A Sermon preached at St Mary’s, Primrose Hill by the Reverend Robert Atwell on Easter Sunday 2008

What gives you hope in a world like ours?

I am not asking if you are an optimist. I mean something deeper than a capacity to look on the bright side of life, to laugh at problems or ‘talk up’ the positives in the face of disaster. That is partly a matter of temperament. I envy such people, though at times I resent their resolute cheeriness. A naturally ‘sunny’ disposition is a genuine gift to have around the place, but it can easily slip into a way of denying or avoiding things that need to be faced.

To be genuinely hopeful is to meet life from a very different place. Hope is not the same thing as optimism, which may be misplaced. Hope involves a tough engagement with life as it really is. It means being utterly realistic about who we are, who others are, and what we are facing. And yet somewhere deep within us, an improbable belief takes hold. Vulnerable but tenacious: it won’t let us go and we can’t quite shake it off either.

So what is your hope? And where does it come from? These are, after all, profoundly unsettling times. Some of our most cherished institutions and patterns of living seem to be under attack. In the past few weeks alone there have been dire warnings about the possibility of an imminent collapse of the worldwide banking system, which might sink our pensions and savings. We are bombarded with predictions that climate change will lead to flooding in many of the world’s major cities. There is the perennial threat of international terrorism. Meanwhile in London there is a resurgence of gang culture with random attacks on people, including the clergy. Everything seems to be in flux.

Despite our relative prosperity and decades of peace, we live in a deeply anxious age. Just under the surface, lurks fear. How can we sustain hope when so much is uncertain?

What gives me hope is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The cluster of stories in the New Testament about the resurrection of Jesus are full of raw shock, fear and astonishment. It is clear that resurrection was simply not what the disciples had expected and it is all the more compelling for that. God had acted in the dark, when no one was around. No CCTV cameras were there to capture this unique and unrepeatable event. There were no paparazzi, no press releases; no witnesses to question – just an empty tomb and a stone rolled away, waiting for someone to discover it.

But as the rumour of life spread, so these primitive stories witness the birth of hope. They describe the gradual transformation of a group of despairing people as they encounter the risen one. And that transformation can be as real for us as it was for the disciples two thousand years ago. We too can be people of hope, confident in the God who can bring life out of death.

Just as the resurrection of Jesus did not undo history, so there can be no way back in life for us. The crucifixion happened and the risen body of Jesus Christ bears the marks of his passion to prove it. But his appearance has changed; in fact so radically has he changed that the disciples do not recognise him. Not unreasonably, Mary Magdalene thinks he is the gardener.

Last autumn I attended my old college reunion. I hadn't seen some of my contemporaries for almost 30 years, and when I walked into the room and looked around, I panicked because initially I didn’t recognize a single face. Everyone seemed grey haired and, dare I say, overweight. Then little by little recognition dawned. It was people’s voices that gave them away: Ah yes, I thought, that warm, kind voice is Graham’s. That infectious laugh can only belong to Benny. That marathon talker who never lets you get a word in edgeways has to be Fred. It’s not surprising that we fail to recognize people after many years, but sometimes people change from one day to the next.

I’m sure you know that famous faux-pas in the ‘Book of Bricks’ where a man at a dinner party turns to his neighbour and says, ‘Tell me, whatever happened to that dreadful woman with the blond hair your husband used to be married to?’ To which she replies, ‘I dyed my hair.’

We all form mental pictures of people, which is why after an absence, sometimes they are unrecognisable. Maybe they really have changed or maybe they have simply changed their hairstyle. It can be quite alarming to realize that you are seeing a person anew, seeing them as though for the first time.

So it is not really strange that Mary Magdalene failed to recognize the risen Jesus. She had returned to anoint the dead body of Jesus. After the crucifixion, with the onset of the Sabbath and nightfall, Jesus had had to be buried quickly. Now at first light Mary returns to finish the job, but seeing the stone which had sealed the tomb rolled away, she assumes that the body has been stolen.

Only a genuine encounter with the risen Christ persuades her otherwise. Yet the recognition is not immediate because the resurrected Christ is much changed. As with my old friends at the college reunion, it was the voice that was the giveaway. It was when Jesus called her by name that the penny dropped.

The various resurrection stories in the Bible are unanimous in proclaiming that we are not dealing with the resuscitation of a corpse. There is continuity with Jesus’ earthly body, but there is also change. It is as if the risen Christ has broken through death and come out the other side.

There is one other thing I would say. We should remember that the first experience of resurrection for the disciples was not one of presence, but of absence. As the angels proclaimed, ‘He is not here; he is risen.’ In fact, 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.

The risen Jesus we honour today does not automatically mean the present Jesus. I don’t mean that God is truly absent. I am thinking of those times when God seems to withdraw his presence from us and we can’t 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. When someone goes to work in the morning, and is no longer physically present in the house, it doesn’t mean they have stopped loving those still at home. Absence is not the same as abandonment.

‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ asks the angel of Mary Magdalene as she gazes into the emptiness of the tomb and confronts this terrible absence. The question is not insensitive or mocking, and Mary is not being criticised. Tears are a language in themselves, and we must learn to question our tears if we are to understand them. Our emotions are powerful and unpredictable, and we need to understand them because 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.

When Jesus in the Gospel blesses those who mourn and weep, he is blessing those who are willing to be truthful. And it is into all truth that Jesus wishes to lead us. Lies imprison: truth sets us free.

Our faith 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’.

Today God makes all things new, and that includes you and me. We can have hope, because death has no dominion. Christ is risen from the dead and God will never let us be confounded.