The Christian Hope
Easter Day
Easter Day
“ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.”
” (1 Corinthians 4.13,14)
We mourn the loss of our beloved Queen Mother, on the day that we rejoice in our beloved Lord’s resurrection.
And St Paul tells us, not, that we should not grieve, but that we should not grieve as those with no hope.
Of course we will grieve. It is a symptom of our humanity; it is a sign of our affection for a good woman who has figured in the backdrop of our lives since before any of us were born.
But as Christians, on this First Day of the Week; on this First Day of the New Creation; on this Resurrection Morning which lifts the pallor of our lenten disciplines...
...as Christians, we grieve with hope: the hope that she who has lived life long and full, is now complete and summed up in Christ who is the firstfruits from the dead.
Elizabeth is not just a memory. She is not ‘kept alive in our hearts’. She is kept alive by the power of God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. And this our hearts know well although our heads are full of doubt.
I first learned grief from children’s stories. When I was too young to read, my father told me stories of an imaginary boy called Alby. But soon I was reading Rupert Bear - those lovely picture books with the rhyming couplets under each picture.
And then Worzel Gummidge, and then Mary Norton’s The Borrowers. I suppose I was 8 or 9 when I began to cry at the end of books - not just because the enchanting story was ended, but because I was old enough to realise that there was no Rupert Bear and Badger; no Earthy Mangold; no Ariadne. They were created in my imagination and then went into oblivion when I turned the last page.
But what of Jesus? That gentle, blond, blue-eyed man in all the pictures around my Sunday School walls. There he was surrounded by all the children of the world - “red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight...” And there he was with the disciples, who looked rather like my local football team - except for one who was dark and looked menacing, and had a large nose - obviously Judas.
Did gentle Jesus too pass into oblivion when we had finished the story, when the Gospel was shut?
We have enacted The Story again through this Holy Week, and as 21st century scientific postmoderns, the Queen Mother’s death and this resurrection Sunday leaves us pondering the same Big Question which is at the heart of our faith and the root of all our doubts.
We can express it in that classical exam question form:
A: Is the idea of a God who became a human being, who died and rose again, a myth which nurtures the ‘Christ within us’; which releases the power of that myth at the heart of our own consciousness; an ancient by-product of human self-awareness?
OR
B: Is there a reality which is beyond the cosmos, the First Cause of the cosmos, a Being who is the Ground of our Being; a transcendent God revealed in the man Christ Jesus?
If you ticked A, then the Easter story ends in the darkness of Good Friday. I was arguing with an atheist in a pub yesterday afternoon and found myself quoting Sartre, “There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within.” All the other high-flown talk about the power of myth is whistling in the dark. Although of course priests like Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith group, the so-called non-realists, or textual nihilists, would deny this. They somehow find hope for living in this myth tradition; this psychological self-trickery.
And if you ticked B when in fact A is correct, then as St Paul puts it, you of all men are most to be pitied. For you have lived your life on a lie. You have supposed there is ultimate meaning when there is none. Life is a Cabaret if you’re lucky, and a Nightmare on Elm Street if you’re not.
But wait a minute, we’re Anglicans. We don’t do ‘tick one box only’. We tick both and keep our options open.
But by ticking both boxes, we are making a profoundly Christian statement. The Answer to the Big Question is A because of B.
In other words: Yes we see the dying and rising myth enacted everywhere around us, and it has deep resonances within our psyche. Christ is within us, and the image of God is implanted within every human.
And the self-awareness of most humans for most of the last 10,000 years has been caught up with god-awareness.
And this is not surprising, for there is a God who is out there, beyond space and time, who has seeded us with longings of immortality. He is there and he is not silent. He woos us to faith by his wounds of love.
Let’s bring it back to the events we celebrate this Easter Day.
Of course I believe in the Death & Resurrection of Jesus both theologically and historically; and I have experienced that new-life-through-death which the Spirit works in me personally. I would not dare stand here unless, having not seen, yet, I have believed.
And yet… at a very deep level I cannot conceive a dead Man resurrected to a new and supernatural state of being. It is alien to all I experience in my everyday world of life and stay-dead death. It relates more to the powerful imagery of legend, saga and myth, whether The Iliad or Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings.
But if it is just myth, A and not B, then I take no comfort from it. For that would be to deceive myself and others. I want no fairy story to sweeten the bitter pill of life, and more to the point, of death.
Having not seen, I am drawn by the authenticity of Christ and his people, to believe.
That great student of myth, CS Lewis, puts it well: “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.” (1979:43) Mythology is full of dying and rising gods. But in Christianity, “we pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to an historical Person crucified under Pontius Pilate…” (Eng ed of God in the Dock, Collins, 1979:44)
We are indeed people of the Empty Tomb, and yet we must not rob the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, of the mystery and potency of myth. Or as Lewis puts it: “ We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology.” (1979:44/5 ‘Myth Became Fact’ is in Undeception and also in God in the Dock, Eng & US eds)
“…the mythical radiance resting on our theology…”
If only ‘seeing is believing’, then I am an unbeliever. If WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get - then, eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
The captain on the bridge of a large naval vessel saw a light ahead on a collision course. He signalled, "Alter your course ten degrees south." The reply came back, "Alter your course ten degrees north."There are some things that are just non-negotiable. The Resurrection of Christ is a non-negotiable part of our Christian faith.
The captain then signalled, "Alter your course ten degrees south. I am a captain." The reply: "Alter your course 10 degrees north. I am a seaman third-class."
The furious captain signalled, "Alter your course ten degrees south. I am a battleship." The reply: "Alter your course ten degrees north. I am a lighthouse."
Today we celebrate the cornerstone of our faith. Christ is Risen, and because he is risen, because I choose to believe that he is risen, then I encounter True Myth. The Holy Spirit gives me a hope that I cannot explain, but which has been the at the heart of Christian experience through the centuries.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother believed this and millions of ordinary Christians through the centuries have staked their lives upon this truth.
“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.”
(1 Corinthians 4.13,14)
