Preacher: Hugh Dickinson
Date: 19/04/2020
Sermon for Easter 2
Today’s readings have given us two if the best known and best loved texts in the New Testament. It’s a pity that the lectionary requires us to read the text from the Acts of the Apostles before the Gospel of St John. That’s back to front. For Our present purposes we must look at the Gospel reading first.
This is one of the most touching and dramatic moments in the Bible. The completely distraught Mary encounters the risen Christ outside the empty tomb in the dawn light of the first Easter morning. At first she doesn’t recognise him. Perhaps he is just a dark figure against the radiance of sunrise. The stranger asks her who she is looking for. Through her tears she says she has lost her Lord and the love of her life. Then, just two words. The shortest possible dialogue. MARY …. RABBONI. Has any one single word ever carried such freight of joy and love as that “Rabboni!!”? She falls down and clasps his feet in ecstasy.
What he then says sounds oddly rejecting, lacking in empathy: “Don’t cling to me.” The English version unfortunately has “Don’t touch me!” What he really means is “You can’t hang onto me.”
Because everything has now changed. The world has changed. No wonder she doesn’t recognise him. Jesus is now moving into the great Realm of God, the vast enfolding sea of the Divine Love. “My Father is now drawing me into his great Heart. You, my dear, are being drawn with me into the Father’s Heart because you are in my heart.”
Where is the heart of God? God’s Love is everywhere, enfolding everyone and everything. Our open doorway into the Divine Love is through Jesus who holds us in his heart. But the world is deaf and blind to God’s Love. So Jesus says to Mary “GO! Go to my friends so they too can be drawn into this Realm of the Resurrection with me because they are all in my heart”. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says he is going ahead of them, down into Galilee, and then on into the whole world.
Mary has caught the life-giving virus of the Resurrection from Jesus, now his friends will catch the virus from her, the virus of Jesus who had said “I have come that you may have abundant life from me!” The whole world will catch this virus. Go!”
But look here! We have only to turn one page and, look! Here is Pentecost. The virus is getting out into the world! It can even go through locked doors. All the nations of the world are represented here in Jerusalem where the virus is centred. They will take it with them when they go home to the four corners of the earth, where it will change the face of all human communities. The world will not be happy about that. In Corinth the citizens complained to the magistrates that “these men have come here who have turned the world upside down”. Jesus said “I have come to set fire to the earth and how I long for that fire to be kindled”. Pentecost is wind and fire and a New World
Fire and viruses. It’s all uncomfortably close to home. But this fire is the Fire of the Spirit and the blood transfusion is the blood of the Heart of God. Look! It’s spreading all around us. Just look at what is happening in all the towns and villages and of the United Kingdom. A sudden tsunami of generosity and kindness and self sacrifice is welling up through the hardened pavements laid down by hard hearted greed and cruel economics. Of course it’s always been here. All those lovely men and women in the NHS, in the caring professions, who we were applauding on our doorsteps a month ago. They have the Jesus virus, in our schools and nurseries, in our social services, and hospices, most of them without knowing that they have it or what it is. Many of our young people are showing symptoms of the Jesus virus. With any luck they will be the people who will turn out world upside down and help God rescue us.
One last thing, my dear friends. When all this trauma is over we will all bear its scars, as Jesus bore his scars, although many of us will not be here to see that day. But one day beyond that day we will all be in the Dawn of the Resurrection and greet one another with ecstasy and joy and clasp hands with love not fear.