A Sermon preached at the Parish Church of St Mary’s, Primrose Hill

Last year I was invited to speak at the annual conference of headteachers of London church primary and secondary schools. During the conference I was fascinated by the reminiscences of the assistant Director of Education on interviewing candidates to be headteachers of church schools. She told me that one seasoned interviewer she knows always asks candidates the same question: ‘What is unique about Christianity?’

She said that over the years she has watched candidates struggle with the question. Some fudge it and mutter hopefully about everyone loving everyone else – not very convincing. Others make a stab in the dark and mention Jesus as a great moral teacher or healer. But there are great spiritual teachers in all religions.

Others apparently opt for the Bible, and how it teaches us to live good lives. But of course, other religions have their holy books and wisdom too.

So what is unique about Christianity?

You may have your own answer, but I would venture that what we have come to church this morning to celebrate is what is unique to Christianity; namely, the resurrection of Christ. In the words of St Peter: “Praise be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

The resurrection and the living hope that this kindles within us is the good news we celebrate today. God has freely given us the gift of his Son, and death itself could not vanquish it. We don’t have to earn this gift or his love – just accept it. And as we accept it, so hope dawns in even the hardest and most cynical of hearts.

Over the past week we have re-lived the events of the last week of Jesus’ life, from his tumultuous entry into Jerusalem, to the last supper he shared with his disciples, his betrayal, trial and crucifixion, and today his resurrection. If one wanted evidence for the resurrection you need look no further than the incredulity of the disciples themselves: they simply did not expect it.

The accounts of the resurrection are full of raw shock, fear and astonishment. God had acted in the dark, when no one was around. No cameras were there to capture this unique and unrepeatable event. There were no press releases; no witnesses to question – just an empty tomb and a stone rolled away, waiting for someone to discover it.

This morning at dawn some of us remembered that early morning visit to the tomb by Mary Magdalene to anoint the body of Jesus properly. The onset of the Jewish Sabbath after the crucifixion had meant that Jesus’ burial had to be completed in a rush. It is still the custom in the Middle-East to bury within 24hrs of death because of the intensity of the heat causes a body to decompose quickly.

We are told by St John that Mary mistakes the risen Christ for the gardener – so hugely different is the resurrected body of Jesus that she doesn’t at first recognise him. It is only as he speaks her name, ‘Mary’, that she recognises this figure in the morning light to be her Lord. Clearly the resurrection is not the resuscitation of a corpse. The risen Christ has, as it were, broken through death and come out the other side.

In relation to this encounter on Easter morning, there are two things I want to say.

First, the initial experience of Jesus’ resurrection for the disciples was not one of presence, but of absence. As the angels said to Mary, ‘He is not here; he is risen.’ According to St Mark’s Gospel, the women found it all so terrifying that they fled from the empty tomb in fear and didn’t tell anyone anything.

In other words, the risen Jesus does not automatically mean the present Jesus. In saying this I don’t mean that God is truly absent. I am thinking of those times when God seems to withdraw his presence and we cannot find him. God is not where we expected him to be. And let’s face it, not all of us feel that God is close to us all of the time. But feelings of the absence of God do not constitute a failure of faith. Also absence is not the same as abandonment. When someone goes to work in the morning, and is no longer physically in the house, it doesn’t mean they have stopped loving those at home.

Secondly, we should reflect on the significance of the angels’ question to Mary. ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ they ask, as she gazes into the empty tomb and confronts this terrible absence. Their question was not insensitive or mocking. Nor was she being criticised. Tears are a language in themselves, and we must learn to question them and listen to them if we are to understand them. Our emotions are powerful and unpredictable, and as we all know we can use them to manipulate sympathy or influence situations for our own ends. But tears can also lead us to the true sources of grief and joy in our life. In our culture we tend to see tears as an embarrassment, but they are a gift.

Of course, being a Christian does not mean that we will be immune from grief and tears. But our faith does declare that tears do not have the last word. As it says in the last book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, ‘There shall be an end to crying and pain and tears; for the former things have passed away.’ For, the writer adds, ‘God makes all things new’.

Let me conclude with a story from Russia.

St Seraphim of Sarov was born in 1759. He entered the monastery at Sarov at the age of twenty and became a solitary for over thirty years. He was an incredibly wise man whose counsel was sought after by thousands.

After his death in 1833 his grave became a huge centre of devotion, but following the revolution the monastery was closed and his grave desecrated. However, in spite of massive intimidation, people still kept going on pilgrimage to the ruins of the monastery, and in particular to pray at the spring near Seraphim’s hermitage, leaving candles and flowers and small ribbons fastened to the branches of the trees.

In reaction to this the communist authorities covered the spring over and fouled its waters. Within months, however, the spring reappeared elsewhere in the woods. Later in the 1950s the soviets smothered the whole site in a concrete bunker. But, you’ve guessed, within a matter of weeks, the spring had popped up elsewhere.

Finally, in the 1970s, the authorities sent in two bulldozers to flatten the entire area. Bizarrely or providentially, depending on your viewpoint, the bulldozers broke down en route, and this time it was the soviet authorities who were intimidated. The soldiers on watch reported seeing an old man dressed in white with a staff kneeling by the spring, and refused to carry out their orders. Today Sarov is once again a great centre of Orthodox devotion. And the water still flows.

If there is a moral to this tale it is this: God is at work and no one can stop it.

We live in unsettling times: global warming, international terrorism, a resurgence of gang culture in our cities. We may not have had to endure a revolution, but we are going through a time of profound change. Some of our most cherished institutions and patterns of living seem to be under attack, and it is difficult to hope when everything seems to be so uncertain.

But we should take heart because Christ is risen. God is at work in our world, opening our graves, giving us back the past so that all that has been buried may be freed and forgiven, and our lives return to God. God is at work: the waters of new life keep bubbling up and cannot be stopped.

God does not ask us to be heroes, but he does ask us to be faithful and to be real, like those Russian peasants, like Mary Magdalene. He understands our difficulties and will never trivialise our tears.

Christ is risen. Today he summons us to life and to hope. We have good cause to rejoice.

Robert Atwell