The great thing about Eastertide is that it lasts longer than Lent! So we will take time – especially in this time of continuing retreat – to meditate on the great mystery of the Lord’s Resurrection. Fr Bob Eccles’ beautiful sermon for the Easter Vigil reflects on how we are all raised by Christ, and even though apart because of present circumstances, the Risen Lord raises us together.
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
“If we have died with Christ we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.”
From the letter of St Paul to the Romans, chapter 6, words we heard tonight
Dear brothers Euan, Aidan, Paul, Bruno, Colin and Dominic, dear Sisters, dear family and friends everywhere and dear everyone tuning in to Radio Maria, sometimes, once in a blue moon, night falls in the daytime. Do you remember? We walked out onto the green or into the park in the middle of the day, to find ourselves part of a curious crowd enjoying the sunshine. It was so long since anyone had seen an eclipse of the sun, we all wanted to be out of doors to see it. The children playing and the teenagers with their bikes and skateboards, this was a first for them, all at once quietened and were still, at noonday the moon was passing over the sun, there was a strange gloom and a mysterious twilight all around. The people in the park suddenly felt chilly and began to walk about on the grass to keep warm.
But then after a few minutes the world shook itself, how surprisingly green the grass was again, and then, a dawn chorus, the voices of surprised children and the birds bursting full-throated into song. The sun shone again, it was just as though nothing had happened. What had we seen? Our lives had been interrupted for a moment. It was like a fleeting reminder of mortality, it was a sort of momentary death, a dying of the light. The darkness had covered the earth, and even the familiar sun, that primitive peoples worshipped as a god. One day perhaps the sun and the moon would fail, and the stars refuse their light. We shook off the thought and got on with our day.
Darkness and light are the most basic and most primitive creatures of all there is. In the story of Creation in the book of Genesis, light is the first thing made. It’s written in our genes, no not the denims you are wearing, silly, our biological genes, that contain the code of our human nature, that we love the light of day and really need the sunshine to flourish. In our minds light and darkness so readily stand in for life and death. Remember the Easter hymn,
Then life and death together fought
each to a strange extreme was brought:
life died but soon revived again,
and even death by it was slain.
So the hymn, Victimae paschali laudes, describes how life and death are locked in a strange and wonderful struggle and at the end, the champion of life lies dead, and yet victorious lives and reigns. And the gospel of St John we hear so often in Eastertide depicts that victory of life over death, in those familiar terms of light over against darkness. In him there was life, St John says of the eternal Word, and that life was the Light of humanity. And the Light shines in darkness, a darkness which is not able to master it. I AM the Light of the world, says the Lord, whoever follows me will have the light of life.
The creed of Christians is simply this, that the Light of the world went down into the darkness, was crucified, died and was buried. At his passing the Sun hid her light. From the sixth hour onwards there was darkness over the whole earth until the ninth, the gospel tells us. He descended then into the sunless world of the dead to set them free, to end the reign of death. The time is coming, he had said, nay has already come, when the dead will listen to the voice of the Son of God, and those who listen to it will live. I think you must be familiar with the Russian ikon where the Risen Lord, his feet standing on the gates of hell broken beneath his feet, reaches down and with his hands draws up Adam and Eve from the tomb? for the Orthodox it’s the favourite image of the Resurrection.
Rowan Williams reflects on it so memorably. When we look at those faces in the ikon, he says, we see no longer the young couple of the garden of Eden but two elders, with white hair and lined faces, this is Adam and Eve who have lost their innocence, the Adam and Eve who are of course ourselves, we who carry around with us the marks of history, of experience, of the knowledge of good and evil, hurts received and hurts done to others. Those are our faces on the ikon, Adam and Eve ‘four thousand winters on’ as the carol rightly puts it; because the history of Adam and Eve is a wintry one, and we know that in ourselves.
So when we speak of the resurrection as a new beginning, a new creation, it is in the sense that the risen Christ reaches down and touches precisely those faces, Adam and Eve grown old. God who wonderfully created us has wonderfully restored us, that image says. That re-creation, that new beginning of resurrection is more wonderful because it is the planting of newness and freshness, beauty and vision and glory, in faces like yours and mine, in lives like yours and mine. The light shines indeed in the darkness and the darkness retreats before it, the risen Christ has won the victory over the Dark Lord, the Satan. This is the victory that overcomes the world, our Easter faith.
And this is the night when typically, if not this time just for once, we receive new Christians to the font. And the children of Christian families. Those baptised believers who are newly confirmed renew the vows of their baptism with us all. On this night holy Church opens her arms in welcome and leads her sons and daughters down into the waters, for this is the night, we sing in exultation, of which it is written, the night shall be clear as the day. Dazzling is the night for us, and full of gladness. This is the night when the neophytes join Christ in the waters, in his struggle against the elemental spirits of darkness. This is our own story and it is told us at an especially testing time when the world is in shadow.
How unusual and how difficult now, that this altar should appear to be a lonely place, where people can’t come, can’t gather. A veil has fallen and just for a time we are invisible to one another, a crowd hidden in the dark, and everyone separated from the ones we love, seemingly. But the truth is that we are all still here, still belonging, like the runners in a strawberry bed – all present and consciously aware of one another, now more than ever. There is a deep vein of fellow-feeling that connects us, and a holy desire to belong to one another that communicates itself. Now more than ever the communion of saints we confess in the creed is a felt reality, the fellowship of the saints in light. Those who have fallen ill are part of it, and the dead who have passed beyond our sight, and those who mourn. Though we cannot see one another we are all present in one communion of faith and hope and love and not one shall be absent tonight, not one shall be unremembered, not in all eternity.
And we are the ones who dare to shout it out, for we are in Christ as little fishes are in the water (as the Fathers liked to say) and we do not believe in death without resurrection. We are His and we dare to cry out, “awake, O sleepers, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” The darkness cannot last, it will pass away, and the day of gladness dawn. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Christ is risen, he is risen indeed! Alleluia, amen.