RonBlog

Sunday 8th April, 2012 Easter

Sentence
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast. 1 Cor. 5:7

Collect
Glorious Lord of life, by the mighty resurrection of Your Son You overcame the old order of sin and death to make all things new in Him; grant that we, who celebrate with joy Christ’s rising from the dead may be raised from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, through Him Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen

First Lesson Acts 10: 34 – 43

Peter began to speak to them: "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.
We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."

For the Psalm Hymn to the Risen Christ

Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us: so let us celebrate the feast
Not with the old leaven of corruption and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth
Christ once raised from the dead, dies no more: death has no more dominion over Him
In dying He died to sin once for all: in living, He lives to God.
See yourselves, therefore, as dead to sin: and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord
Christ has been raised from the dead: the first-fruits of those who sleep.
For as by one man came death: by another man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die: even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Epistle I Corinthians 15: 1 – 11

I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

GOSPEL Mark 16: 1 – 8
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Jesus. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.
As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

© New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
Copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the
Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission. All rights reserved

NOTES ON THE READINGS .....

First Lesson
I have commented before that this passage is included in the Lectionary perhaps more often than any other. There is good reason of course, for it marks yet another stage in the development of Peter and his understanding of the Gospel.
This matter has to do with the acceptance of Gentiles into the Church; small drama for you, you say, but that is because you have two millennia of Christian discovery right in your lap. It was a vast and significant step for the Early Church.
Like any human being of any time and age, we bring a lot of baggage into our pilgrimage. Sadly we are often totally unaware of it until some ‘egg hits the fan’ and we have to do a rethink. Jews had been convinced for centuries that they were the Chosen People of God, the only humans in whom God had the slightest interest. It was embedded so deeply in the Jewish psyche that I suspect much of Judaism today has the same understanding.
Had the Church remained with that dogma, it would never have survived the first century. It would first have become simply a Jewish sect, and then almost certainly died out.
On the other hand, one of the great, repeated and strong emphases of the Old Testament prophets, and the Psalms, and, indeed, the original promise of blessing to Abraham had the focus on the entire human population. If you find that hard to believe, Google ‘Gentile(s)’ or ‘nations’ in your Bible and stand ready to be overwhelmed with the response. As the final and irreversible evidence, read the Gospels again to see the irrepressible Jesus in His wide acceptance of Gentiles. Over the top of that is our Lord’s remarkable (for that time) acceptance of women. Luke, in particular, underlines the hugely important role women played in Jesus’ ministry – another shock for His contemporaries.
Read the entire incident in Acts 10 to get the full picture. In spite of being the ‘hay-seed’ Jew – from Galilee – Peter was still very much the kosher person. But that experience led him so far past tradition as to be breath-taking. Mind you, that same man had trouble with his contemporaries who were certain that he had crossed over that ‘line in the sand.’ Thank heaven he did!!!!!
So who do we translate as ‘Gentiles’ in today’s world? Fr. Warren is for ever pointing us to the need to make room for people however different to us in our fellowship ........

For the Psalm
I guess it is true to say that this quotation from Corinthians explains itself as the passage unfolds. And please notice that this rune of words is not some introspective ‘holy, heart-warming’ statement. It is the expression of a very clear and strategic view of the Faith for all of humanity, once you realize that ‘Adam’ is not some figure from a very distant past, but is shorthand for all humans living outside the point, purpose and benefit of the Faith.

Epistle
This passage used to be the normal choice of readings in the Funeral Service of the Book of Common Prayer. I recall using it, in decades past, and finding the need to explain to people what the Apostle was on about. The reality is quite clear: Paul was painfully aware that the Resurrection would make it hard for many to believe, and offered the cold hard evidence of many people who had individual experience of the Risen Christ. Whilst we are bereft of such evidence, other sound factors can be added to the store of facts and factors. Not least of those, of course, is the continuing existence of the Faith and Church; and in fact stop and ponder the extent to which so much of life is subject to the death / resurrection cycle. Even day and night!

GOSPEL
Some years ago at Christmas I left a sheet on the Church Notice Board which offered suggestions at what would have happened at the Nativity if (a) the shepherds and (b) the Magi had been women. Part of the page was a little risqué, but funny. The other part was quite down to earth, indicating the sheer practicality of the ladies when it comes to significant events. They brought casseroles, they brought nappies, and they cleaned up the stable etc.
Here in Mark’s brief account of the death of Jesus, it was the ladies who came, early and well prepared to do what was required to attend to the body of their Lord. No fuss; no bother. There was just the grim determination to get the job done, as quickly and as completely as possible. Bless ‘em. And thank heaven for them
Notice also how much of a complete surprise the resurrection came to them. Jesus had talked about it often enough, but I guess none of us hear what we do not expect to hear, or see! We really are rather thick, eh! Mind you, I find reference to ‘fear and terror’ a little hard to coper with, but if telemovies are any real indication, it seems that seeing a dead body evokes such a response from the ladies – absence of a body may have produced more explosive reactions.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

You can call me anything you like, as you read on, but I have to report having (consciously) celebrated something like 70 Easters over the past decades. Having lived through times when nothing about the Faith was questioned to now when almost everything is, it has long been a concern of mine how far too often we Christians have got all excited over the celebration whilst missing the whole point of it all. In fact one of my contemporaries in a Youth Group to which I belonged would get ‘over the top’ excited, but I doubt if she could have explained why. In other words froth and bubble have never appealed to me, -- which may explain partly why I tend to be a bit of a party-pooper. Nothing wrong with getting excited – but excitement ought to have a real and empirical basis. Otherwise it is like the end of a fire-cracker show: all a bit of a let-down.

So, resurrection: is it real or is it ephemeral?
If there is an explanation that I would ask you to consider, it is what I have expressed often about ‘miracles.’ Again, if there is one thing that I have learnt from the study of the Gospels, it is that Jesus – from His Temptations on, turned His back on using miracle as a means of gaining a following. John’s Gospel makes it most clear when he describes what we might call ‘miracle’ as ‘sign!’ In other words, it is a matter of understanding that to which the sign or miracle is pointing, and not to confuse the two.

So what is the resurrection saying, and as I see it, loud and clear? Please come on a journey with me.
When one looks at the Cross in the way it is designed to be looked at, it is the savage expression of the determination of evil people to get rid of anyone or anything that threatens their position and power. This is an age-old process that still occurs regularly even in so-called democracies , and in those days was so common that anything different was an utter rarity. Evil ruled, and that was that, and you would be stupid even to consider the possibility that anything different could happen. (It is small wonder that the ancient Babylonian creation myths posited the certainty that life was bloody and it was pointless even trying to consider anything different.) It seems to me that much of fundamentalist Islam is on the same wave-length. Mind you, that violent attitude applies to fundamentalist almost anything! And before you get too proud, I have just been reading (Jan 2012) a book on the slavery situation in the Deep South of USA where the so-called Christians there operated [some still do!!!] under the same false theology!)

If retaliation was the real way to go, then Jesus would have done so. That He did not was a stunning change from the expected, and that did not arise out of weakness but because He knew that retaliation against evil only increased that evil, and did nothing to overcome it.
Should you have the bravery to see this, Jesus overcame evil by absorbing it and refusing to retaliate. Evil is overcome, not by destroying the perpetrators, but by showing up evil for what it is. THAT is how evil is defeated, and note that this approach still requires the positive response from us by seeing and then avoiding doing evil ourselves.

Those present that day when Jesus was killed expected that there was the end of the ‘lovely story.’ End of Jesus, end of problem. But it was not the end, but a stunning new beginning.
That Jesus rose from the dead was the sign and seal, the semeion that the old immutable pattern was no longer inevitable. With Jesus rising, there came the new certainty that love can be suppressed but it will rise again. Justice can be suppressed but it will rise again. Likewise truth and compassion and loyalty and all the ancient values that make life liveable will keep coming back, for life is intolerable without them.

DO I believe in Jesus’ resurrection, yes I do, for not only do those things I have mentioned never die, but look at the ordinary things of life and see the same picture. Day and night; summer and winter, death and life, seeds and reaping, trees and fruit. Life is punctured with illustrations of the necessity of resurrection, and thank God for that!