Date: 19th
April 2009
Preacher: Nikki
Devitt
Churches: Draycott
& Rodney Stoke
Readings:
Acts 4, 32-35
1 John 1.1 – 2.2
John 20, 19 - 31
Easter 2
We recently visited Amsterdam, and while we were there we
visited Anne Frank’s House….some of you might have been there:
It’s where the teenage Anne and her family went into hiding
from the Nazis, during the war , because they were Jews.
…and even if you haven’t been there yourself, you’ve perhaps
read the young Anne’s diary-
expressing by turns confusion, and incomprehension,
alternating with hope for a better future,
and then the daily fear of discovery by the military
police of that brutal and ruthless regime..
Now, Perhaps this familiar glimpse of recent history can
give us some insight into the way the disciples were feeling that first Easter
evening. They were not just standing around, waiting for the
denouement…
They are gathered in a house together, dismayed and
perplexed at the turn of events
behind locked doors
terrified that
the Temple police might arrive at any moment and arrest them,
because of their association with Jesus.
They’ve bolted and barred the doors against the dangers from
outside…
but there’s something else:
perhaps, too, each disciple is afraid of the guilt inside
himself,
each one locking his own heart and mind
against the others,
each not wanting to admit that they have failed Jesus in the
crisis.
And what does the future hold for them now? Their
master is dead…
…..And into the midst of this pain and this fear
Jesus breaks through…
He comes through the locked doors of their house,
and of their hearts
He stands
among them
and
says Peace be with you
…or
Shalom
It’s the
everyday greeting between Jews on the streets of Jerusalem,
but in using
that greeting,
people are
expressing the hope that one day God’s reign of justice & wholeness and
peace will reign.
And so
when Jesus comes back, from beyond death
and speaks peace to his
disciples,
he’s
perhaps saying to them that this new age, of God’s order, has begun.
And the
disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord: in fact the Greek word for ‘rejoiced’
used in the original text is connected strongly with the word for ‘grace’
…so we
might say the disciples were ‘graced out’ or (more poetically)‘uplifted
or overwhelmed by grace’
Well, Something
extraordinary clearly happened to them, because they went from being paralysed
with despair & fear
to going
out, facing their enemies, and proclaiming the gospel of God’s kingdom.
So what
had brought about this extraordinary change,
in these erstwhile cowardly, fearful and
despairing men?
Well, John
gives us a very subtle clue in the way he tells the story,
in the words he uses
(but it’s
a clue that easily gets lost in translation) and it’s to do with different ways
of ‘seeing’.
There are
lots of different Greek words, which we translate simply as ‘seeing’ and
John uses them all in the resurrection stories…
So let’s go back to Easter morning:
Day is
breaking as Mary Magdalen goes to the tomb and sees that
the stone at the entrance of the tomb has been moved away.
This word for
‘seeing’ is related to the word for eyelids (βλεπω)
…so, a
purely physical gesture, of casting a glance (no understanding involved…in fact
she’s puzzled and alarmed )
So she
runs to find the disciples and tell them
that the
Lord’s body has gone from the tomb. And 2 of them rush off to go and
investigate.
Peter gets to the tomb first, and sees
the graveclothes…that’s a different sort of seeing:
The word
used for ‘seeing’ this time is related to our English word ‘theory’…
it means
to scrutinise and
ask questions of something in an enquiring
sort of way
…without, it seems, necessarily
arriving at the answers.
Well, the
disciples return home, Mary stays in the garden weeping, and she sees
2 angels in white. (This is the same word as examining the graveclothes…she’s
exploring the phenomenon but not really getting it)
Then Mary sees
Jesus,(same word again!) : she looks but doesn’t see, she
doesn’t recognise him, and she mistakes
him for the gardener.
Then, when
Jesus then has revealed who he is, she runs and tells the disciples
‘I have seen the Lord’
but she
uses another quite different
word to see.
She uses
the word from which we get our English word ‘idea’…and this means to see
and understand, to get the idea,
to have
insight and true vision into what has happened.
And so
that same evening,
the
disciples are together on the first day of the week
this is where our gospel reading
starts…
And when
Jesus has stood among them and given them his peace:
the disciples are overjoyed when they see the Lord,
and this finally is
the kind of seeing which sees and understands
(like Mary Magdalen).
And the
way John tells this, it isn’t a one off event, of catching sight…but he
describes a continuous state of seeing….
☺And
of course, we too, have different ways of seeing.
As Easter
comes round once more, with flowers in church again, and hymns with
‘alleluia’s,
We may
just notice the change of season, enjoy the superficial trappings of the feast,
but remain spectators, untouched by it all, nothing within us changes.
Or we might
examine the Easter stories with the second, ‘theoretical’ kind of viewpoint,
and perhaps ask why Mary mistook Jesus
for the gardener, or how Jesus came through the walls of the house?
...we cannot
answer these questions and if we dwell on these things,
we risk
missing the point of the stories: We risk remaining in the empty
tomb, pondering the (now redundant) grave clothes…
John tells
us at the end of his gospel
that he
has written it
‘so that we shall believe
that Jesus is the Christ,
and shall have life
in his name’.
And for
that to happen,
We surely
need to see the risen Lord in the third sense,
with our hearts and minds, and to
respond with our whole selves,
to experience resurrection in our own lives
by accepting the peace of
Christ
in our own hearts,
and in our lives-together (as did
the disciples)
… and if we do that,
we, like those first disciples,
shall be sent out ,
alive with Christ’s spirit,
to transform the world.
I’ll end
with an Easter prayer by Janet Morley.
Risen
Christ
whose
absence leaves us paralysed
But whose
presence is overwhelming:
Breathe on
us with your abundant life,
So that,
seeing you,
We may go
out into the world
Bringing
your unexpected joy.
Amen