As a trainee Reader I had a wonderful tutor called Phillip
Cunningham. Phillip was at that time a schoolteacher and
Reader, who later became priested – and he had a great gift
for bringing theology down to earth. During a teaching
session on Easter he asked us students three questions.
First question – ‘If most of us don’t see apparitions of the
Risen Christ; how do we know he’s alive?’ Second question
‘If tomorrow a team of archaeologists discovered Christ’s
bones in Palestine, would it make any difference to your
faith?’ And the third – ‘What difference does the
Resurrection really make in a world of sin and pain?’
They are good questions, aren’t they? And particularly this
weekend that third one, at a time when we have been bombing
Syria to try and stop the gassing of children with chemical
weapons. The Resurrection of Our Lord is central to the
Christian faith, yet is so hard for us to grasp as an event,
so difficult for us fully to understand its implications for
the here and now.
The first disciples found it difficult to grasp as well.
When Jesus showed himself to them, after the encounter on
the Emmaus road, he came out of the blue - like a visitor
from another world - and they hardly recognised him. But he
showed them his hands and his feet and asked for something
to eat: it was to re-join this world of pain and sorrow and
joy that he had shouldered his way out of the tomb. This was
not some ghostly apparition, but the risen, still wounded
Christ, asking for food not to prove anything, but just
because he was hungry. And as usual Jesus taught them,
opening their minds to the scriptures, and pointing them
forward to Pentecost - to the coming of his Holy
Spirit upon the church; in its worship, its fellowship, its
mission and its ministry. Perhaps some of those witnesses to
the resurrection wanted to hug him, to hold on to him, just
as Mary Magdalene had done in the Easter garden. But Jesus
was trying to introduce them to a new relationship with him,
that would transcend time and space.
Do you wrestle with the Resurrection? Some of us, and I’m
one, tend to worry about its biological plausibility. But
all of that becomes much less of an issue if we remember who
Jesus is. Jesus is always the One who bridges earth and
heaven, time and eternity. He is the ultimate time
traveller, the supreme Lord of all space and all time who
continually weaves in and out of the material world and
human lives. In his Resurrection Jesus becomes part of the
warp and weft of our earthly existence, God’s gold thread in
the fabric of life. ‘The Lord is here. His spirit is with
us’.
Do you wrestle with the Resurrection? If Luke in his
gospel tells us what the Resurrection is like, John in his
first letter suggests how it might change things for us.
John describes us as children of God, loved by the Father
and sharing with Jesus in his Risen likeness. We can get an
inkling of what this is about by using a human analogy. It
is strange, almost uncanny, how some adopted children take
on the habits, gestures and speech inflections of their
adoptive parents, and even seem at times to look like them.
That family likeness will be ours, says John, if we share
Our Lord’s risen life, the life that overflows with abundant
costly love, the love that hurts. But John warns us that if
we truly live this life we will find ourselves struggling to
make that love real in a world of sin and pain. Like Jesus
we will face difficult choices, and risk rejection and
misunderstanding by the world. A sobering thought for
Christ’s people – do we pass the test? Do we love until it
hurts? Or do we still have some way to go?
Do you wrestle with the Resurrection? Do you even grapple
with the risen Christ himself – try to hold him down to get
some answers from him? In one of his wonderful hymns Charles
Wesley does just that. Like Jacob, who wrestled with God at
Peniel, Wesley imagines himself struggling with the
invisible, risen Christ – Come O thou Traveller unknown,
whom still I hold, but cannot see…...
And Wesley continues later with this quite extraordinary
verse:
In vain Thou strugglest to get free,
I never will release my hold;
Art Thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of Thy love unfold;
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy Name, Thy Nature know.
Wesley’s longing and yearning – his ‘instant prayer’ -
are passionate, intimate. Too passionate and intimate it
seems for some hymn books: the English Hymnal for one leaves
that verse out altogether. But if we like Wesley, hold on,
hold on in faith and hope and love, the invisible risen
Christ will reveal himself even to the likes of us. He will
reveal himself to us, softly and gently, deep in our real
selves - in the abundant, loving, costly humanity of his
Easter glory.
Who, I ask Thee, Who art
Thou?
‘Tis Love! ‘tis Love! Thou diedst for me!
Tell me Thy Name, and tell me
now…
I hear Thy whisper in my heart!
Speak, or Thou never hence shall
move,
The morning breaks, the shadows flee;
And tell me if Thy Name is
Love?
Pure universal Love Thou art;
To me, to all Thy mercies move;
Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love.