Christ Church Cathedral

Yes, it is still Easter and I wish to speak about Easter today. But by way of introduction, I would ask you to take part in a little thought experiment with me. Think for a moment about some significant event in your life which happened about twenty years ago.... How much can you remember about the event? Are your memories images or words? How much detail can you remember? How much of what you are recalling is from your own memory of the event, and how much comes from what other people have told you?...Now, if you are old enough, do the same thing for an event of forty years ago...Finally, if you are very ancient, like me, think of an event of sixty years ago.

So, let's get back to thoughts about the meaning of Easter. Quite clearly, for the writers of our Christian scriptures, the Resurrection was the most significant event and driving force in their lives. But if we put to our texts the question, what exactly was the resurrection, we will find a surprising diversity in the answers. This will be the more surprising because, in our liturgical drama, we are accustomed  to conflating the different stories and understandings, and treating them as one story. And that is fine, but if we want to probe deeper, if we want to indulge in the activity which St Anselm described as faith seeking understanding, we need to take the conflated story apart and see what the writers were really saying.

Let us begin with St Mark's gospel, the earliest written gospel we have. Most scholars agree that Mark ends at chapter 16, verse 8. The remaining verses, 9 to 20, appear in very different forms in different manuscripts, and are clearly a later addition added to solve a puzzle. The puzzle is this: there is no account, in Mark, of the resurrection. The story ends when three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James and Salome come to the tomb on the Sunday morning, and find it empty. They meet a young man who instructs them to tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus has gone to Galilee. But then Mark says that they did not deliver the message, they didn't say anything to any one, because they were terrified. Full stop: end of Gospel! Mark was writing about forty years after the event. Try to fit that into the thought experiment we did a moment ago.

Now let us go back a little bit to what Paul has to tell us. Over all, Paul has a great deal to say about the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus, but only once does he speak of it as an event, when he is writing to the church at Corinth^[1]. The first point he makes is that he is handing on to the Christians at Corinth what he as been told. It is not his personal experience. The Greek word he uses for handing on is linked with our word tradition. The tradition, whether oral or written, is something we receive, and something we pass on. The tradition Paul had received was that after the crucifixion Jesus appeared to Cephas, to the twelve, then to five hundred, then to James and all the apostles, and finally to Paul himself. Paul is writing this twenty years after the event. Think back again to our exercise. It is clear that Paul had very different understanding of the twelve and the apostles than later became the norm where the twelve were the apostles. It is not clear who Cephas was, and there is no mention at all of the women. But most significantly this is about appearances of Jesus. What he is speaking of is something akin to a vision, but a vision which is a shared experience occurring to groups of people. There is no indication that these were bodily, physical experiences.

When we look at Matthew's Gospel^[2], we find that he expands Mark's story and has the disciples leave immediately for Galilee, where they do see Jesus, but there is no indication whether this was a physical sighting or a visionary seeing. Matthew, like Luke is writing about sixty years after the event. On the other hand Luke totally re-jigs Mark's story. He tells us, in the end of the Gospel and the beginning of Acts that the apostles certainly did not go to Galilee. They stayed firmly in Jerusalem, as instructed by Jesus. Luke adds two stories, the one of the encounter of Jesus on the journey to Emmaus, the other, which we read last Sunday of an appearance in Jerusalem, where it is very clearly stated, for the first time, that this was a physical appearance proved by Jesus both eating and suggesting that disciple might want to touch him. Luke ends with an ascension story, but it is set in Bethany, near Jerusalem, unlike Matthew's story, which is set, as we have seen, in Galilee. John, who is even later, interestingly has two endings, both of them about physical appearance, but one set on Jerusalem, the other in Galilee.

So, what we see is this; that in Paul and the canonical Gospels, there is a very great deal of diversity in understanding of the event called the resurrection. Once again, think about your relation to the events in your life, with which we began, and see if our thought exercise sheds some light on the diversity of the gospel stories. As you do so, bear in mind that none of the writers is giving first hand testimony to the historic event. They are passing on the tradition which they have received from the community.

But we need to go further than this. Neither Paul nor the Gospel writers really treat the resurrection as an historical event at all. For them, and this is especially clear in Paul, John and Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, the meaning of the resurrection is to be found in its effect on the community. The resurrection is associated with a number of themes: healing either of individuals or of the world, death whether through natural causes or through persecution, preaching the gospel and passing on the message (tradition), redemption and salvation. For the writers of our scriptures the resurrection is what calls the community together, and holds it together. The resurrection gives the community its marching orders as a community which brings healing, joy and peace, not to itself, but to the world.

We could go so far as to say that the resurrection is the community and defines the community.

As we go forward in the tradition, beyond the Scripture writers and into the early theologians and early life of the church, the resurrection becomes particularly associated with the two great dramatic actions of the liturgy, the Eucharist and Baptism, both of which have been central to the life of the church and in both of which we are involved in today. The Eucharist is the common meal of the church in which we meet the living Jesus today, in our own experience, both through the scripture and in the sharing of bread and wine. Baptism is the drama of entry into membership of the community. Each time we baptize we bring a new person into the loving community of the risen Christ. And each time we baptize, we all of us renew our first membership of that community.

But to return to our scriptures, there is one small but important word associated with most of the stories of the resurrection. It is, quite simply Go!

But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.^[3]

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...^[4]

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.^[5]

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." ^[6]

The coming together of the community is not really the important thing. The Christian community is not about us but about those to whom we are told to go. The food we receive in this liturgy is food for a journey. We come here and meet with the risen Christ, only to be told to go, to be sent. This is what resurrection means, this is what Eucharist means, this is what our Baptism means. It is the foundational, if not often understood, rationale for the very existence of the Church, the risen Christ's body in the world today.

I end with a personal postscript. In our Gospel today, John, who is always giving us the word of the risen Jesus has Jesus say:

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold...^[7]

In our world of today we are becoming increasingly aware of other communities, some of which intersect with the community of our church, like the communities of our neighborhood, work , school, university or common interest; some of which are totally apart such as communities of other faiths. To discover how we should relate the Christian community to these other communities is of the greatest importance in our world today. It is to the question of how to relate to communities of other faiths, that I shall be devoting, God willing, the first years of my retirement.

^[1]I Corinthians  15:1-11

^[2]Matthew 28:1-20

^[3]Mark 16:7

^[4]Matthew 28:19

^[5]Acts 1:8

^[6]John 20:21

^[7]John 10:16a