Easter 2017 - Alleluiah...Christ is Risen

Easter means many different things to many different people.  A sign of new life.  The defeat of darkness.  The Spring Equinox, with all the promise of new life - chicks, bunnies and eggs.  Especially chocolate eggs!  Or, perhaps, the single most important event of all history!

What do you believe?

Let's first review the claims made about Jesus, which we demonstrated just now in the signing of the new Pascal Candle. He is the Alpha and Omega. The Beginning and the End. He is the one who has the power to make all things new...and who promises a new heaven and a new earth. C.S. Lewis spent some time in his book, Mere Christianity, thinking about what it meant for Jesus to come and live as a human being. He wrote: “The Eternal being who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man, but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug.”

Jesus, having emptied himself of his divinity, came to live among us as a human being.  It’s worth remembering that. Sometimes, when we struggle to live like Jesus, it’s tempting for us to think “Well, it was easy for Jesus – he was God!”.  But that is not the message of the Gospels.  Jesus emptied himself of all Godly power.  He became fully human, to show us what a truly full, human, life looks like.  As a human being, he lived and he loved, and he gave up all that he had for others.  He taught us what God was like, and offered us the chance to choose God’s way of living.

But if it wasn’t for Easter...these remarkable actions on the part of God would quite probably have gone unknown, and un-remarked by the rest of humanity. Jesus wasn’t the first man to die in a horribly painful way...and he wasn’t the last. His disciples knew that, and the historical records of the time - the Gospels - tell us that after his death they thought that the whole thing was over. They hid in an upper room - terrified.

But the fact is that Jesus shrugged off death!  Taking back the Divinity he had laid aside as a human, he rose from the tomb!  And what a dramatic impact that had!   It transformed the lives of Jesus’ friends, and from there it transformed lives throughout the whole world.

It is sometimes said that it doesn’t really matter whether or not we believe in the Resurrection. Some people have suggested that Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead...it was just that his presence with the disciples seemed to live on with them, after his death. Some people suggest that Jesus was only alive in the sense that any dead person is alive to us...in our memories. But I don’t think that interpretation matches the facts.

First of all, people don’t give up their own lives for a memory. We know that many - if not all - of the disciples were persecuted, hated, tried and martyred for their assertion...their absolute certainty...that Jesus had got up from the grave. They could not deny what they had seen with their own eyes...no matter how much they were threatened and beaten. Now in these days we know that people will give their lives for religious dogma - for what they’ve been brainwashed with by the mad mullahs of Al Quaida.  But the sacrifice of the Disciples was something quite different. For them to have denied that they had seen Jesus rise from the dead, would have been like us having to deny that grass is green.

Secondly, if Jesus had not risen from the dead, why didn’t the Roman or Jewish authorities simply produce his body to disprove it? That would have quickly stopped the resurrection rumour in its tracks. But there was no body to produce.

As you know, probably, I’m a pretty liberal Christian.  I’m happy to allow a great deal of latitude in the interpretation of all sorts of theology!  But on this one issue, I am steadfast to the faith we have inherited.  Jesus calls us to follow him, not only because he died for us...not because we feel grateful to him (although of course we should). The message of Easter is that Jesus calls us to follow him because he lives!

As one of us, Jesus not only died, but was raised from the dead and now lives with the Father. And he says that he wants to share his joy and his life with us. Jesus isn’t looking for our sympathy; he’s inviting us to get involved. He’s looking for us to join his followers in proclaiming that there is another way than the way of war and violence and hate, of greed and consumerism and poverty. And he’s inviting us, ultimately, to come home to the love of our heavenly Father. That’s why he died...to give us life, and to call us home. Not to illicit our pity.

So it does matter what we believe. If we believe that Jesus only lived in his disciples’ memories...then he died there too - when they died. And our faith is based on nothing more than a vague wishfulness - a unproveable hypothesis that maybe God exists, and maybe we have somewhere to go after we die.

If, on the other hand - as all the evidence suggests - he really rose from the dead, still lives today, and calls us to life and to heaven...then that is worth something. That is a truth worth hanging on to. That is a fact worth telling our neighbours about. That is something worth celebrating.

Alleluiah...Christ is Risen!

Mothering Sunday 2017

Preached on Sunday 26th March 2017

Mothering Sunday 2017

Right then.  Let's start with some basic dictionary definitions.  What is a mother?

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, a mother is:

"A mucilaginous substance produced in vinegar during fermentation by mould-fungus"
"A term of address for an elderly woman of the lower class"
Better.
How about "the Head of a Religious Community"
or
"A quality or condition which gives rise to another, as in 'necessity is the mother of invention'"
or
"Artificial Mother:  An apparatus for rearing chickens"
But of course, the most usual use of the word is the one we give to our Mums...to those who gave birth to us, and who brought us up in the world.

True motherhood though, is much more than the biological function of bringing new life into the world.  That part of motherhood is hard, no doubt.  It takes commitment, devotion, and (apparently!) a lot of pain to fulfil the purely biological process of motherhood.  But, as any mother will tell you - it's after the birth that the real work of mothering begins.

Real mothering takes time, devotion, and skill.  In fact it is very easy to tell new mothers from more experienced ones - especially by the way they relate to their children.

Apparently,
• when you have your first baby, you spend a great deal of time just gazing at your baby.
• When you have your second child, you spend a good deal of every day just making sure that your first child isn't hitting, poking or squeezing the new baby.
• When you have your third child, you spend a little bit of every day hiding from all the children!

There are other signs of an experienced mother too.
• You know you've become a mother when you go out for a romantic meal with your husband, and then reach over to start cutting up his steak.
• You know you've become a real mother when you start thinking about writing a book called "101 things to do with tumble-dryer fluff and dried pasta shells".
• You know you've become a mother when you begin to hope that tomato sauce is, in fact, a vegetable!

But let's face it, not every mother is successful.  In fact, in these days of fractured or highly mobile families, it is not at all unusual for a young mum to find herself bringing up a child, all alone, with no other family members around.  In this area alone I know of many young mums who are isolated beyond belief...stuck at the top of a high rise building, perhaps with the lift broken down, or perhaps with too many children to be able to go out into the world, even to seek help.  For many, motherhood becomes an oppressive almost prison-like experience.

The other uncomfortable fact is that some mothers just shouldn't be mothers.  Too many children grow up in homes that are unloving, or where one parent or the other suffers from addictions to drugs or alcohol.  Some parents routinely use violence to bring up their children, others are too poorly educated to realise that sticking a child in front of a play-station all day does not constitute good parenting!

And that is why Mothering Sunday should inspire us to enlarge our vision of what 'mothering' is.  Mothering is something that the whole of society should be involved with.  Mothering, crucially, is something which the Church teaches should be done by the whole community.

In fact Jesus used some pretty strange language about mothers.  Do you remember the time when someone tugged at his sleeve and said "Your mother and brothers are outside"?   But, according to Matthew Chapter 12, Jesus answered the one who was telling Him and said, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, “Behold my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

This was pretty weird stuff, wasn't it?  Jesus appears to reject his own Mother, in favour of the larger community of disciples who were following him.  Uh?  What's going on?

For Jesus, the bonds of family were clearly important.  They were so important that when he hung on the cross, one of the things most clearly on his mind was the long-term care of his Mother...which is why he asks John to take care of her.  But before that, by his actions and by his words, Jesus makes it very clear that the family unit - and even the bonds of love between a mother and a child - must take second place to the wider Christian community.

And that's because the Christian wider community is the whole Body of Christ - and the Body of Christ is called, by Christ, to serve and 'mother' the rest of the world.  To those who are sick, or in prison, or hungry, or homeless, Christ says, effectively, "Mother them".  

So for the Church, Mothering Sunday has never been just 'Mother's Day'.  You could even wonder whether Mother's Day is just a secular scam, designed to sell cards and flowers, and rack-up the profits of restaurants, by feeding on our guilt about not having phoned our mothers!

To be a mother is much more than to be the one human being whose sole duty is to bring up one or more biological children.  Motherhood needs to be understood as a calling that every Christian - man or woman - shares...a calling to 'mother' a world which is need of the kind of wisdom, challenge and upbringing that the very best Mothers are capable of.

All of us are called to be that kind of mother to the people of our parish.  By our teaching of the Gospel, by our prayers for the sick and the suffering, by our feeding of the hungry poor, by the visiting of the lonely, by our care for the oppressed, by the provision of opportunities for people - and children - to grow in talent and humanity...we are called to act as a mother to the wider family of the people of Havant.

So here's my prayer for this church, and for this parish:  may we discover the fullness of mother-hood revealed to us through the example of Christ.  May we discover the joy of giving loving, motherly service to the lost, the lonely and the poor of our parish.  May we know that fulfilment which comes from sharing God's motherly love to more than just our own families...but to the whole world to which Christ calls us.

Amen