St John the Evangelist’s recently had its clocks refurbished. The church spire is very prominent in Burgess Hill and people look to it from all over to tell the time. I think of St John’s with its fast growing congregation as a spiritual lighthouse for the town having a membership so open to the Holy Spirit. We are a body people can check with, like the church clock, and be put right in a more profound sense than getting the right time.
‘Christ is risen from the dead! He has crushed death by his death and bestowed life upon those who lay in the tomb!’
Words from the Orthodox Easter service. We can’t get enough of Easter. It’s the Queen Season of the Church’s year. Festive hangings and vestments, the Paschal Candle standing proud in the sanctuary, alleluias galore and an especially joyful repertoire from the choir and the refurbished organ over these great 40 days – for we read in Acts 1:3 ‘how after Christ’s suffering he presented himself alive to his disciples by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days speaking about the kingdom of God’.
Although I wasn’t able to attend last Sunday’s Annual Church Meeting I read the attractively presented report show and how heartening it was to see the upward sloping graph of Sunday attendance on page 6. We at St John’s are definitely an Easter People, a Community of the Resurrection experiencing growth in faith, love and numbers. This despite bearing loss of church members through mortality, not least the sadness of our former Churchwarden Liz Hayward’s sudden passing almost a year ago – I’m sure she’s still praying for us!
People get intrigued into church nowadays and part of the intriguing is warm fellowship, intelligent preaching and sound liturgy – but there’s nothing more intriguing than resurrection! As former Lord Chief Justice of the United Kingdom, Lord Darling, observed about Christ’s Resurrection: ‘In its favour there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the Resurrection story is true’. Do people know this? That the events of Holy Week are so grounded in history they’re taken seriously by legal experts?
Moving on to today’s Gospel reading from St Luke’s Gospel Chapter 24, Our Lord provides here an intriguing demonstration of the physicality of the resurrection, showing his wounded yet glorified hands and feet and eating a piece of grilled fish.
Those who were at the Easter Vigil two weeks ago will recall that when we blessed the Paschal Candle we placed four nails in its side to represent the crucifixion. As we read in today’s Gospel: ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem’. The point Our Lord makes is the same point St Peter makes in the first reading: ‘it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer’.
The atheist writer Albert Camus once debated the resurrection with members of the French Dominican Order. He complained that the resurrection was an unreal and unsatisfactory happy ending. They answered by pointing to this text. God came to share our suffering which served to expiate the sin of the world. No suffering we have to endure is now strange to God. As one of Wesley’s Advent hymns puts it: ‘Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears. Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers. With what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars’.
‘It is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name’.
This morning the risen Christ invites us once more to repent, to turn to him for forgiveness, so that his light may shine in us and through us.
I was interested to see the illustrations of the church clocks refurbishment in our annual report. It reminded me of our building’s prominence in Burgess Hill and how people look to it from all over to tell the time. The spire’s prominence leads me to think of St John’s as a spiritual lighthouse through her committed membership open to the Holy Spirit. We are a body people can check with, like the church clock, and be put right in a more profound sense than getting the right time.
St John’s as a lighthouse? Maybe, if you and I become lighthouses, little candles lit from the Easter Candle? Lit with this faith – that the most meaningful thing in life is what conquers death.
In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but LIFE – and where that life is to be found – as I believe it is here at St John’s – people who possess it will intrigue and infect others who’ve yet to find it!
To quote Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann: ‘The source of false religion is the inability to rejoice, or rather, the refusal of joy, whereas joy is absolutely essential because it is without any doubt the fruit of God’s presence’.
So then – let our focus this Sunday in Easter season be on rejoicing for eucharist and Christian life itself means no less than thanks and praise.
Christ is risen! ‘In his, in God’s presence is the fullness of joy and at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore’ says the Psalmist.
Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!
