Second Sunday of Easter
No cooling off!
Acts 4.32-35; 1 John 1.1-2.2;
John 20.19-end
It flashes on the screen just as the drama is about to start, ‘This programme contains scenes some viewers may find disturbing,’ or ‘This programme contains strong language from the beginning and throughout,’ or some other message of alert. Are they meant to divert us or attract us? Sometimes I’m not quite sure, but we’ve come to expect these warnings as a regular part of TV viewing – but we don’t expect them to be attached to Bible readings in public worship. And yet they might well be to the readings set for Morning Prayer in the week of Easter.
Each day the first reading set has been from The Song of Solomon, sometimes called the Song of Songs – a decidedly racy love poem.
He says of her:
How graceful are your feet in sandals,
O queenly maiden!
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a master hand.
Your navel is a rounded bowl
that never lacks mixed wine.
Your belly is a heap of wheat,
encircled with lilies.
She says of him:
My beloved is mine and I am his;
he pastures his flock among the lilies.
Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle
or a young stag on the cleft mountains.
The poem is sensuous; the ardour of the couple is expressed in a frank and direct way; it is passionate and profoundly physical; the emotions it conjures up are sexual, even ecstatic. The language is often beautiful and discloses a closely observed love of nature and the world, yet it leaves you in no doubt what it is actually about – before you read it a warning might be appropriate. This is a full-hearted love poem not for the faint-hearted! It rejoices in the burning passion of love. And there it is in our most holy Bible; and there it is in our prayers and reflections for this week of Easter.
Why? I ask myself. I don’t mean ‘why in the Bible?’ I’m happy to acknowledge that our forebears in the faith thought that sensual human love has something to do with life before God; and that without claiming some spiritual message hidden under a physical and emotional disguise. No, the question I’m interested in is ‘why think on it in Easter week?’
And perhaps the clue is near the end of the poem, in chapter 8, where the lover says:
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned.
This is about unquenchable love: as strong as death itself. Love beyond all ending: a raging flame that will not be doused in any circumstance. This is the seal embossed on your very self that can never be removed: and indelible marking of your very person that is ineradicable.
The rock over the entrance of Christ’s tomb was meant to be a seal, a closing that signified his complete nothingness, his ultimate end. But it became the seal of the love poem – a seal that forever marks his love; a seal that cannot be eradicated: the fierce ardour of the lover that will know no end. The character of God’s love is this – disclosed in some small part by human passion at its most profound, as Shakespeare’s 116th sonnet has it:
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
To walk in the light of this love changes everything. It brings a new quality to being alive; it makes the lover’s ardour not a momentary surge but an abiding passion. As 1 John puts it (and that brings me to my text!) ‘We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete’ (v.4). Know that abiding passion as they did in the very first days of the church: ‘With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them …’ (Acts 4.33, 34).
Such was the momentum of the resurrection that they put all difference behind them and became a single people where every person’s need was met. Such was the emotional power of the resurrection that is was as if the grace of God was actually walking about amongst them, touching hearts and minds so that their belonging together was a new reality of unheard of consequence. Such was the dynamism of the resurrection that it was tangible in how they behaved.
It’s like the lover’s ardour – visible, infectious, and all pervasive. A raging flame that cannot be quenched by many waters, even floods; a palace of treasures is as nothing beside it. Love is like that – complete joy. This isn’t pleasure – it is more than pleasure; this isn’t happiness – it is more than what we delight in with one another; no, this is joy where we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus. Clotting, still blood was evil’s seal upon the dead Jesus. But love’s seal marks that blood not as decay but as our reassurance of eternal love that frees us from sin’s grip.
This close to Easter unquenchable love is still our experience, as it was those first followers. But Scripture is not naïve or simplistic or unrealistic. Our forebears knew that the raging flame too easily fades with time; ardour turns to boredom; passion becomes routine; and fellowship becomes indifference.
Surely one of the reasons Luke records the communal living of that first Jerusalem church is precisely because the churches created in the years after needed encouragement to toward their communal belonging – it didn’t come with the fervent passion of the moment as seems to have done in the immediate aftermath of the resurrection.
And surely why Saint John dwells on the joy of fellowship with each other and with God is precisely because walking in the light of Christ takes courage and determination – it’s so easy, as he says, to ‘deceive ourselves.’ We all too easily become faithless – but it is on God we rely because he is always faithful.
And finally doesn’t Thomas question the reality of what he has been told because there is a quality to this passion and ardour that can only be experienced personally; you can’t receive it second hand. Love as strong as death is a thing you must know for yourself. And its knowing, if only for a moment, must be enough.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare)
‘We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete’
He is risen! Acts 4.32-35; John 20.19-end
Happy Easter! A wry smile comes to your face. He’s a bit behind isn’t he? Well. yes, but rather more importantly NO! Last Sunday was wonderful, but according to the New Testament there are forty days of Easter - today is Easter. The Book of Acts is our recurring text in this season, and it tells us that Jesus after his passion, showed himself alive to the apostles by appearing to them over a period of 40 days. The proof was that they had met him. They didn’t see him rise, but they met him risen. That’s Easter, when the living Lord meets us.
What were you doing on 11th February 1990? I don’t mean in general terms - it was a Sunday - I mean precisely what did you do that day? Last week’s activity is often confused to me, let alone 20+ years. How about 22 November 1963? Perhaps that date is more familiar. I know exactly, the weather was good for the time of year, I’d been out on my bike. But of course the days were short, so I’d come in to watch TV, but I couldn’t because only somber music was being broadcast. On the other side of
the world the President of the United States had been assassinated. Where were you when JFK was shot? And the 11th February 1990 -Nelson Mandela walked free from Victor Verster prison - his ten thousand days of imprisonment over - he says of that moment, at seventy-one years of age my life began anew. And every sympathetic soul on this planet with access to a TV or radio, felt it too.
11th February 1990 - a moment of history. But there was a moment to make even that moment seem ordinary - the
moment when Jesus rose. What a journalistic opportunity. They could have reported it. Look he stands up in the tomb, he is walking slowly out, the light obviously distracting him, the applause is thunderous, the crowds have returned to acclaim him king after all. If only TV had been around then. But you see it is not like that - no one was there when it happened, no one saw it. The testimony of our scriptures isn’t “we saw him rise,” it is “we met him risen.” What those first believers say is that he came to us. Surely such a frank honest make it all the more reassuring and believable. As Paul says, if Christ is not raised our faith is in vain. But what the Gospels actually tell us is, he came. The resurrection of
Jesus is more about a person meeting people, than an event in the sense of the spectacular. Every Gospel says so.
He came to Mary in the garden. She only expected to find a body - sacred, loved, but dead. She had no thought otherwise, until - “Mary.” And what had never occurred to her as possibility happened to her as fact. “I have seen the Lord!” she said.
That same day, Jesus came again to disciples locked in a room with their fears. And yet again a week later for poor Thomas - who has had a bad press ever since. Yet could it have been that he so wanted it to be true that he was fearful it might just be his friends wishful thinking. The very vehemence of his demand to see and touch the wounds of Christ demonstrates just how much emotion was riding on Thomas’ doubt. His was not a skeptical indifference. It wasn’t reasoned argument he was about - no, nail-prints and a spear wound are things that relate to his wounded heart.
A priest was going from the USA to Latin America. On the plane he found himself sitting beside a woman from Peru. She told him how she was returning home with her mother who had undergone three operations in America. “Is your mother feeling better now? He asked. “Oh yes,” the woman replied. “She’s completely cured. All her family will be waiting at the airport to welcome her back.”
Then the woman asked him why he was going south. He told her that he was a priest and was going there to do missionary
work. On hearing that he was a priest her faced changed dramatically. She leaned over, took him by the arm, and whispered in an agonized voice, “Oh Father, mother’s cancer is very advanced, and there is no hope for her.”
Why had she felt she had to keep up a pretense that all was well? Why did she have to hide, not only the mortal physical wounds of her mother, but her own emotional wounds as well? Surely they were not things to be ashamed of ? Her wounds were caused by love after all. But only when she discovered that she was sitting by a priest - someone from whom she might expect sympathy and comfort, did she come out with the truth, allowing herself to touch and be touched.
Similarly Thomas is enveloped by his grief - only touching and being touched can make a difference. Our human hearts are only healed by another human being who knows our pains. The risen human one who comes to met his people.
So with the two who had trusted that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel. They are on their way back home with the slow, heavy steps of disillusionment. What lies before them is only the life they had known before him. The reports of women not angels can reassure them, only the risen Jesus who walks with them, and enters the house with them, and is finally recognized by them. Now they know him again, and they set off back to town, hearts ablaze with stupendous news to tell. They arrive back, but the others get theirs in first - “It’s true, the Lord has risen!” How do they know
that? - “and has appeared to Simon.” Which is how they all know - they have met him, risen.
In the scriptures, the resurrection of Jesus is not, as resurrection, unique. There are six other accounts of person
supernaturally raised - the widow of Zarephath’s son (1 Kings 17), the woman of Shunem’s son (2 Kings 4), Jairus’s daughter (Mark 4), the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7), Lazarus (John 11), and Eutychus (Acts 20). But so what? We take it that they lived out their natural lives, and we hope that they made good use of the extra time. But not one of all
these people has the slightest bearing or influence on our lives today. But Jesus has.
However we understand what happened to those others, we know that Jesus is different. He rose from death - he came to the apostles - he comes to those who believe their word. He gave his promise to be with us to the end of time - that “Us” is us and all the Christians before us and after us. Even the forty days of Easter are only history, for NOW is the indefinite extension of Easter.
If Jesus had not risen, there would have been no gospel. But if he had only risen, the gospel would have ended 2000 years
ago. He rose on the day, and appeared to the apostles through the forty days - and comes to us this day as we
meet in his name and meet him. He gives us his peace and sends us on our way to live his life.
In the early second century Aristides, a non-Christian, defended our forebears in the faith before the Emperor Hadrian, and this is what he said:
These Christians love one another. They never fail to help widows. They save orphans from those who would hurt them. If
a man has something, he gives freely to the one who has nothing. If they see a stranger, Christians take him into their homes and treat him as a brother. And if they hear that one of them is in prison, or persecuted for professing the name of their redeemer, they all give him what he needs. If it is possible, they bail him out. If one of them is poor and there isn’t enough food to go around, they fast several days to give him the food he needs. We are dealing with a new kind of person. There is something divine in them.
The risen Lord came amongst them and said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you ….”
What were you doing on 11th February 1990? I don’t mean in general terms - it was a Sunday - I mean precisely what did you do that day? Last week’s activity is often confused to me, let alone 20+ years. How about 22 November 1963? Perhaps that date is more familiar. I know exactly, the weather was good for the time of year, I’d been out on my bike. But of course the days were short, so I’d come in to watch TV, but I couldn’t because only somber music was being broadcast. On the other side of
the world the President of the United States had been assassinated. Where were you when JFK was shot? And the 11th February 1990 -Nelson Mandela walked free from Victor Verster prison - his ten thousand days of imprisonment over - he says of that moment, at seventy-one years of age my life began anew. And every sympathetic soul on this planet with access to a TV or radio, felt it too.
11th February 1990 - a moment of history. But there was a moment to make even that moment seem ordinary - the
moment when Jesus rose. What a journalistic opportunity. They could have reported it. Look he stands up in the tomb, he is walking slowly out, the light obviously distracting him, the applause is thunderous, the crowds have returned to acclaim him king after all. If only TV had been around then. But you see it is not like that - no one was there when it happened, no one saw it. The testimony of our scriptures isn’t “we saw him rise,” it is “we met him risen.” What those first believers say is that he came to us. Surely such a frank honest make it all the more reassuring and believable. As Paul says, if Christ is not raised our faith is in vain. But what the Gospels actually tell us is, he came. The resurrection of
Jesus is more about a person meeting people, than an event in the sense of the spectacular. Every Gospel says so.
He came to Mary in the garden. She only expected to find a body - sacred, loved, but dead. She had no thought otherwise, until - “Mary.” And what had never occurred to her as possibility happened to her as fact. “I have seen the Lord!” she said.
That same day, Jesus came again to disciples locked in a room with their fears. And yet again a week later for poor Thomas - who has had a bad press ever since. Yet could it have been that he so wanted it to be true that he was fearful it might just be his friends wishful thinking. The very vehemence of his demand to see and touch the wounds of Christ demonstrates just how much emotion was riding on Thomas’ doubt. His was not a skeptical indifference. It wasn’t reasoned argument he was about - no, nail-prints and a spear wound are things that relate to his wounded heart.
A priest was going from the USA to Latin America. On the plane he found himself sitting beside a woman from Peru. She told him how she was returning home with her mother who had undergone three operations in America. “Is your mother feeling better now? He asked. “Oh yes,” the woman replied. “She’s completely cured. All her family will be waiting at the airport to welcome her back.”
Then the woman asked him why he was going south. He told her that he was a priest and was going there to do missionary
work. On hearing that he was a priest her faced changed dramatically. She leaned over, took him by the arm, and whispered in an agonized voice, “Oh Father, mother’s cancer is very advanced, and there is no hope for her.”
Why had she felt she had to keep up a pretense that all was well? Why did she have to hide, not only the mortal physical wounds of her mother, but her own emotional wounds as well? Surely they were not things to be ashamed of ? Her wounds were caused by love after all. But only when she discovered that she was sitting by a priest - someone from whom she might expect sympathy and comfort, did she come out with the truth, allowing herself to touch and be touched.
Similarly Thomas is enveloped by his grief - only touching and being touched can make a difference. Our human hearts are only healed by another human being who knows our pains. The risen human one who comes to met his people.
So with the two who had trusted that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel. They are on their way back home with the slow, heavy steps of disillusionment. What lies before them is only the life they had known before him. The reports of women not angels can reassure them, only the risen Jesus who walks with them, and enters the house with them, and is finally recognized by them. Now they know him again, and they set off back to town, hearts ablaze with stupendous news to tell. They arrive back, but the others get theirs in first - “It’s true, the Lord has risen!” How do they know
that? - “and has appeared to Simon.” Which is how they all know - they have met him, risen.
In the scriptures, the resurrection of Jesus is not, as resurrection, unique. There are six other accounts of person
supernaturally raised - the widow of Zarephath’s son (1 Kings 17), the woman of Shunem’s son (2 Kings 4), Jairus’s daughter (Mark 4), the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7), Lazarus (John 11), and Eutychus (Acts 20). But so what? We take it that they lived out their natural lives, and we hope that they made good use of the extra time. But not one of all
these people has the slightest bearing or influence on our lives today. But Jesus has.
However we understand what happened to those others, we know that Jesus is different. He rose from death - he came to the apostles - he comes to those who believe their word. He gave his promise to be with us to the end of time - that “Us” is us and all the Christians before us and after us. Even the forty days of Easter are only history, for NOW is the indefinite extension of Easter.
If Jesus had not risen, there would have been no gospel. But if he had only risen, the gospel would have ended 2000 years
ago. He rose on the day, and appeared to the apostles through the forty days - and comes to us this day as we
meet in his name and meet him. He gives us his peace and sends us on our way to live his life.
In the early second century Aristides, a non-Christian, defended our forebears in the faith before the Emperor Hadrian, and this is what he said:
These Christians love one another. They never fail to help widows. They save orphans from those who would hurt them. If
a man has something, he gives freely to the one who has nothing. If they see a stranger, Christians take him into their homes and treat him as a brother. And if they hear that one of them is in prison, or persecuted for professing the name of their redeemer, they all give him what he needs. If it is possible, they bail him out. If one of them is poor and there isn’t enough food to go around, they fast several days to give him the food he needs. We are dealing with a new kind of person. There is something divine in them.
The risen Lord came amongst them and said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you ….”
