EASTER SUNDAY
4 April 2010

Early in the morning of the first Easter Day, something extra-ordinary happened. A man whom Roman soldiers had certified dead two days earlier came back to life. When his friends came to finish the preparation of his body for the grave (something they had been unable to do the day he died because of the approaching Passover) his tomb was open and his body was nowhere to be found.

The precise sequence of what happened next varies from one Gospel to another – hardly surprising given what they were trying to describe – but by the end of the day he had been seen alive by over a dozen people, including Mary Magdalene, ten of the apostles gathered in fear, and a further two walking dejectedly home away from Jerusalem.

These are the facts at the heart of our faith: the Paschal Mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s what everything else in scripture points to and flows from: the moment at which the burden of sin is released and its follower death is defeated, and we are once again set right with God. We call this the Atonement: a neat little word which, whether by accident or design, can be broken down into its constituent syllables to give “At-one-ment”. The Atonement sets us at one with God.

There are different ways of describing how Jesus death actually accomplishes this. Some have used the image of the law court. We are the guilty prisoner, but Jesus steps in to take the punishment due to us. For others the image of the slave-market speaks more powerfully: by our sins we have sold ourselves into slavery; but Jesus death pays the price to set us free.

Other images include that of sacrifice, like the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant, with Christ's offering of himself the reality which finally fulfils and supersedes them; or the image of Christ the Victor, whose death is actually a feint to deceive Satan and enter his realm.

These are the images that dominate our Easter hymns:

he who gave for us his life, who for us endured the strife, is our Paschal Lamb to-day …

He whose paths no records tell, who descended into hell,
who the strong man armed hath bound, now in highest heaven is crowned.

Then there is the simple image of the Jesus whose teaching and life of love obediently laid down for his friends reveals the Father to us and shows us the way to his arms.

Each of these will speak to different people in different ways; they are complementary images, not exclusive ones. But the explanation doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that in the death and resurrection of Jesus something has happened that forever changes the nature of God’s dealings with us. Nothing can ever be the same again. We may reject the it, we may ignore it (and many do), we may simply laugh at the whole thing, as the Greeks of Saint Paul’s letters did. We may not even know about it. But that doesn’t negate its power.

Since the first Easter, God and man have been one in a new way, because in Jesus God known what it is to suffer and to die, and by his resurrection has taken that knowledge into his eternal Godhead. He understands us from our perspective, and so can judge us with mercy. Since the first Easter man and God have been one in a new way, because we have seen God in our midst, making himself plain. He has, as the Fathers of the Church delighted to say, using an Old Testament image, “pitched his tent among us.” And by the resurrection he has revealed humanity's true destiny … eternal life in the fellowship of the Father.

In Jesus God became one with us, taking our human nature. By dying for us and rising again he has made it possible for us to become one with him. And all not for any merit of ours, but simply out of his own overflowing, generous love.

And what difference ought that to make to us, here and now, two millennia later? Well to answer that question I'm going to turn to another hymn – or more accurately a poem, for that is what before it was set to a hymn tune to be sung. The words are those of the 16th Century poet and playwright Edmund Spencer, best known for his poem in praise of the Tudors, The Faerie Queen. But in one of his Sonnets he wrote these words:

Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day didst make thy triumph over death and sin,
and having harrowed hell, didst bring away captivity thence captive, us to win:

this joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin, and grant that we for whom thou diddest die,
being with thy dear Blood clean washed from sin, may live for ever in felicity:

and that thy love we weighing worthily, may likewise love thee for the same again;
and for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy, with love may one another entertain;

so let us love, dear Love, as we ought; love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

… and he repeats the final two lines for emphasis:

So let us love, dear Love, as we ought; love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

For the Paschal mystery vindicates the way of love the Father shows us in his Son – the Jesus whose teaching and life of love obediently laid down for his friends reveals the Father to us and shows us the way to his arms. Because the death and resurrection of Jesus show us above all, that to that way of love even death is not the end, but the beginning of a richer, fuller life in the Father's presence.

And to that way of love, to which he calls us, we now re-commit ourselves, as we re-affirm our baptismal promises.