Unchaining the resurrection

Psalm 114; Luke 24.13-35

Friends, every year at Easter I hear the resurrection of Christ being tied to the cycles of nature, to the return of fertility, to the flowering of flora and fauna in the (ironically) European springtime. For that is what the theology of the resurrection has become in our culture: an affirmation of the eternal return of that which we saw last year, and the year before, and the year before that, and so on. Here the Christian meaning of the resurrection has been collapsed into that old pagan celebration of Oestre, the Anglo-Saxon god of fertility, whose advent is celebrated with the cyclic return of the sun to warm the world and awaken the life that lays dormant in the soil. This Easter celebrates what Nietzsche called ‘the eternal return of the Same’, the irrepressible tendency of nature to repair and renew itself; but more seriously, of human beings to want what they have always wanted, to believe what they have always believed, and to know what they have always known. It is an Easter in which the rhetoric of ‘new life’ is just a figure of speech, because nothing new is really possible. The circle returns, endlessly, to where it began. Which makes me think that perhaps the best symbol of this modern Easter is not even the fertile bunny or the egg, but the Big Mac. Because each time you have one, it tastes exactly the same as the one you had last time. 

Moreover, I often feel that our church, the Uniting Church, has become exactly like this pagan version of Easter: forever, like Smith in the Matrix films, preaching a gospel of inevitability. Since we have so tethered our faith to the economic and cultural fortunes of our society, we feel as though we no longer have anything important to say or do, nothing, that is, that has not already been said or done by many others. Here our faith in the resurrection is made forever small – about the size of our faith in the ‘human spirit’ - and forever repetitive, condemned to be no more than a ‘spiritual’ footnote to themes that have been present in politics, economics, law and sociology from time immemorial. Themes that are condemned to repeat themselves over and over again because they are made by us, by human beings, who find it comforting to believe that there is nothing really new under the sun. 

Of course, the Feast of the Resurrection has almost nothing, almost nothing I say, to do with the eternal return of this neo-pagan Easter (I will return to this 'almost' on another occasion). The resurrection of Jesus, rather, is about the in-breaking of something that is so new, so different, so unheard of, that, strictly speaking, we cannot even describe it. It is, as Jürgen Moltmann says somewhere, an event entirely without adequate comparison or analogy. It is an event that shatters every established pattern or model, every expectation, every shred of comfort and certainty we may have had about the way things are. It is like the t-shirt I bought at a U2 concert a few years back which said 'Everything You Know is Wrong'. It is the explosion within sameness of a reality which is totally and radically other than anything that we could ever think or imagine: it is the arrival of God. And the purpose of this interruption, this bending of reality? To change things. To change things so entirely that we will never again become captive to all that is predictable, or ‘necessary,’ or ‘fated’. When Christ rises he does not rise, like Lazarus, to a life lived as it had been lived before. When Christ rises, he rends not only our hearts, as Peter says in his Pentecostal sermon, but also the very fabric of the way things have always been, so that God’s creatures may never be slaves to the same ever again. 

Here we find ourselves inside Luke’s story of the Emmaus road. Like us, the travelling companions live in that time after the resurrection. The women had been to the tomb and witnessed its emptiness, but scarcely able to understand what had happened themselves, find that they cannot make themselves understood amongst their male companions, who remain trapped inside their cycle of despair. And that is where we find the companions as they begin their journey. Like many of us in the Uniting Church, they had lived though a cycling of highs and lows: their messianic hope had been shattered on a Roman cross. Yet it is here, precisely within the circle of their despair, that the risen Jesus chooses to meet them. 

Now, having joined them, Jesus, listens to their woes. We would expect that of him, would we not? But then he does something rather surprising. He begins to preach to them from the Scriptures – and not in the mode of most of the sermons I’ve heard, which do little more than confirm and comfort me within the circle of what I already know. No, this is a profoundly dis-confirming preaching, first castigating the companions for their lack of faith in the prophets, and then proceeding to deconstruct their Scriptural knowledge so radically that its meaning is utterly and irreversibly altered. The results were, I imagine, terrifying. Suddenly the companions begin to see that everything they had ever known and believed was wrong. Yet despite the upset, there is something in what Jesus says that compels them to hang onto him. 

So when they urge Jesus to join them for the evening meal, he consents to do so. And there he does something which really dislodges their expectations. In a careful repetition of what he had done at the last supper, Jesus takes bread, says a prayer of blessing, and breaks it so that all gathered may eat. At that moment, we are told, the companion’s eyes are opened. They recognise that the stranger is Jesus, their friend, the crucified one. And yet he is not that one. He is radically different. He is risen. If that isn’t weird enough, Luke then tells us that in that precise moment of recognition, at that very nano-second, Jesus vanishes from their sight and is seen no more. Turning to each other in wonder and excitement, the disciples declare to each other the way in which their hearts were ‘burning’ within them when they heard the word preached. Note the word: ‘burned,’ as in purged by a bushfire, not ‘warmed’, as by a cosy open fire on a winter’s night. The disciples rise from where they are and return to the place of despair and forlorn logic from which they came. They return to Jerusalem with a distinct and special mission: to declare and confirm that Christ had indeed been raised, and that he had make himself known to them in the breaking of bread. Which is to say, they returned to Jerusalem to dis-confirm the logic of the Same which held sway there, to interrupt and fragment its omnipotent power by the burning presence of all they had glimpsed in the risen Christ. 

Now, this is a strange and wondrous story by any standard. So strange and wonderful that I am certain that almost everything I intend in speaking about it tonight is not quite right. But this is how it is with the resurrected Christ. He comes to us as the word that is strange and in/credible, not conforming to the logic of what we know and experience to be real and trustworthy. He comes to us not to confirm what we know or to reinforce our sense of what is good and noble and true. He comes to change all that, to show us, in the blazing light of his risen glory, that the Eternal Return of the same is killing us. Slowly killing us, but killing us all the same. And who can doubt this word? Hasn’t life become genuinely banal for us in this neo-pagan world of circles? Hemmingway wrote famously that most people live lives of 'quiet desperation'. He was writing about himself, of course, a man who was constantly on the look-out for new experience, something which might cut across the boredom of his life. The writer of Ecclesiastes complains that all is ‘vanity’, by which he means that human beings, despite all their apparent thirst for experience, tend to look only for that which may be easily integrated into the logic and the framework which is always already there. But Christ is raised to shatter that logic, to undo the idolatrous gaze that works such vanity into all that is seen and touched and felt. Christ is raised to set us free from such things. 

This I believe, and this I declare to you today. But I want you to note two important implications of this belief for ourselves, as we begin on this new venture in religious community. First, resurrection belief is sustainable only if one believes what Luke says about the disappearance of Christ at the very moment that we recognise him. Remember what we heard from Moltmann. The resurrection is an event without analogy. No matter how much we try to understand and describe him, no matter hard we work to create forms of religious devotion by which he might be rendered permanently present, the risen Christ will always and everywhere elude and elide our grasp. We see him as in a glass darkly; he is a flash of light at the corner of our eyes, which, if we turn to take him squarely into the full ambit of our gaze, will only disappear into invisibility. The monastic traditions speak, often, about the Christ who comes in the guise of a stranger, a stranger who is gone even before one realises who he was. In precisely that mode, the Emmaus story tells us that no matter how ingenious our religious forms may become - even those, like ours, which earnestly seek to reform and recover what has been forgotten and lost - they will certainly not secure a Christ who may be domesticated to our own use and purpose. The risen Christ, you see, is free. He will always prosecute his own purposes, not ours. 

Which leads into my second point, and a rather perplexing one at that. Perhaps you will have noticed how Luke structures his story after the model of a first century worship service? First there is a Gathering of companions, who come immediately from the circle of despair, and they are joined there by Christ. Then there is a Service of the Word, a recounting of the Scriptures and a preaching; and it is Christ himself who does this; yet he is not recognised by those who hear. Then there is a Eucharist, where Christ is again the anonymous presider who breaks bread, blesses, and share it with his companions. And then there is a Mission. The disciples, having finally discerned the risen Christ, are driven out by the burning in their hearts to dis-confirm and question the logic of the world from which they came. What is Luke telling us in all this? Simply this: that the risen Christ ministers to us in the gathered worship of the Christian church. That he reveals himself to us in the reading of Scripture, the preaching of the word, and in the breaking of the bread. Which is probably rather unwelcome news to those who want to close down worshipping congregations in order to keep social and cultural programmes going! But seriously, how can this be? How is it that this most ordinary human language of worship may become the language of Christ? Didn’t I just say to you that Christ comes to interrupt our language and to un-say all that we might say of him! Well, there is a great mystery here, a mystery very much at the heart of everything I am trying to do in my own journey through life. And a mystery tied very much to the mystery of Christ himself, who, in the incarnation, is said to be God in an ordinary human life. Perhaps all that one may say about this mystery is something like this: That it is by the ordinary human language of Christian worship that Christ, himself, chooses to arrives in our midst. Not to confirm what we intend to say, but rather to so dispossess our devotional forms of the meaning we intend, that, somehow, even as we say and do them, we hear them coming back at us with a meaning not our own, in an inflection and tongue not our own, so that our hearts burn with confusion, and terror – certainly - but ultimately with the holy joy of people who are being liberated from their bondage to the same old thing. That is why we must continue to devote ourselves to the apostle’s teaching, to prayer, and to the breaking of bread with each other. For Christ has chosen these things, more than any others, as the instruments of his converting work. 

I pray to God that Christ may do just that, even with what we plan to do day by day and month by month in our little community. May Christ come to blast away our tired old habits of mind and heart. May Christ come to transform our despair and our churchly weariness, that we may find an appetite for evangelism and for witness that many of us have never truly known. May Christ come with the power described by the Psalmist, a power able to transform desert rock into pools of soothing water, the power that is able to lift all who are truly lost to their feet and give them courage. Even so, may it be for us, and for our church. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus, come!

This homily was delivered on the Feast of the Resurrection in 2014 to constitute the Kairos Community, a group of Uniting Church ministers who committed themselves to daily prayer, to mutual care and to a monthly gathering for theological education and the celebration of the Eucharist.

Breaking Out with Jesus

Text: Luke 24.1-35

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re going around in circles?  Do you ever get the feeling that the record is stuck, that you’ve heard it all before?  I got that feeling as I watched the evening news last night, and now I feel sick to the stomach.  For even as we gather in this season on which Christ rose from a violent death, the ancient feuds continue unabated. In Columbia and Afganistan, in Iraq and the Sudan, the cycle of violence and despair turns yet again: an eye for an eye, a church for a mosque, a wrong for a wrong.

To my mind, what we see in all this is what Nietzsche called ‘the eternal return of the Same’, the irrepressible tendency of human beings to crave what they have always craved, to believe what they have always believed, and to know what they have always known.  With the eternal return the rhetoric of ‘new life’ is just a figure of speech, because nothing new is really possible.  The circle returns, endlessly, to where it began.  Violence begets violence, and despair begets only despair.  In the end even the most hopeful amongst us are seduced.  We begin to believe that we’ve seen in all before, that there is nothing new under the sun.

The reality of the Resurrection, which we celebrate this morning, confronts this cycle absolutely. For the resurrection of Jesus is about the in-breaking of something that is so new, so different, so unheard of, that, strictly speaking, we cannot even describe it.  It is, as Jürgen Moltmann says somewhere, an event entirely without comparison or analogy.  It is an event which shatters every established pattern, every expectation, every shred of certainty we may have had about the way things are.   It is like the T-Shirt which I bought at a U2 concert a few years back which said “Everything You Know is Wrong”.  It is the explosion within Sameness of a reality which is totally and radically other than anything that we could ever think or imagine:  it is the arrival of God.  And what is the purpose of this interruption?  To change things.  To change things so entirely that we will never again become captive to all that seems predictable, or ‘necessary,’ or ‘fated’.  When Christ rises he does not rise, like Lazarus, to a life lived as it had been lived before.  When Christ rises, he rends not only the entrance to his tomb, but also the very fabric of the way things have always been, so that God’s creatures may never be slaves to the Same ever again.

Here we find ourselves inside Luke’s story of the Emmaus road.  Like us, the travelling companions live in that time after the resurrection.  The women had been to the tomb and witnessed its emptiness, but scarcely able to understand what had happened themselves, find that they cannot make themselves understood amongst their male companions, who remain trapped inside their cycle of grief, anger and despair.  Like many of us, they are stuck within the endless cycle of expectation and disappointment: their messianic hope had been shattered on a Roman cross.  Still, it is here, in the very centre of that circle, that the Christ chooses to meet them. 

As two of these disciples journey toward Emmaus, Jesus joins them, listening to their woeful story of hopes dashed and despair grown large again.  But then he does something rather surprising.  He begins to preach to them from the Scriptures, but not in the mode of many of the sermons I’ve heard, which do little more than confirm and comfort me in what I already know.   No, this is a profoundly dis-confirming preaching, which first castigates them for their lack of faith in the prophets, and then proceeds to deconstruct their Scriptural knowledge so radically that the meaning of the same is utterly and irreversibly altered.  The results were, I imagine, terrifying.  Suddenly the disciples begin to see that everything they had ever known and believed was wrong.  Yet despite the upset, there is something compelling in what Jesus says that compels them to hang onto him. 

So when they urge Jesus to join them for the evening meal, he consents to do so.  And there he does something which really dislodges their expectations.  In a careful repetition of what he had done at the last supper, Jesus takes bread, says a prayer of blessing, and breaks it so that all gathered may eat.  At that moment, we are told, the companion’s eyes are opened.  They recognise that the stranger is Jesus, their friend, the crucified one.  And yet he is not that one.  He is radically different.  He is somehow other.  If that isn’t weird enough, Luke then tells us that in that precise moment of recognition, at that very nano-second, Jesus vanishes from their sight and is seen no more. 

Turning to each other in wonder and excitement, the disciples declare the way in which their hearts were ‘burning’ within them when they heard the word preached.  Note the word: ‘burned,’ as in purged by a bushfire, not ‘warmed’, as by a cosy open fire on a winter’s night.  The disciples rise from where they are and return to the place of despair and forlorn logic from which they came.  They return to Jerusalem with a distinct and special mission:  to declare and confirm that Christ had indeed been raised, and that he had make himself known to them in the breaking of bread.  Which is to say, they returned to Jerusalem to dis-confirm the miserable logic of the Same which held sway there, to interrupt and fragment its omnipotent power by the burning joyfulness of all they had glimpsed in the risen Christ.

Now, this is a strange and wondrous story by any standard.  So strange and wonderful that I am certain that almost everything I intend in speaking about it this morning is not quite right.  But this is how it is with the resurrected Christ.  He comes to us as the word that is strange and in/credible, not conforming to the logic of what we know and experience to be real and trustworthy.  He comes to us not to confirm what we know or to reinforce our sense that things will never change.  He comes to transform that inclination utterly, to show us, in the blazing light of his risen glory, that the Eternal Return of the same is killing us.  Slowly killing us, but killing us all the same.  And who can doubt this word?  Hasn’t life become genuinely banal for us in this neo-pagan world of circles?  Hemmingway wrote famously that most people live lives of “quiet desperation”.  The writer of Ecclesiastes complains that all is ‘vanity’, by which he means that human beings, despite all their apparent thirst for experience, tend to look only for that which may be easily integrated into the logic and the framework which is always already there: the framework of violence, the strong over the weak, the deserving over the less deserving.  But Christ is raised to shatter that logic, to undo the idolatrous gaze that works such vanity into all that is seen and touched and felt.  Christ is raised to set us free.

This I believe, and this I declare to you today.  But I want you to note two important implications of this belief.  And these reflections are guided directly by Luke’s text.  First, resurrection belief is sustainable only if one believes what Luke says about the disappearance of Christ at the very moment that we recognise him.  Remember what we heard from Moltmann. The resurrection is an event without analogy.  No matter how much we try to understand and describe him, the risen Christ will always and everywhere elude and elide our grasp.  We see him as in a glass darkly; he is a flash of light at the corner of our eyes, which, if we turn to take squarely into the full ambit of our gaze, will disappear into invisibility.  The Celtic tradition speaks of the Christ who always comes in the guise of the stranger, a stranger who is gone even before one realises who he was.  In precisely that mode, the Emmaus story tells us that no matter how ingenious our resurrection accounts and theologies become, they will certainly not secure a Christ who may be domesticated for our own use and purpose.  Christ will not allow himself to be manipulated like that.  He will not join us in our crusades against those we see as our enemies.

Which leads into my second point, and a rather perplexing one at that.  Perhaps you will have noticed how Luke structures his story after the model of a first century worship service?  First there is a Gathering of companions, who come immediately from the circle of despair, and they are joined there by Christ.  Then there is a Service of the Word, a recounting of the Scriptures and a preaching; and it is Christ himself who does this; yet he is not recognised by those who hear.  Then there is a Eucharist, where Christ is again the anonymous presider who breaks bread, blesses, and share it with his companions.  And then there is a Mission.  The disciples, having finally discerned the risen Christ, are then driven out by the burning in their hearts to dis-confirm and question the logic of the world from which they came. 

What Luke is telling us here is simply this: that it is in the gathered worship of the Christian church that Christ chooses to reveal his radically new word and reality.  That worship itself is the mode by which he interrupts and fractures the logic of despair.  For in the reading of Scripture, the preaching of the word, and in the breaking of the bread, Christ himself comes to call us out of whatever trap of fate or necessity in which we have become ensnared.  In worship he gives us a glimpse of that world in which violence and despair have been done away, absorbed into Christ’s death on the cross.  In worship we learn that Christ is risen to make another world, another logic possible, the world and logic a transfiguring love which is able to cast out all fear—even the fear of our enemies.

But how can this be?  How is it that this ordinary human language of worship may become the language of Christ?  Didn’t I just say to you that Christ comes to interrupt our language and to un-say all that we might say of him!  Well, there is a great mystery here, a mystery tied very much to the mystery of Christ himself, who, in the incarnation, is said to be God in an ordinary human life.  Perhaps all that one may say about this mystery is something like this:  That in the human language of Christian worship, Christ speaks himself so resolutely that even where our liturgy seeks to enlist him to our wars against others or enrol him in our logic of violence and despair, Christ is able to address us in his own voice, from the margins as it were.  Even from that marginal place, Christ is able to speak powerfully: to so dispossess our liturgy of the meanings we intend, that, somehow, even as we say it, we hear it said back to us with a meaning not our own, in an inflection and tongue not our own, so that our hearts burn with confusion, and terror, but ultimately with the holy joy of people who are really being liberated from their bondage to the same old thing.  Christ will not succumb to the tombs we may make for ourselves or for him.  Christ will break free.  He will always break free, and he will break us free with him. 

I pray to God that Christ may do just that, even with what we say and do this morning. 

Holy Week and the Great Three Days of Easter - an introduction for the uninitiated

Christianity’s most important festival occurs each year in Holy Week (sometimes called 'passiontide') and the first day of the Paschal (Easter) season. Beginning with Palm/Passion Sunday, Holy Week commemorates the last week of Jesus’ life. Through a series of public services of worship, Christians everywhere join with Christ as he enters Jerusalem, shares a last meal with his disciples, is arrested, tortured, crucified and buried. Finally, at the Easter Vigil - which takes place sometime after sundown on the evening of Holy Saturday - Christians all over the world gather to celebrate Christ’s resurrection and renew their baptismal promises to follow Christ faithfully.

Palm/Passion Sunday

There are two parts to this opening service of Holy Week. The first part is familiar to most Protestants. It is the Liturgy of the Palms, commemorating the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to cries of ‘hosanna’ and the waving of palm branches. The second part of the service is not, perhaps, so familiar. The Liturgy of the Passion is a reading of the whole story of Christ’s suffering and death, which might be interspersed with the extinguishing of candles to symbolise the ebbing away of Christ’s life. Because the service is best completed in almost total darkness, the darkness at the moment of Christ’s death, many gather for this service in the evening.

Maundy Thursday

The Maundy Thursday service commemorates the last supper Jesus shared with his disciples. According to John’s gospel, Jesus took a servant’s towel at the evening meal and washed his disciple’s feet. He did this to show that he had come amongst them as a servant, and that they, too, were called to serve one another. In memory of this event, the liturgy gives opportunity for the worshippers to wash each other’s feet. Afterwards, worshippers share a supper of bread and wine together, in thanksgiving for that first supper or 'eucharist' Jesus shared with his friends. The service is completed with a reading of Psalm 22, which is all about being betrayed by a friend and how an experience like that can cause a person to feel betrayed by God as well. While the Psalm is being read, the church is stripped of all colour and light. In this way, worshippers are prepared to walk with Jesus to Gethsemane, where Jesus is betrayed by his friend Judas through the bitterness of a kiss.

The Maundy Thursday service should not be regarded as an event that stands on its own. It is part of one great act of worship that lasts for three days, in a multi-service rite known as the Paschal Triduum, or Great Three Days of Easter. For that reason, there is no blessing or dismissal at the end of the Thursday event. Instead there is the simple expectation that all will gather again for the events of Great Friday.

Good (and Great) Friday

There are two kinds of service on Good, or Great, Friday. The first, an ecumenical 'Stations' or 'Way of the Cross' procession, has its origins in a private devotional practices from fourth century Rome. There the journey of Christ to Golgotha, carrying his cross, was commemorated by a rhythmic movement of walking, reading and prayer. Today it has become a means by which separated churches may come together to publicly share their sorrow at Christ’s death. An ecumenical Way of the Cross is often planned for the late morning of Good Friday.

The second service of Good Friday may best be celebrated at 3pm, in memory of the hour of Christ’s death (Matt 27.45). This second component of the paschal Triduum incorporates a reading of the story of Christ’s death, a series of ‘reproaches’ as from God the Father towards a world that would crucify his son, and a final movement of silent prayer that is known, traditionally, as the ‘veneration of the cross’. Here a great wooden cross is laid on the floor of the church and people are invited to stand or kneel before it, to touch the cross and offer their prayers of penitence and thanksgiving for Christ’s great sacrifice. Many church traditions have no eucharist on Good Friday because the period between the Supper on Thursday evening and the Easter Vigil on Saturday evening is a fast.  In those churches that cannot abide a fast, the eucharist is sometimes celebrated silently, or in an abbreviated form, using the blessed symbols from the night before.  In any case, this service can be very, very moving. Again, there is no dismissal or blessing at the end of the service. Instead, the participants are invited to continue their worship at the final component of the Triduum, The Great Vigil of Easter.

Great and Holy Saturday (The descent to Hell)

The Western Church has always been a little perplexed about what to do with Holy Saturday, and especially the notion from 1 Peter 4.1-8 that Christ, upon dying, went 'in the Spirit' to all those trapped in the underworld who had not heard the gospel and preached to them that they, like the liviing, might repent.  Again, one should not take such accounts as 'history' but as theology. Peter wants us to know that the gospel is preached to all creation, from its heights to its depths, and all people are called to make a response.  One way to celebrate these themes is to meet on the morning of Holy Saturday around a cross that is layed on the ground with a burial shroud over it. The service then takes the form of morning prayer, except the psalms, prayers and canticles are taken from 'Matins for Great and Holy Saturday' in the Eastern tradition.

The Great Vigil of Pascha (Easter)

The Great Vigil is the most important service of the Christian year because it celebrates what, for Christians, is the central event in human history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The service begins sometime between sundown and dawn with a 'Liturgy of Light'. Worshippers gather outside the church around a fire from which a new Paschal candle is lit. The Paschal (Easter) candle is a symbol of Christ’s resurrection. It burns in the church every Sunday during the fifty days of the Easter season to remind us that Christ is risen.

Following behind the raised candle, worshipers then process into a darkened church where they are seated for the 'Liturgy of the Word', a reading of selected passages from the whole history of God's dealings with humankind. As each reading passes, the worshippers say a prayer and light a new candle. The church gets gradually brighter. At the final reading, an account of the resurrection, all the lights go on, the Easter banners are unfurled, and the congregation rises to sing a joyful song of praise to the God who alone is able to give life to the dead.

What follows is a 'Liturgy of Baptism', in which catechumens who have long been preparing to embrace Christ are finally welcomed into the church through baptism, a washing with water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Rising from the water, each new Christian is annointed with oil, as a sign that God's Spirit has now taken up residence in their lives as advocate and guide. Ideally, a bishop can be present to say the prayers of 'confirmation' over them before all the other worshippers - those already baptised - renew the vows made at their own baptisms or confirmations: to turn from evil and to follow Christ, and to live in the faith of the church. The congregation is sprinkled with water as a sign of renewal in that vocation and mission.

Finally, worshippers share the 'Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper' as a sign that Christ is for ever amongst his people as the crucified and risen one, feeding and nurturing them for their mission in the world. The newly baptised joyfully receive the supper for the very first time! A blessing and dismissal indicates that the Paschal Triduum is now over. At this point, the champagne often flows very freely indeed!

Feast of the Resurrection (or Pascha)

A morning service on Easter Day can be relatively informal. Because many worshippers will have been up late the night before, this service may be built around a breakfast meal of bread, fish and wine. This mode of doing thing commemorates St. John’s account of the appearance of the risen Jesus to seven of his disciples on the beach of Lake Galilee where they were fishing (Jn 21). Worshippers may be invited to bring some bread, fish and wine (or grape-juice, if you prefer) to share with others. The service includes the ancient greeting ‘Christ is risen: He is risen indeed!’ and there are stories, prayers and Easter hymns aplenty. This is a morning of great joy and celebration at the new hope of resurrection. The celebrations continue over the next 50 days until Pentecost, which commemorates the giving of the Spirit of Christ at his ascension to the right hand of his Father. This is the season par excellence for the celebration of baptisms and various ceremonies of renewal in faith.

A final word about 'Christian' and 'Pagan' versions of Easter

You may have noticed that there is no mention in any of these specifically Christian forms of Easter worship of either eggs or bunnies. Some may find that surprising. In fact, the celebration of Easter using eggs and bunnies owes far more to pre-Christian Europe than to Christianity. The pagan celebration of Easter was essentially about the turning of the seasons from the dark of winter to the brightness of spring and the new harvest this would make possible. For pagans Easter was, and is, essentially a celebration of the returning fertility of the earth every year at springtime. In this context, symbols of fertility such as eggs and rabbits make perfect sense.

The Christian Easter celebrates something rather different, however. For Christians, the risen Christ is not simply another version of the 'Corn King' (C.S. Lewis' phrase) - a god or goddess who returns to life when the earth has been warmed by the spring sun in order to bless the fertility of the earth and guarantee a successful harvest. Christ is not, in this sense, an 'eternal return' (Nietzsche) of that which we have come to expect on an annual basis: the eternal fecundity of the earth, and a symbol of our endless capacity to become what we have always expected we can become as human beings. No. Christ is something more than this. Christ is the arrival, within human history, of something which neither nature nor history could produce on its own, from its own cycles or resources, as it were. Christ is the arrival of something genuinely new: a new idea, a new creation, a new way to live.

For in Christ, so Christians believe, God has acted to liberate human beings from the despair of their eternally cyclic imaginations. To the cry of the wise: 'there is nothing new under the sun', God poses not a confirming answer but an eternal question: 'What kind of world would be made if you abandon yourselves, your resources, your imaginations and allow yourselves to be re-made - from the outside in - in the image of this human being from another time and place, this Christ?' For what does the risen Christ mean, for Christians, if not the arrival within the possible of that which is not, strictly, possible: life, where there was only death; light, where there was only darkness; peace, where there was only conflict; hope, where there was only despair; purpose and vocation, where there was only accident? For Christians, then, the resurrection of Christ is nothing less than the contradiction of every expectation built on the principle of the 'eternal return'. It is the shattering of every pattern or model built on what has happened before. It is the beginning of a future which is genuinely new, genuinely revolutionary. SO new, SO revolutionary that we can barely glimpse its import.

For me, that is good news. Because I am tired of iterations that never solve anything, answers that simply confirm what we already think we know, solutions that never really worked in the first place. It is the good news that it is God who can save us. We are no longer condemned to save ourselves.

A holy Passiontide and joyful Paschal season to you all!