Easter People

As we go through this morning’s service I suspect that you will not fail to notice that we sing and say ‘Alleluia’ quite a lot.  The word ‘Hallelujah’ is Hebrew in origin and is a joyful expression in Old Testament worship. It means, literally, ‘Praise the Lord!’  After the Resurrection the Christian Church happily took it over and it is much used, especially at Easter and whenever, in the Christian year there is a special celebration.   There is, however, one period in the Church year when it is never sung and that is, of course, Lent.  Indeed, in earlier times we might have taken part in a ceremony held widely in the Christian Church just before Lent – that of ‘burying’ the alleluia.  It took many forms.  A simple way of doing it was to wrap  up a board on which was painted the word, ‘Alleluia’ – which was then carried in solemn procession either to the altar or down to the Church crypt or some place of safekeeping where it remained until Easter morning when it was unwrapped again. In some places it became a custom to really ‘bury’ the Alleluia. A banner or scroll with the word was placed in a coffin and solemnly buried in a grave.  Prayers were even said for its resurrection on Easter Sunday.  Even  special hymns were  sung like “Alleluia, song of sweetness” refers to the farewell: “Alleluia cannot always be our Song while here below; alleluia our transgressions make us for a while forgo.”  Even cremation was anticipated in some ceremonies where the alleluia was made of woven straw and set alight.

Burying the Alleluia became a symbol for much of Lenten observance when we are called to die to sin and bury those things within us which obstruct the love of God. That dying to self which our Lord says is the mark of the true follower  of the Christian Way.  By doing this we prepare ourselves to celebrate the Resurrection, this joyful time when the Alleluias ring out again and become the glad song of those whose hearts are filled with joy at the Rising of Christ from the dead.

St. Augustine caught the mood of this in words that have become justly famous and oft quoted: “We are Easter People and Alleluia is our Song.”  But what does it actually mean to say that we are Easter People?

For Mary Magdalene and those who went to the Tomb on the first Easter Day it meant a complete reversal of expectations -  of passing from darkness to light – a favourite theme of St. John’s Gospel, which begins with the Prologue telling us that Jesus had come into the world as a ‘light for all people and one who shines in darkness which can never overcome it/him.

Yet towards the end of the Gospel we are confronted with a seeming destruction of the light which is Christ.  When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning John also adds  while it was still dark.  This is obviously a physical darkness – it is the end of the night – but it is a spiritual darkness too.  Mary came with heavy heart, as one who grieved for the loss of her dearest friend on earth. Those who have experienced the bereavement of a loved one will know exactly how she felt. For her, darkness and night was a condition of loss and dereliction. The Lord whom she loved had been Crucified and with it a part of herself had died, as with the other followers of Jesus.  What was to be revealed to her is only obvious to those of us who have the insight of  living this side of Easter. For Mary there was only the certainty that Crucifixion had snuffed out the life of Jesus as surely as a puff of wind blows out a candle.

For Mary, for the world, for the believers in Jesus it was truly night and it only ceases to be night when she encountered Jesus in the garden, believing him to be its keeper. When, in their encounter, the Risen Christ says her name, the darkness in her soul lifted and the joy wells up inside as she blurts out, ‘Rabbouni’ . This is Mary’s Alleluia moment and she passes from darkness to light.

Even so, she tries to hold on to him because she has not yet fully understood. ‘Do not hold on to me” – in other words, do not try to go back to how things were – something those who are bereaved often want to do. The way is forward. This is a new relationship and it is about becoming an Easter person. The Risen Christ explains to her that he is no longer bound by the earth and that he will shortly ascend to His Father. The Divine Plan has been fulfilled and a new relationship – Covenant; Testament - has been forged between God and humanity. The message he entrusts to her to take to the disciples emphasises this new relationship. ‘I am going to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.’

Not only is Jesus no longer bound to the earth but neither is Mary Magdalene – nor the disciples – nor, by extension, are we. Easter People live in this world but their hearts are already beating in that other world – the world of God.  When Mary runs to the disciples with her news she is already moving forward in Easter Faith.

When she had first gone to the disciples after her first visit to the tomb, she told them, with despair, that the Lord had been taken from the tomb. This time she met them with a confession of Easter faith, her second Alleluia moment –  I have seen the Lord!  This is the first proclamation of the Easter message though, to be fair, she was not the first to believe. That honour goes to the Beloved disciple,  generally regarded as St. John, who had been into  the empty tomb with its discarded grave-clothes and had seen and believed.  For him that belief was evidential  and, perhaps because he was the closest to Jesus, expected. The facts spoke to his faith. It was all very matter-of-fact and quite low key.   For Mary, however, it was an encounter with the Risen Christ and it was this that moved her from belief to confession.

Mary, therefore, began to move on and moving towards God and it was this that turned her into an Easter Person. She saw, she believed,  and - she told.  And, of course in the seeing, the believing and the telling she not only witnessed to others but also witnessed to her own heart – as she was converted by faith in the Risen Christ..  She was the first of the Easter People and already by the end of our short Gospel account she had, as it were, sang her first two Alleluias!

Obviously as the Easter event unfolded there were going to be lots more -  but what about us? If we are to be Easter people then we have to own this Gospel of the Resurrection ourselves.  In part, we do this because of Mary’s faith and proclamation and those who, like her, came to understand what had happened between Good Friday and Easter morning, or to be more accurate, between the stable at Bethlehem and the Tomb outside Jerusalem.  We have come to faith through the progressive witness of Christian believers stretching back from our own time to Mary’s ‘Alleluia’ moment in the Garden.

But that tells us only how we got the message. It does not tell us what we have done with it in our own hearts.  That requires faith because facts alone or the convictions of others do not convert us. What truly converts is an encounter with the living God. 

When my own faith was growing, I have to tell you that I had a lot of problems with Jesus. I found it very easy to relate to God the Father and maybe that was because it was the Father who first touched my heart in an ‘Alleluia’ moment in a darkened and empty College Chapel in Cambridge. I had no trouble therefore in relating to the Father. Nor, because my faith developed at a time when the Charismatic movement was strong in England, did I have any trouble with the Holy Spirit.  What took a little more effort was my relationship with Jesus.

At the time, there was something called the ‘Jesus’ movement and it concentrated on Jesus the man. My problem was that I struggled to have a relationship with Jesus  as Mary Magdalene and those who were his  disciples did. I could imagine what he was like but only they knew him. My attempts to know Jesus in the way they did kept hitting a brick wall – or to be more precise – an empty tomb. Everything I knew about Jesus was because of those who knew him on earth. But I, like all of us, stand on this side of Easter. Everything we know about Jesus is interpreted by our knowledge and experience of the Risen Christ who, though one and the same person, is also ‘bigger than’ the earthly Jesus.

Mary Magdalene encountered the Risen Christ and discovered that, as a result, she could not cling to the Jesus she knew. For her salvation this was something vitally important. She wanted to hold on to a memory and keep Jesus on earth. But, if she was to become an Easter person, the opposite had to happen for her. And also for me. I could not contain Jesus on earth – I could not simply relate to him as the disciples did. Like Mary Magdalene I had to learn that, because of the Resurrection, there was a bigger vision – one which allowed me to think of the world of God as both encompassing this world and taking me beyond it. As that 4th century commentator on Christians said – Christians live in this world but are not of it. They are citizens of earth but their heart is in heaven.

When I realized that I did not need to contain Jesus on earth but that I could meet him this side of Easter as Lord of the Kingdom, then my horizons were widened and I could relate to Jesus as he was on earth because I was now relating to Him in a much bigger way.  I’m not sure whether this makes sense to you – but what I’m trying to say is that Easter people have the widest view of God that it is possible for human beings to take – and this is because of Easter; because of the Victory of love on the Cross which makes the undisputable statement that God loves us; and because of the Resurrection which takes us, in love, to the heart of love itself – right to the heart of God.

This, I believe is what the Divine Plan really was and is. It didn’t stop at a Cross – that was the gateway we  pass through to meet the Risen Christ who greets us and calls us by name - each one of us – our own personal Alleluia! Moment – which draws us into the company of the Redeemed –Easter People – for whom ‘Alleluia’ is the song of the Kingdom where Christ the Risen Lord reigns with his Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end – and in whose eternal love we are called by Christ to live – forever!