Article
- Date:
- Sunday 8th May 2022
Year C, The Forth Sunday of Easter - Place:
- Holy Trinity, Cuckfield
- Service:
- Evensong
- Readings:
- Isaiah 63.7-14
Luke 24.36.49
We are in mysterious - one might say magical - territory in the last Chapter of Luke's Gospel; and the only surprising thing about that is that we should be surprised. When a man who has been crucified in front of hundreds of witnesses and has been laid dead in a tomb we ought to be in mysterious territory when he suddenly appears again, not near the tomb, as in John nor nearby, as in Matthew, but first of all in Luke along the Emmaus Road; and then, in our reading, Jesus appears to the Disciples in their hideaway on the first evening of his risen life in a scene apparently identical to that in John's Gospel but, typical of Luke, instead of recording the doubts of Thomas he chooses to record Jesus eating fish. It's all very elating but also very confusing as the Disciples to try to de-code their experience.
This is not, as many people think, a simple matter. Most people in most situations do not de-code experience in a tabula rasa context; they don't, in other words, start from scratch. Most people from the time of their birth, steadily and cumulatively develop a framework in which they understand their sensual experience: we learn to distinguish between the smell of toast and burnt toast; we expect water to come out of taps but identically appearanced vodka to come out of a bottle; more critically, we have very sophisticated ideas and expectations about relationships; and when we fall in love it's difficult to work out how much of the charm lies in the beloved and how much of it lies in our self-construction of the beloved to meet our needs (Proust)-. So it was with the Disciples who had undergone a very complex set of emotional relationships with Jesus; and, yes, he had been predictable; and he had said some enigmatic things about rising again on the third Day; but an empty tomb, an appearance on the Emmaus Road, a disappearance after his self-revelation in the Eucharist, and an appearance again, somehow coming out of nowhere, was a great deal to take in. no wonder they were, as Luke records "startled and terrified".
I wish we were. Perhaps because of our history, perhaps because of our temperament, perhaps because of our woefully incomplete theology of Salvation, we seem able to grasp the pity and the agony of Jesus - although our abstract theories of Redemption often numb us to the sheer physical pain of what Jesus suffered - but we somehow can't handle the Resurrection; just as many people can only handle rather mundane situations and can't get on with the magical realism of Salman Rushdie or the science fiction of Doris Lessing. I used the word "magical" on purpose, wishing to distinguish this from the work of magicians, because it's a cultural word we understand from childhood and if we are lucky re-experience, say, in the theatre. Well, that is what is called for here. Intellectual power and coherence, the application of detective techniques, and even close textual analysis, are just not going to do it for us.
The Resurrection is the single event which most properly calls for faith; there's no other way of dealing with it; but if we don't deal with it in faith, as Saint Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 15, there's no point at all in bothering.
No doubt you have heard people, even Ordained Ministers, in an attempt to be 'pastorally' comforting, say that doubt is the reverse side of the coin of faith, in other words, they say, doubt is part of faith. But to say this is to misuse both terms: doubt concerns our inability to interpret data in a way which is secure enough to provide a basis for further interpretation of experience, it does not refer to the data, it refers to us; and faith has nothing to do with data but is the spiritually foundational mindset which equips us to look at data from a theological standpoint; so the other side of the coin of faith isn't doubt, it's attentiveness to the Holy Spirit. If we study the Bible that's well and good but faith is much more fundamental than that, in much the same way as we have faith that when we flick a switch a light will come on even though we don't know how electricity is made; or, even more amazingly, we trust an aeroplane will take off even though we don't have a clue how that huge lump of metal can leave the ground.
So when we think about the Resurrection of Jesus, the question often asked, about what he looked like, is not very relevant; he looked like what he wanted to look like: he didn't look like Jesus when Mary Magdalene thought he was a gardener, and then when he spoke he did look like Jesus; he didn't look like Jesus as he walked the Emmaus road but the sign of breaking bread made him look like Jesus; the wounds and fish made him look like Jesus but the appearance out of nothing couldn't be accounted for.
But the best way to approach the Resurrection, framed by our experience and therefore different for each of us, is to live it the way we live falling i love; amazed, confused, sometimes so overwhelmed that we are almost physically sick with the excess of it, disoriented from the rational and the analytical, not very good at framing a stable picture, not quite knowing what to do to make the best of it, to see that it does not fade as quickly as it flowered. Falling in love is a desperate thing but, if we work at it, the falling turns into being. But every relationship can become jaded and stand in need of a tonic. Well, that's what Easter is all about. It allows us to experience falling in love again and again.
Finally, never forget that in this love affair where we know that Jesus loves us beyond words, what he asks of us is that we should love unconditionally, not in return, but because that is why we were created, it is a call for us to behave within our created nature. And, well, if this is all a bit too much, at least loosen up just a bit.