ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Sermon preached by the Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at Evensong and Benediction on Easter Day, 23rd March 2008

Readings: Isaiah 43. 1-21; 1 Corinthians 15. 1-11;

An infants and junior church school in North London was given a grant to create an arts project in the spring term. The school had a large and rather uninspiring playground so it was decided to create a life-size Easter garden in one corner. The whole school was involved. Many of the things in the garden were made by the children. The parents made trees by nailing pieces of wood together with leaves painted by some of the young ones. Plants were supplied from people's gardens. Year 5 made a tomb out of wire covered with plaster painted stone colour. Year 6 (the senior year) was given the task of deciding who should be in the garden.

The children decided that the resurrected Christ should be in the garden alone: no gardeners, no Mary Magdalene, no disciples and no angels. (Angels it seemed were for Christmas only!) So how would they depict Jesus? What would be his pose? How would he look? There was a discussion in the class about how Jesus would feel after the resurrection. Given what he'd been through in Holy Week what would he feel like? One of the children summed it up succinctly. 'He'd be knackered', she said. 'He'd be knackered - all that work!'

So for the school's Easter garden Year 6 built a wonderful more than life-size sculpture made of papier-mâché of the risen Christ in repose. He sat: his back resting against a tree, one knee bent upwards encircled by his hands; his head leaning back; his eyes slightly closed yet surveying the garden, this new Eden, this world of his creation. 'Knackered', yes, but not 'shattered', not so tired that he couldn't think.

I suspect that most of us experience two sorts of tiredness. There's the tiredness that's deadening. The sort of tiredness that means we're finished: we can't go on any longer; we're played out and we're past caring. On motorways we often see large signs warning us that 'Tiredness Can Kill' and so it can.

But there's another sort of tiredness: the sort of tiredness that although our bodies ache and our brains hurt yet there's a sense of fulfilment; of a job well done; of something accomplished. It's like the farmer walking the land after the harvest; the executive looking at good year-end results; the cleaner cleaning a room to perfection; a medic saying good-bye to a patient after a full recovery; a composer writing the final stave of a piece of music; a poet concluding a poem; a mother giving birth to a healthy child.

The last words of Jesus from the cross according to St John are 'It is finished', 'It is consummated', 'Its done.' And the resurrection? The resurrection is the vindication, the validation, the verification of this victory. Death has been conquered.

Believing this has profound implications for how we live. All of us are afraid of death and although we say that we believe in the resurrection it takes a lifetime for the implications to sink in. When we contemplate our own deaths we probably shudder. Fear remains. Woody Allen best summed this up for me when he said 'I'm not afraid of dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens.'

So if we're going to appropriate the resurrection for ourselves we need constantly to look and look and look again at how it plays out in our lives.

Salvation comes from the Jews and one of the last century's great Jewish philosophers was Hannah Arendt. She managed to escape the Nazis and spent most of her life in America.

She makes this observation. (I paraphrase.) There are two great facts of life. The first is that we shall all die. We live our lives forward. We count the passing years. We know how old we are. We know how old our parents or grandparents were when they died. We see the years ahead diminishing. And however well-adjusted we are there will always be fear; fear of the unknown; fear of death.

But there is another fact of life. All of us were born. We know when we were born. We celebrate our birthdays. Death is always marked by sorrow. Even when a person has died peacefully and full of years there's always a sense of loss. We grieve. But birth is nearly always a time of celebration. We shed not tears of sorrow but tears of joy. There is a new life and for that we are grateful.

Hannah Arendt says that we should try to live our lives within the parameters of birth and not allow them to be circumscribed by death. That's the way to live well. Because when we are stalked by death we are driven by fear but when we are caught up in the rapture of birth we are called to life. The presence of a new life is a summons to join in; to nurture; to be a part of something. This is surely the way to live as believers inthe resurrection.

St Paul writing to the church in Corinth in this evening's second lesson makes it clear that he is part of an unfolding tradition. The risen Christ appeared to large numbers, to the apostles and finally to him unworthy though he was. I am what I am, he says (although he could never have known what Gloria Gaynor would make of that!) And he's worked harder than anyone else in the embryonic church to spread the good news.

Protestantism with its fearsome work ethic has had a deep influence on us all even those who worship in churches like this. Its part of the cultural air we breathe: justification by perspiration! If we work harder then whatever it is that we're striving for (including religion) is reified; made true. Not so!

A living faith, a life-giving faith, a resurrection faith is one that doesn't leave us spent but full. Tired we may be especially those of us who've spent many hours in church this week but I hope that we're tired in the sense that we've truly finished something. There has been an event. There has been something accomplished and something understood. Something profound has been consummated and birthed in us.

We have not simply visited an empty tomb but we have just left a womb empty.