Sermon Archive
Arguing with Death
Sermon preached by John Armes at Holy Communion on 8 April 2007, Easter Day
Isaiah 65:17-25 ; Acts 10:34-43 ; Luke 24:1-12
When I was at university I was the part-owner of a punt. This gave us the opportunity to indulge in all sorts of cunning punting stunts, but the occasion I remember most particularly was the first time I went punting by moonlight. The river was deserted, and whilst one friend propelled us along, the rest of us gazed in silence at the stars, and listened to the wash of water against the prows of the boat. As a 19 year old, I remember reflecting that this was one of those 'first times', one of those intense experiences through which we enjoy simply being alive. No future moonlit voyage could ever feel as fresh and new as this one.
As we grow older, as the first time gives way to the second, third, fiftieth time, it’s all too easy to forget that an Easter faith is about making things new. Isaiah is not alone in his vision of a new heaven and a new earth, quite unlike those that have gone before. Trouble is that sometimes we become so attached to the old that we don’t want things to change, we don’t want to give up long cherished ideas of how things are or how they ought to be. And when we apply this mentality to faith and God, things that touch us profoundly, then our determination to hold onto the old can be almost unshakable. It’s something to do with being human, with needing to make sense of the world we have been given.
Yet as the bible tells the story God doesn't seem to respect this timidity. For what we hear in Old and New Testaments is an unfolding conversation between God and humanity; or perhaps conversation is too soft a word. Often encounters with God involve argument even, as in Jacob’s case, a real wrestling match. But whether the argument comes from the human side or the divine, the end result is that boundaries are strained and broken and new and uncomfortable understandings emerge. God shakes us up and we are never the same again.
This last week we’ve been thinking a lot about the story of Abraham's expedition up a mountain to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice, because he believes this is what God wants of him. God intervenes and stops the slaughter – yet we’re left shaking with horror. How could Abraham possibly have imagined that God would want this? Rabbinic teaching tends to see this as a story not so much about obedience as about a moment when who God is, and who God is not is disclosed. Child sacrifice for evermore is declared unacceptable in the Abrahamic faiths.
Abraham, of course, will argue the toss with God. Moses similarly, frequently stands up in defence of his people against God's apparent anger. Then when it comes to the New Testament we find a gentile woman arguing with Jesus and persuading him to heal her daughter. In these incidents it's hard to say who is learning from whom. But what is clear is that God does not repeat himself; whenever God is involved in the encounter something new, unexpected, never seen before, is born. Even when Abraham is 70, God still has the power to surprise him.
We can trace a path through history of such awkward moments of disclosure. Some long held belief, some unexamined prejudice is brought into the light of God and exposed as a sham. Take the slave trade, for example. Extraordinary that the church for long years justified this utter denial of human rights on the basis of the bible! The change of heart did not come easily, but it came. And gradually other prejudices are exposed; and when they are we wonder how our ancestors could not have seen them. Attitudes to women, attitudes to creation, attitudes towards different sexualities… and attitudes to other faiths – what is it that Peter says in our second reading? ‘God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’ Here is Peter, the faithful Jew, not only opening the door to gentiles but, as we read it now, offering an inclusive sense of the grace of God to people of very different faiths.
In St John’s over the past year I have at age 51 encountered new ‘first times’, when I have enjoyed being alive. The Moderator of the Church of Scotland having his feet washed by a Roman Catholic Cardinal and an Anglican bishop. A Muslim chanting the call to prayer in our chancel. A Jewish woman, a Muslim woman, a Sikh man gathered here in our church to share the insights of their faith against slavery and joining hands in solidarity. Every time God gets into us, every time our hearts are changed, there is a little Easter when the boundaries are strained.
For Easter is not just a church celebration of spring; when trees blossom and lambs gambol in the meadows. This would imply that Easter is the same year by year, as sure as the cycle of the seasons. Whilst of course the story of Easter doesn’t change yet we change and the world changes and therefore the demands Easter makes on us change too. We bring ourselves to Easter, we return to the beginning of our faith and, to misquote TS Eliot, we recognise the place as if for the first time. And in that moment of recognition we ask what we find in ourselves that is death dealing, that still peers into the tomb looking for the living amongst the dead. What dearly held attitudes do we find are exposed to the light of God and challenged; what parts of our lives are offered transformation and resurrection?
This is why we’ve been encouraged this Lent to take a hard look at our lives and to consider in what ways now, in 2007, we feel led to grow in faith, to serve our neighbour, to commit ourselves to a just and peaceful world in which all living things are cherished. And to offer these pledges at the altar during this service. An opportunity to shed our old skins, to give our souls a makeover.
An Easter faith is one that encounters change not as something to avoid or to deny but as a place of divine possibility. This means accepting that much of what we now hold dear is provisional. And it means that the spiritual tremors that terrified Abraham and Moses, Mary and Peter will terrify us too. An Easter faith shakes even the unshakeable; the unavoidable reality that death awaits us all. Easter splits the rocks, tears the veil, hands our dead back to us, and leaves us with a queasy sense that all is not as it seems, even in the face of those who tell us that death is the final argument against a loving God. At Easter God argues with death; at Easter Jesus, the man contends with death on our behalf.
Not that this could or should diminish the reality of death, the pain of loss, of endings, of separation. Yet Easter puts death in its place by allowing us to see that both God and therefore our own lives are more than we are yet able to conceive. That the possibility that death may not hold ultimate power over us allows us to come at life afresh, to see it as if for the first time and to accept that whatever happened in the past, because of God the future can be different.
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