Last week the world was full of Easter joy.
Whether you
rose with the dawn to hear the resurrection greeted in the sound of
joyful bird song as the bishop kindled the new fire, or rolled downstairs in
your pyjamas with seconds to spare before online church, I hope and pray that
for a while at least the uncertainties, questions and grey areas of faith were subsumed
by the confident truth
"Christ is risen! He is risen indeed"
A week on, though, we're back with our own familiar realities...in a world
where fear has literally locked us in, behind closed doors for almost a year -
and where doubts and insecurities are part of the fabric of life.
And this week we’re very much
confronted by death...whether your focus is the sadly shortened life of Richard
Okorogheye, or the 99 years of tireless service that was the life of Philip,
Duke of Edinburgh...or whether you’re remembering those 451 souls killed in the
2nd Coventry air raid over the nights of 8th/9th and 10th/11th
April 80 years ago...or a quieter, less public death closer to home.
While the sure and certain
hope of resurrection should enable us to accept death’s reality without fear
for ourselves or our loved ones, there’s nothing that says we shouldn’t grieve,
whatever Paul may have asserted in our epistle.
I’ve no idea how it landed
with the church in Corinth, but if I’m honest, reading it this morning makes me
frankly rather CROSS.
I’m absolutely excited and
hopeful about the glory ahead – but I am conscious, too, that we are not wired
to simply walk away from the ravaged tents that were once beloved human bodies.
I cannot conceive how it
might feel to bear an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure…
I can, and I do, know how it
feels to love every curl on my granddaughter’s head, and the way her little
brother totters off down the garden like a small and determined piglet in
gumboots.
Here and now, the way that I
experience those whom I love is in all the frailty and God-given perfection of
our human bodies…those amazing works of divine engineering that shelter us all
our life long.
Yes, a tent can be blown away
in a sudden storm, but it can also provide hospitality, rest and nurture,
comfort and joy..It can be a temporary home...even if ultimately we expect to
leave it behind like the bright ephemera abandoned on the fields of Glastonbury
and Reading after a summer festival.
.
Bodies too, are precious
lodgings for the moment, beloved vehicles through which we recognise and
encounter each other and through which we encounter God.
They are so significant, that
God chose to have one himself…
And Jesus wept over the death
of Lazarus his friend...and did not in any way reprimand Jairus for his
stupidity in mourning the loss of his daughter…or the widow mourning her dead
son.
So I think, Paul, that you’re
on the wrong track here.
Here and now we are material
beings – with a wonderful destiny, yes...but for now...BODIES MATTER which is
why Thomas’s story is so important.
It does seem unfair that nobody talks about Peter
the Turncoat or - despite their evident ambition - James & John the Wannabe
twins - but Thomas - oh, he's Thomas the Doubter for all time - and as such,
surely, the patron of pretty much everyone I have ever known.
He hears the excited testimony of his friends "We have SEEN the Lord"
- and is not satisfied.
He wants firm, tangible evidence...nothing that
could be based on mass hysteria (can 10 be a mass?) or the power of suggestion.
He’s not interested in memory
or metaphor.
He wants incontrovertible proof that Jesus is
alive.
And he receives it.
He sees with his eyes and
touches with his hands a body that is recognisably that same body he saw from a
distance, suffering at Calvary.
And that encounter swings it
for him.
He knows the truth – because
he experiences it in his own body...the thrill of touching one whom he’d
thought never to touch again…
That, of course, is not given
to many.
I believe in the resurrection
of the body, we say – but
When we say farewell to a
loved one’s body, we do so unsure of how the final resurrection will be. We trust,
we hope that we will know them, that the love that has bound us here on earth
will be part of the reality of heaven…
And we can take heart, I
think, because Jesus did not return to his friends as an idea...but as a
physical being...a person bearing the scars of the cross... sharing bread and
fish ...a person they could still touch and hug and hold for a while, despite
that eternal weight of glory that is his from the beginning and for ever.
To set against St Paul, the
American writer John Updike offers Seven Stanzas at Easter
Make no
mistake: if He rose at all
it
was as His body;
if
the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit,
the amino acids rekindle,
the
Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each
soft Spring recurrent;
it
was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes
of the eleven apostles;
it
was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the
same valved heart
that–pierced–died,
withered, paused, and then
regathered
out of enduring Might
new
strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy,
sidestepping, transcendence;
making
of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded
credulity of earlier ages:
let
us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not
a stone in a story,
but
the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding
of time will eclipse for each of us
the
wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make
it a real angel,
weighty
with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque
in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun
on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for
our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest,
awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed
by the miracle,
and
crushed by remonstrance.
Christ is risen – in body and
indeed.
Alleluia!
Last week the world was full
of Easter joy.
Whether you
rose with the dawn to hear the resurrection greeted in the sound of
joyful bird song as the bishop kindled the new fire, or rolled downstairs in
your pyjamas with seconds to spare before online church, I hope and pray that
for a while at least the uncertainties, questions and grey areas of faith were subsumed
by the confident truth
"Christ is risen! He is risen indeed"
A week on, though, we're back with our own familiar realities...in a world
where fear has literally locked us in, behind closed doors for almost a year -
and where doubts and insecurities are part of the fabric of life.
And this week we’re very much
confronted by death...whether your focus is the sadly shortened life of Richard
Okorogheye, or the 99 years of tireless service that was the life of Philip,
Duke of Edinburgh...or whether you’re remembering those 451 souls killed in the
2nd Coventry air raid over the nights of 8th/9th and 10th/11th
April 80 years ago...or a quieter, less public death closer to home.
While the sure and certain
hope of resurrection should enable us to accept death’s reality without fear
for ourselves or our loved ones, there’s nothing that says we shouldn’t grieve,
whatever Paul may have asserted in our epistle.
I’ve no idea how it landed
with the church in Corinth, but if I’m honest, reading it this morning makes me
frankly rather CROSS.
I’m absolutely excited and
hopeful about the glory ahead – but I am conscious, too, that we are not wired
to simply walk away from the ravaged tents that were once beloved human bodies.
I cannot conceive how it
might feel to bear an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure…
I can, and I do, know how it
feels to love every curl on my granddaughter’s head, and the way her little
brother totters off down the garden like a small and determined piglet in
gumboots.
Here and now, the way that I
experience those whom I love is in all the frailty and God-given perfection of
our human bodies…those amazing works of divine engineering that shelter us all
our life long.
Yes, a tent can be blown away
in a sudden storm, but it can also provide hospitality, rest and nurture,
comfort and joy..It can be a temporary home...even if ultimately we expect to
leave it behind like the bright ephemera abandoned on the fields of Glastonbury
and Reading after a summer festival.
.
Bodies too, are precious
lodgings for the moment, beloved vehicles through which we recognise and
encounter each other and through which we encounter God.
They are so significant, that
God chose to have one himself…
And Jesus wept over the death
of Lazarus his friend...and did not in any way reprimand Jairus for his
stupidity in mourning the loss of his daughter…or the widow mourning her dead
son.
So I think, Paul, that you’re
on the wrong track here.
Here and now we are material
beings – with a wonderful destiny, yes...but for now...BODIES MATTER which is
why Thomas’s story is so important.
It does seem unfair that nobody talks about Peter
the Turncoat or - despite their evident ambition - James & John the Wannabe
twins - but Thomas - oh, he's Thomas the Doubter for all time - and as such,
surely, the patron of pretty much everyone I have ever known.
He hears the excited testimony of his friends "We have SEEN the Lord"
- and is not satisfied.
He wants firm, tangible evidence...nothing that
could be based on mass hysteria (can 10 be a mass?) or the power of suggestion.
He’s not interested in memory
or metaphor.
He wants incontrovertible proof that Jesus is
alive.
And he receives it.
He sees with his eyes and
touches with his hands a body that is recognisably that same body he saw from a
distance, suffering at Calvary.
And that encounter swings it
for him.
He knows the truth – because
he experiences it in his own body...the thrill of touching one whom he’d
thought never to touch again…
That, of course, is not given
to many.
I believe in the resurrection
of the body, we say – but
When we say farewell to a
loved one’s body, we do so unsure of how the final resurrection will be. We trust,
we hope that we will know them, that the love that has bound us here on earth
will be part of the reality of heaven…
And we can take heart, I
think, because Jesus did not return to his friends as an idea...but as a
physical being...a person bearing the scars of the cross... sharing bread and
fish ...a person they could still touch and hug and hold for a while, despite
that eternal weight of glory that is his from the beginning and for ever.
To set against St Paul, the
American writer John Updike offers Seven Stanzas at Easter
Make no
mistake: if He rose at all
it
was as His body;
if
the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit,
the amino acids rekindle,
the
Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each
soft Spring recurrent;
it
was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes
of the eleven apostles;
it
was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the
same valved heart
that–pierced–died,
withered, paused, and then
regathered
out of enduring Might
new
strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy,
sidestepping, transcendence;
making
of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded
credulity of earlier ages:
let
us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not
a stone in a story,
but
the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding
of time will eclipse for each of us
the
wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make
it a real angel,
weighty
with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque
in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun
on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for
our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest,
awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed
by the miracle,
and
crushed by remonstrance.
Christ is risen – in body and
indeed.
Alleluia!
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