this wall.

And yet. And yet. And yet there is Jesus. I want to tell you about Jesus. Jesus was probably no taller than you or me, and he knows this wall named Death. He met death in a horrible horrific way. Death was a sentence given to him. Jesus has faced the wall we call Death. He has stared Death down, He has felt its terrible blow, He has experienced taking a final breath. Death put him in the ground, sealed up tight, locked down. Jesus’ story is like every other story, but — the good news hinges on a but — but the thing about Jesus is that God has shown him the other side, God has lifted him up, raised him up, to see the joy and life beyond the wall, beyond Death. Jesus has climbed over, gone ahead, and walked in the light, and grace and beauty of the other side, and he comes back to tell us about it, to say to us he has seen future, he is living the new creation.

He is the older sibling who says, I can see, its ok, I know what there is on the other side. Jesus, is the Brother who says: I am the Living Hope, I am the Good News, I am the Way and the Truth. I am the Resurrection and the Life. What we celebrate today is the wonderful joyful glorious news that this wall surrounding us is no longer something to fear. We are now confronted by Grace. Jesus has made us a window, and he lifts us up, raises us up that we might glimpse through, that we might have Hope, that we might have Life, even now.

This is Easter. This is the news I share with you, I proclaim to you. It’s my charge today, to help announce the joy that is the risen Jesus so that hear it, feel it, grasp it, so that your pulse quickens, your hearts beat a little faster, your hands clap, your feet even dance, your voices sing alleluia. We are asking God to Easter us.

Today once again we are invited into Hope, we are invited into Life, we are invited into Faith that Jesus is already on the other side, and has made us a way to join him. Do not be afraid says Jesus. See the new horizon. See the new reality. See the new creation, the promised land. Death will meet all us, but we see the glory, we feel the joy, we taste the freedom of Death undone and we know, we believe, we have faith that the death and resurrection of Jesus, means Life for us, that nothing can separate us from Jesus, nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even Death. Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed. Happy Easter!

He is Risen: An Easter Sermon

The entire Christian faith hinges on the words ‘He is risen.’[i]

We talk about the centrality of the cross,

in fact for some Christians the cross is all that matters,

everything else is like window-dressing.

But without the resurrection the cross is just a death;

We might sing of the power of the cross,

            but the power of the cross is powerless without the resurrection.

Without the resurrection the gospel is no news;

without the resurrection the words of Jesus are an impossible dream;

without the resurrection the church is a bunch of delusional do-gooders who’ve wasted too many opportunities for a Sunday lie-in;

without the resurrection Jesus himself is just a tiny footnote in history;

without the resurrection death is still the last word on life;

without the resurrection the only way to overcome evil is to fight fire with fire;

without the resurrection our past is a prison and our future is fate;

without the resurrection your bank balance and your BMI is all that matters;

without the resurrection the possible election of President Trump would mean

the end of the world.

I say again the entire Christian faith hinges on the words ‘He is risen.’

As the apostle Paul says:

            ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile’ (1 Cor. 15.17)

The resurrection means Jesus is alive,

            Jesus lives.

It means the narrative of his life has not ended.

The gospels are not biographies of a dead man,

but they are the account of one who lived and died and was raised to life.

The gospels are not simply a record of the past,

            they are the revelation of the Living One

                        who invites us to follow him,

                        who beckons us to listen,

                        who forgives us of our sin,

                       who loves us without restraint.

To read the gospels

            is encounter the one who is the same

                        yesterday, today and forever (Heb. 13.8)

The whole Bible becomes his living words,

            because Jesus, the Word become flesh,

                        Is the Living Word of Life.

This is the good news:

            Jesus is alive today

And so we know we can live his way,

            loving enemies, forgiving wrongs,

            letting go of control.

And this is why the church is not deluded.

They are a community of persons

            who lives have been, and are being, transformed

            by their worship and witness,

            of the Risen and Reigning One who breathes

                        His gift of mercy and peace upon them.

            The church does not worship a dead hero,

                        But a risen King.

            The church is a community of living memory,

                        Because it remembers one who lives,                    

                                    who is the head of the Church

                                    and Lord of creation.

That Jesus is alive,

            is why he is not a footnote in history,

            but its meaning and key and its goal.

The life of Jesus has created the greatest music and poetry,

            has founded centres of healing and learning,

            lies beneath the basis for justice and dignity.

            This is to practice resurrection,[ii]

            this is to anticipate the coming kingdom of God.

The church are an Easter people or they are no people at all.

The resurrection of Jesus is the defeat of death,

            the end of endings.

It is the assurance that he alone is the first and last word,

the resurrection of Jesus is the promise that we’d not fear our final breath.

The resurrection of Jesus means that the reality and power of evil is not

overcome through violence

            but instead through the cross –

the resurrection is God’s vindication of non-violence

‘The cross and not the sword, suffering and not brute power determine the meaning of history.’[iii]

The resurrection says the way of the cross is not accidental,

            but the grain of the universe.[iv]

Rather than fight fire with fire,

the church fights fire with water and bread and wine

                        with baptism and holy communion

            believing that the cross and resurrection of Jesus are more powerful than guns or bombs, tanks or Trident.

The resurrection of Jesus means our past can be forgiven and our future is now our destiny in Christ.[v]

            Where our past can be a prison, holding us in its grip, the resurrection announces that Jesus comes to free us, meaning our past is no longer able to assert its power over us: what has been is forgiven.

            Where our future can be fearful, uncertain, the resurrection announces that our future is now knowable – it is life with Jesus, we are no longer subject to the whims of fate, but can live with confidence that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus.

The resurrection of Jesus means that money and health no longer determine what a good life looks like.

Without the resurrection, we live fearful of not having enough, we live fearful of being destitute; we live with the lie that money makes happiness.

The resurrection declares that we live in the abundance of God, whose gifts never run out, who calls us into fellowship and friendship, who gives us good work to do, who offers us the joy and peace and hope of Holy Spirit.

            Without the resurrection, we live fearful of suffering and illness.

The resurrection of Jesus says that even in the midst of suffering, God is with us and God is for us.

The resurrection causes us to see life as a gift rather than a right, it draws us to see that suffering can sometimes be a vocation, for it is not finally ultimate.

The resurrection of Jesus means that we need not finally fear Trump or Putin or Isis.

The promise of God revealed in the raising of Jesus is that a new world is coming

The witness of the church is not dependent in living in a benign democracy,

            but on the power of the Holy Spirit

The early church did not fear Caesar,

for the resurrection of Jesus turned the church outward in mission

            with boldness, courage, faith, love, hope.

With the St. Paul let our prayer be to know Christ and the power of his resurrection (Phil 3.9).

The early church witnessed to a new age, a new time, a new creation.

Two thousand years on it can feel like we are stuck in the old age, the old time, the old creation.

The claim is that the church in the west is dying,

            it is certainly losing numbers,

but the resurrection of Jesus says God will never give up on the church,

            not because of its own righteousness,

            but because of the mercy and grace of God,

            that is raising daughters and sons,

                        like you and me,

who have experienced the power of resurrection

                                    to transform, forgive and be sent

                        to proclaim the good news that Jesus lives.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through

the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.

This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,

who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—

of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—

may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Though you have not seen him, you love him;

and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him

and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,

for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1.3-9)

Amen.

 

[i] This sermon found some inspiration from ‘If Christ is Risen’ a sermon preached by Sam Wells on Easter Sunday 2015. http://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/wp-content/uploads/April-5-SW.pdf

[ii] Wendell Berry, ‘Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front’

[iii] John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus

[iv] Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe (SCM, 2001) borrowed from Yoder.

[v] Sam Wells, The Nazareth Manifesto (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)

Cross Art

I am part of a small team that has sought to find ways of telling the Christian story in Southend Town Centre. A few years back we took over an empty shop for Holy Week and installed a form of the Stations of the Cross. Last year we sought again to tell the Easter story through a series of framed bits of art that we placed in different locations across the Town Centre. This year we commissioned 5 local artists to design a cross. We then produced 500 small crosses and we dropped them all over the town centre for anyway to find a take away.

The five cross designs was a fascinating way to how others see the cross. I'm not sure what each of the artists was intending, but these are my reflections.

 This first cross is imprinted with a compass. I see this in two ways. First, the cross is that which stands radiating out across the world - north, south, east, west. Second, the cross is the compass of the Christian life, it is how the church seeks to orientate its life.

 

 

 

 

 

This second cross is imprinted with flowers. I see these flowers either as about to flower or in the process of withering away. The cross is both death and life. It perhaps captures something of St. Paul's words to the church in Corinth that 'we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus … death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.'  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This cross reminds me of a rainbow and so the promise God makes Noah to never flood the earth again. It is a promise of commitment to all creation. The cross also contains across it a line of thorns, and so saying that God is making a new promise now in the death of Jesus, a new covenant. A new promise, a new covenant that confirms the promise to Noah and at the same time dealing with the human propensity to sin.  

Chocolate now lies at the centre of the Easter season. It has replaced the cross. And so here in this fourth cross we see the two juxtaposed together. Do they any connection? Chocolate can taste bitter or sweet, which perhaps also reflects the meaning of the cross, it is bitter and sweet, sorrow and joy. 

 

 

This final cross is one that suggests that though  it happened long ago, the cross remains alive as something with power. The images look like fossilised fish and the words are 'life', 'long before', 'on belonging to', 'hand in hand', 'remains.' It is perhaps the most enigmatic of the five designs. The Baptist theologian Paul Fiddes wrote a book called Past Event and Present Salvation and I see this cross as grappling with that sense of past and present.

Who will roll away the stone? An Easter Sermon

Who will roll away the stone?

Mark 16.1-8

Easter Sunday 5^th April 2015

Belle Vue Baptist

 

Who will roll away the stone?

Jesus is not asking the question this time.

The women disciples are.

Who will roll away the stone?

Jesus is hidden behind the stone.

Jesus who has died is hidden behind the stone.

Jesus in whom they had hoped, with whom they had lived,

and to whom they had followed as Lord.

Who will roll away the stone?

Who will roll away the stone so they can at least give his body the honour its due

and they can cling just one more time to him, before he becomes just a memory.

And if these women are asking the question,

so are we,

who will roll away the stone?

   Jesus you called me and I followed

   Jesus you promised and I believed

   Jesus you gave me faith and hope – small like a mustard seed, but you planted me in soil ready to grow.

   but … but now there is this stone

   in the way … this big stone that I can’t move.

A stone that represents

my cynicism – I can’t get past that you’re just too good be true,

I can’t get over that maybe you’re just all made up, or at least

history as made you more than you are.

my apathy – I can’t find the energy to keep believing, the passion just isn’t there    

                   anymore, it all seems too much like hard work

my suffering – I can’t stop asking why me Jesus? why is this happening to me?

my sadness – I just feel sad, there’s no joy left in me, I feel like you’ve taken away  

                   those I loved …

Who will roll away the stone?

 

For some of us, perhaps many of us,

the Saturday of Holy Week is where the story ends:

Jesus dead in the tomb.

Faith and hope ebbing away.

We started, but now we can’t go any further;

we started, but we don’t know how to go any further;

we started, but we don’t want to go any further.

Who will roll away the stone?

The stone represents

the thing we can’t get round.

The stone represents

our desire to stop.

The stone represents

a weight we cannot lift.

 

Easter dares us to look again.

Easter dares us to believe that God is stronger than the stone,

that Jesus can make a way where we can’t,

that Jesus will come and wait until we are ready to go again,

that Jesus can remove the weight weighing us down.

Easter declares that nothing, nothing whatsoever,

(to borrow some well-known words)

neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation – and certainly not a large cumbersome stone – can separate Christ from God, and us from Christ.*

Easter is the announcement

that Jesus is who he said he was

that the gospel really is good news

that death is undone

that a new world has come

         that the stone lies rolled away.

 

Come to the tomb and see that it’s empty.

Come to the table and find Christ is present.

Go into the world for Christ goes ahead of us.

And who is this Christ: he is risen one,

         who says ‘Be clean’;

         who says ‘Your sins are forgiven’;

         who says ‘Go in peace and be freed from your suffering’;

         who says ‘Don’t be afraid just believe’;

         who says ‘All things are possible with God’;

         who says ‘This is my body’.

 

The woman in the story move from despair to terror.

The stone lies rolled away,

but they are overwhelmed with the news that Jesus is risen.

We are left with an ending that is unresolved,

but with the word of hope and faith, ringing out,

‘He has risen! He is not here’

The promise is we will see him again,

if we will go and look for him.

Easter celebrates a new day, a new world, a new time,

it invites us to leave behind

our cynicism, our apathy, our suffering and our sadness,

to be embraced by Jesus,

do you want to see the glory of God?

Jesus is both here and he is beyond waiting for us,

he invites us once again to follow him,

back to the beginning:

the kingdom of God is near,

repent and believe the good news.

 

* Sam Wells, Learning to Dream Again.

This sermon was helped by reading Ched Myers, Binding the Strongman and Wells sermon 'Rolling Stones' in Learning to Dream Again.

Easter Icons 2015

This year's Easter Icons is in the street. For several years it was hosted in a church, last year we were in a empty shop in a shopping centre, this year we've gone on to the streets. 14 pieces of 'art' in and around Southend High Street, even one at the end of the Pier, that seek to tell the Easter story. There's a website here to accompany the trail.

How do we live Easter?

The church is getting better about observing (or recovering) lent. There are number of resources, ideas, possibilities for people to engage with intentionally (or half-heartedly) over the 40 days.

There is little or nothing for the 50 days of Easter.

How do we live Easter or to use Wendell Berry's wonderful phrase 'practice resurrection'?

Easter tends to pass us by.

We get to to the summit of resurrection day and then drift along until Pentecost, or maybe Ascension.

What are Easter habits?

Lent is hard work, should Easter be a rest? After all, the disciples went fishing or at least were fairly quiet until Pentecost. Should Easter be a break (many clergy often need one), and then at Pentecost, when we pick up the work of again, (empowered by the Spirit)?

Its easier to preach Lent, than it is to preach Easter, or that is it what it can feel like.

So any ideas for 50 ways to live Easter?

Easter Icons 2013

On Good Friday ...

... if you're in the Southend area, or fancy a day trip, come and visit Easter Icons. (With thanks to Si Smith for permission to use the image)