4th April 2010 - "The one who is alive"

Stephen Fielding - St Peter's, Tewin and Ayot St Peter
Easter Day

There jumps out at us from that gospel reading this morning a question as surprising to us now as it must have been to the women who came to the tomb on the first day of the week as the dawn was breaking. The women who came with spices and ointment in their hands to embalm the body of Jesus who has been buried a couple of days before. And what do they find? They find no stone in front of the tomb and going into the tomb they cannot find the body of Jesus. In whatever state of mind they now find themselves, they're asked that key question by two figures in bright raiment:

‘Why do you search among the dead for the one who is alive?’

What would you have said? What might the women have said? ‘Well we're searching for him here because this is where his dead body was put on Friday; we're searching here because we've come to embalm him; we're searching here because that's what you do; and anyway people who are dead are not alive. Get real!’ It must have been incredibly disconcerting for them to be told that the man they loved, the man they had seen killed, was alive. What could that possibly mean? And when in their perplexity they run back to the 11 disciples and tell them what the two figures have said to them, the disciples don't believe it either. They refuse to believe the women. Only Peter gets up runs to the tomb and sees the linen clothes lying all by themselves with no body in them; and no doubt starts to wonder whether what the women had said might not be true after all.

That Jesus was now alive pressed itself on them as he actually appeared and came to talk to them. He came and ate with them. He gave them breakfast by the seashore. He showed them the nail marks in his hands and the nail marks on his feet. And so the belief arose that that Jesus had been raised, that God had raised him from the dead, that he was indeed alive; and if alive, then still alive.

I believe we may find it very difficult to persuade ourselves now that Jesus is alive. We say to ourselves, ‘It was a very long time ago, let's just respect him and admire him as the figure who went to his death urging people to mend their ways and trust in the living God’. Or we say to ourselves, ‘ He was a great man, a prophet of Israel in his way, but what could it possibly mean to say that he is alive?’ Or we say, ‘What a great example of human living, but alive? I don't think so!’

And yet in the most profound sense Jesus is alive. And when I say Jesus is alive I don't mean it in the sense that we believe that there is life after death, though of course we do believe that there is life after death. I mean it in the sense that when Jesus was raised from the dead he brought into existence a whole new world, a world which is absolutely full of potential for the whole created order. That new world full of potential for the whole created order includes the potential and the possibility for us to be part of the new world which was then created, part of the spiritual energy that was then released, the advance guard of the new heaven and the new earth which God was bringing in at that very moment. And Jesus is alive at the head and centre of that new world, the kingdom of heaven, already a reality, which every Easter and indeed every Sunday we ought to rejoice in and celebrate. For it is at the heart of the Christian faith that not only is the risen Lord alive, but that those of us who believe that he is risen and still alive are ourselves transformed by the possibility that in him we have been raised from the dead and share his risen life.

And the application? We are to speak to him and relate to him as if he is alive, as our friend and as our Redeemer.

Amen