Easter Sunday - Changes - A sermon for April 17th 2022

 

A sermon for Easter Sunday          April 17^th 2022

"May the words of my mouth and the whispering of my heart, always find favour, in your presence, Yahweh, my rock, my redeemer."

Hallelujah! Christ is risen he is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

We're finally here. Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It all comes down to this day, the greatest day in the church year and this is the day we get all the, 're’s.'

resurrection

renewal

restore

reborn

and all these re’s are verbs, describing action, this is a day of change, to something new.

And today we celebrate the greatest change in our history for two thousand years.

And whether we like it or not, change is inevitable and it can be joyful and amazing, but can also be painful and stressful.

It was all of these for Jesus

And it is also for us sometimes, but a quick thought on this is that our change is ours, if it's hard, it's hard and if someone says they found the same change easy that does not diminish your change.

Oh and the idea that God doesn't give you more change than you can handle, is unhelpful, it assumes God causes all the hard stuff and He doesn't.

Sometimes, the stuff will bend, break or change you.

It may be more than you can handle.

It was for Jesus. He was hurt, killed and couldn't survive it. He died. But God didn't kill him, we did. Our lack of love didn’t kill him. The sins of the people who rejected him on that fateful day, were taken to the cross, but they were forgiven, for they knew not what they were doing. The thieves killed next to Jesus on crosses, were forgiven their sins, to be with Jesus in paradise, a promise of what lies ahead for us.

God’s plan was what came afterwards.

Amid all this, Jesus wasn’t abandoned, even if he felt it, he was never alone, and neither are we ever alone, however difficult life’s changes may be.

Jesus, on that day, could only survive through change.

And this had to happen. Out of this came the change which was needed, in the church and in faith, in Jesus and in us.

A new religion was born out of Judaism.

A new church, was born, dividing and growing again and again like cells in a growing body.

A new Jesus was transformed out of death, for when he comes back he has changed as well, and not just into new robes, he is not the same as he was before. For even though he is resurrected, he carries the wounds from the nails in the cross.

In the gospel of Luke today we hear only about the discovery of the empty tomb, about the two men, angels in dazzling clothes who terrified the women who'd come to anoint the body of Jesus.

These men tell the women what has happened, not with statements, but by asking questions; who do you look for? why do you look for the living among the dead?

And they get a mini-sermon as well; remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the son of man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again?

Which must be rather cryptic and confusing and not what is expected when visiting the grave of a loved one.

In contrast to this miraculous event, we get the the good old patriarchy disbelieving these women once again, the men who heard from them, thinking they are telling an idle tale, not believing or trusting the women, their friends and fellow disciples, and perhaps this isn't the day to talk about women not being believed through the years, centuries and millennia.

Or perhaps it is, so that when we consider the action of change in resurection, can we also think about changes in society which mean not dismissing witnesses just because of their gender, their skin colour, their status or sexual orientation. Just a thought…

But it's reassuring, that even though the truth was only believed when Peter also went to the tomb, the witness of these women, by Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other woman, their witness is still recorded in the Gospel of Luke.

It would have been easy to have missed them out altogether and just recorded the visit by Peter, so full credit to Luke for doing this.

Ironically, in this reading today we still don't get to see the risen Jesus. That will happen another day, but for today, the empty tomb is evidence enough, the two angels talking to the women are evidence enough.

In our Gospel today, we have people affected by change in different ways.

First of all we have the women who had a plan, they were going to prepare Jesus’ body for burial, to finish the work they couldn't complete on Good Friday.

They probably walked up there, sad, grieving and a little upset but with a plan, not expecting to find an empty tomb and to be confronted by dazzling men in white clothes.

This turned all their expectations upside down - a shocking change for them, then the other disciples led by Peter, who probably knew the women had gone to the tomb, but probably didn't expect anymore than to be told later that their work had been completed and they could continue grieving the death of their friend still not understanding what had happened.

Then of course the change experienced by Jesus himself. He had prayed for this change to be taken away from him in the garden of Gethsemane, even though he knew it was inevitable, it was not something he looked forward to, because he knew it would be painful and distressing,

and while he knew that the result would be the culmination of all the plans he had made with his father in heaven, it didn't make the change any easier to understand or bear.

Jesus knew and God knew that this would happen.

That if Jesus kept challenging the authority of the religious leaders and the Roman authorities, they would eventually see the need to remove him.

So they did and even then some of them didn't really want to kill him, but Jesus knew that it had to happen.

So all those re’s that I mentioned came to pass for Jesus, he was restored, reborn renewed, and resurrected he survived through change and he returned but was not the same as we'll hear about in the gospels in the weeks ahead, he appeared different, but was more serene, not fully present more divine but was still Jesus.

So what does this mean for us.

Is it that there may be a reward our faithfulness and trust.

Perhaps more than anything it's a sign that very often we have to change just for the good things to happen and sometimes they aren't good things at the time and change happens anyway.

Many of us go through life trying to avoid change, I know I certainly do.

It's much easier to live day by day hoping that nothing will change. That things are settled and will be the same, but as I get the older I realise that change happens whether I want it to or not.

Of course change is easier if you are in control, if you can manage it, if it's communicated well and if you understand the reasons for the change.

But this change was unique, after all, I don't think any of us are aware of anyone else who's ever returned in a physical way to the people they loved after they died, as much as we may wish they could, and actually Jesus didn't stay with his friends and loved ones for long.

It wasn't a permanent physical resurrection but in his actions he showed the way to light, and joy, truth and hope and eternal life.

He showed there was more to life than death, that there was purpose beyond the end of our lives.

So that as a result of his resurrection, we know that death is no longer the end, instead it becomes a milestone in our lives where we enter a new realm, a heavenly place, a new heaven and a new earth.

It will be an eternal home alongside God, alongside our loved ones and quite what form we will take or they will take, we don't really know, but we do know that it is a joyful place, with exuberant music, filled with extravagant love, surrounded with light and hope.

Jesus has opened the way to this place for us and all we have to do to get there is to have faith in him because Jesus wants all his followers to join him there

and there are almost no barriers to this promise, because this is a promise of eternal life and through faith all sins are forgiven. And it is never to late to come to faith.

And I may have told this story before, but it helps to see that there is always hope for everybody.  

It's the tale of young lad, perhaps 10 years old talking to a Bishop at his school in class.

The Bishop asks what do you think happened in the three days when Jesus died, before he rose again.

The boy put his hand up and said I think Jesus went to hell, and why did he go there, asked the bishop, it was to look for Judas, said the boy, to tell Judas that he loved him and that he was forgiven so that he could come to heaven.

Life after death is eternal with no beginning and no end, so I believe that there is no time when we cannot turn to Christ, even after death to be saved to find a place with him in heaven and with our loved ones and in this we have hope.

Hope that change may come and that the change will be a renewal, of healing, love and hope, for us, for those we love and all of humanity.

So, we look to the cross, to the empty tomb now, and on the glorious morning of Jesus’ resurrection, it is a moment to shout Hallelujah, to be joyful to sing with the heavenly hosts to praise God, to live with hope and expectation of a future beyond this life which is filled with light and joy where pain and suffering have ended.

So let's shout once more Hallelujah he is risen indeed let us give thanks to the Lord!

Amen.

 

 Preached at St George and St Cyr in Cam and Stinchcombe. Also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A1ZEEsUJl4

 

 

Luke 24:1-12. The Resurrection of Jesus

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ² They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³ but when they went in, they did not find the body.

⁴ While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. ⁵ The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 

⁶ Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, ⁷ that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ 

⁸ Then they remembered his words, ⁹ and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰ Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 

¹¹ But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹² But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

 

I realised something quite shocking yesterday, a song called changes is now 51 years old, written early in 1971 by David Bowie, which means its only 6 months younger than me, and that is rather scary. It’s scary when I have to admit being born the nineteen hundreds, or see a story on tv set in the nineteen eighties as historical drama. Among many things the song talks about the need to find your own way in the world, as an artist and a young person, not to be constrained by the norms of society and what is expected of you.

Its quite challenging to listen to this because as I get older, I keep hoping things will stay the same, but they don’t, they never do.

 

And in the difficulty experienced by Jesus, it makes me think about the changes we go through in our lives and how the world around us responds when we describe change that we're experiencing because our change is our change if it's traumatic it’s traumatic, if it makes us emotional, then that's real change, and can be very hard and if someone says to you that they went through the same thing and it was easy for them well I would just ignore them because your change is your change and if you find it painful it's painful, so please don't let other people diminish your experiences the real and at the same time the phrase God doesn't give you more than you can handle comes to mind and while this might be a nice sounding platitude I'm not sure it's true because because it seems that God causes all the hard stuff in our lives so therefore it can't be more than you can cope with but I don't think that God does cause the hard stuff in our lives he may not show reactions to it 2 events but God doesn't cause bad stuff to happen because sometimes the bad experiences will break us and change us they may be more than we can handle and let's remember they were for Jesus the experience he went through was excruciatingly painful he died I did not survive but God didn't kill Jesus gods plan was about what came afterwards

Even in Peters sermon in Acts, Peter simply says that God raised Jesus on the third day and told him to appear, but only to people who were chosen as witnesses by God, who ate and drank with him, after he rose from the dead, which is only a small part of the story.