He has been raised

This evening we began the service in darkness and watched the light grow as we read the story of God’s freedom in Bradford Cathedral. I baptised five adults and confirmed more than twenty. The sermon was for them and the text follows here:

He has been raised (Mark 16:1-8)

I want to give you some advice – whoever you are and however old you might be: if anyone ever asks you to lead a tour of the Holy Land, try to say ‘no’. I have led several and I can only compare the experience to trying to herd cats… or attempting to get mice to walk in a straight line into a trap. Schedules go out of the window and any hope of sticking to time quickly becomes a fantasy. Go to Skegness instead.

However, if you do ever get the chance to go on a tour of the Holy Land, don’t hesitate. It will be wonderful and memorable. Just don’t agree to lead one, that’s all. And, if you do get to Jerusalem, here’s a question to ask people randomly around the streets (before the police come to pick you up, that is): “Can you tell me where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is, please?” Whatever answer you get, follow it up with another question: “OK, can you tell me where the Church of the Resurrection is?”

You see, they’re the same place. Western Christians have traditionally called it the ‘Church of the Holy Sepulchre’, but Eastern Christians know it as the ‘Church of the Resurrection’. And I guess the two questions this provokes are: what’s the difference, and does it matter? After all, aren’t they just names?

Well, the difference is more than just names or semantics. Some Christians stop at the cross and see Jesus bearing the sins of the whole world and thereby setting us free for forgiveness and new life. Others go through the cross and the empty tomb and emerge surprised and bewildered, but in a new world – or, at least, the old world lived in differently and seen differently… shot through with new colour and unsuppressed joy.

You see, the whole point of the Jesus story is that it didn’t end with death –even death on a cross. In a world of violence in which the mighty Roman Empire exerted its power by making people very afraid of dying and death, Jesus of Nazareth opens his arms on the gallows, taking whatever nastiness the world can throw at him, and doesn’t throw it back. He takes it… and it looks as if he has massively miscalculated. The Messiah was supposed to lead God’s people to freedom – just like Moses led them through the waters of the Red Sea towards the Land of Promise; yet, here he is, hanging dead on a cross, mocked by his killers and deserted by his friends. What a pathetic disappointment.

The problem with Jesus is that he has gone walkabout with a load of friends for a couple of years and has raised their hopes. They thought that he might just be the one to trust – the one who would not let them down. As they went about their rather odd business, he began to use words to fire their souls and did things to make people think that God himself might at last be among them again. The words of the ancient prophets echoed in their deep memories when they saw sick people brought to health and the most unlikely people discover that God was on their side – despite the strictures of the religious leaders. They thought they were on a roll – that triumph lay ahead.

But, here he is, hanging limp and bloodied on a cross. Rome has won again. All the hope was simply blind illusion – fantasy. What a let-down. And now what do they do with their minds and hearts? Do they go back to where they were before Jesus met them on the beach and asked them to go for a walk with him? Or do they rationalise their experience and return to business as usual, but with a new religious perspective?

In fact, they did what you and I would probably have done: they ran away and hid and cried and tried to make sense of all that had gone on – and worried that they might be next up on the Roman executioner’s job list. Their world had fallen apart. Not just their rational understanding of God and the world, but their entire world view – the lens through which they saw God, the world and themselves lay shattered and bleeding in the dirt of the rubbish tip that was Calvary.

Now, we know the end of the story – what happened next. But, they didn’t. They knew only that their world had ended and they had only fear and bewilderment to lead them through Friday and Saturday and into yet another dreaded day of emptiness. They hadn’t been able to figure Jesus out when he was alive and with them; they certainly couldn’t figure out what was to happen next. It just all looked bleak – their world had ended.

Let’s come back to now – Bradford in April 2012. Easter services throughout the world will begin with the priest proclaiming to waiting congregations: “Christ is risen!” And, with loud voices, the people will respond with: “He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!”

I think this might be wrong. We speak of Easter joy because we know what happened next. But, I think that if we were to really live the story of Holy Week and Easter, we wouldn’t respond like that. I think the priest would proclaim: “Christ is risen!” and the congregation would say: “What? Really? You’re joking! Don’t be so cruel.” If we were honest, that is.

When Mary Magdalene went to the garden on the day after the Sabbath, she did not expect to find an empty tomb, did not expect to be met by a young man in white, and did not expect her world to be turned upside down. She went there to mourn and weep. She went there expecting to find the world the way it always is: violence has won, might is right, power always defeats justice, goodness is feeble when faced by fear. She expects business as usual in the same old world.

But, when she and Salome come to the tomb, their world is challenged, their expectations confounded, their grief confused, and their destination redesignated.

Easter is not about death and destruction – business as usual in the tired old world. It is about life and surprise and transformation and hope. For, in their arriving at the empty tomb they are surprised by life and bewildered by hope. The old rules have been broken: death does not have the final word, destruction is not the ultimate victor, violence need not be accorded honour and respect. Indeed, we are offered new life not because Jesus absorbed the sin and muck of the world on the cross, but because having done so, God then raised him from the dead.

I once told a famous songwriter that I had changed the words of one of his songs. He asked which, and I said it was an Easter song in which the last line of the first verse said: ‘Back to life he came’. “No, he didn’t,” I argued; “as Paul put it, ‘God raised Christ from the dead.” Or, as Mark puts it in our Gospel reading this evening: ‘He has been raised.’ Jesus did not resuscitate. He did not come back to life. The molecules of his body did not simply reassemble after a couple of days of decomposition. No. The good news (the Gospel, that is) is that God raised Christ from the dead. God did it. Jesus was dead, not just a little bit tired and swoony. Dead as dead can be. And God raised him. As we see later in the story, he was the same, but different.

And the point is this. I want to be an Eastern Christian in Jerusalem. I want to live in the light of the resurrection, not stop at the crucifixion. Easter is not possible without having first gone through Good Friday and Empty Saturday; but, if we stop at Friday or Saturday, we have believed the lies of the old world – that violence, death and destruction have the final word in this world after all. The Holy Sepulchre is vital, but we move on to be the Church of the Resurrection – a people filled with hope, confident to live in the old world in the light of the new world of resurrection life. We are an Easter People and ‘resurrection’ is our cry.

This evening we baptise a number of people and confirm many more. Why? What for? What is going on here?

Well, baptism is not something we do; it is something that is done to us. We receive the grace and love of God that cannot be earned, grasped, claimed or nobbled. We are marked with the indelible cross and know that we have passed from darkness to light – from the world of destruction to the one in which the God of resurrection surprises us with a joy and confidence we didn’t expect. Then, marked thus, we discover that we are in the company of millions of others who – as we now see – have also been marked with the sign of Christ, the cross that makes a mockery of the world’s powerful pretensions. We are not in this alone.

In confirmation we stand, marked with the sign of Christ, and take our place – consciously and deliberately – in Christ’s resurrection company. We take responsibility – as did Mary Magdalene and Salome and Peter and Thomas and all the others – for telling the story and daring to suggest that the world and its fears look different when we are marked with Christ’s cross and belong to the company of those who dare to defy the old world’s expectations and miserable resignation to violence and death. We are in this together. Filled with the spirit of that same Christ – empowered and equipped by that same Spirit of God who raised Christ from the dead – we dare to live differently in the world for his sake. Our eyes have been opened and we can do no other.

Brothers and sisters, let’s celebrate that tonight the darkness – however real and however dark – is not the end of the story. Let’s celebrate that tonight the darkness will be penetrated not by choirs of angels, but by the quietness of a bewildering encounter with the God who always surprises us – and who always has the final word in this world and the next.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

 

Digging for truth?

Earlier this year I led a group visit to Israel and posted reflections on a number of elements.

One that still haunts me was the couple of hours we spent being propagandised at the so-called City of David. You can read my thoughts and detect my discomfort in this and other subsequent posts.

Ahdaf Soueif does a comprehensively better and more incisive job in today’s Guardian. It makes for painful reading and will no doubt enrage those who think criticism of Israel amounts to criticism of God.

I still struggle to understand the incomprehension of people who quote the prophets’ cry for justice while kicking helpless people out of their homes and off their land for questionable archaeological reasons.

 

Suffer the little children (Israel 2)

Empires come and go. That’s what history teaches us. It also teaches us that those empires that focus on their longevity as their primary goal eventually implode. This is why the repeated and resounding message of the Old Testament is that the people who call themselves ‘God’s people’ must focus on justice, mercy and faithfulness – longevity might or might not be the result, but that is not important.

Empires that make their own security their primary goal will usually compromise justice, mercy and faithfulness and the empire will find its days numbered – however strong and powerful it looks to be at the moment. Hubris carries within its womb the seed of its own destruction.

This is one of the conversations running today as our group of visitors to Israel-Palestine continues to explore the land of Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Amos and Jesus. But there are also encouragements to be found in sometimes surprising places and for sometimes surprising reasons.

The Princess Basma Hospital sits on top of the Mount of Olives in territory that is indisputably Palestinian. The hospital (which also comprises a school) does brilliant work with disabled children and their families. Children are admitted with their mother for anything between two weeks to two months. The mothers are taught to reject the shame of bearing a ‘not-perfect’ child, while also being given programmes and routines for the caring and nurturing of their child once back at home. They do particularly good work with hearing-impaired children, but they also have a workshop for making artificial limbs.

The hospital is now suffering from diminished interest from Christians and the restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the difficulty of movement. It costs $120 per day per child, but only some of the money comes from the Palestinian Authority and insurance.

The encouragement comes from the fact that the Israelis and the Palestinians have to cooperate to some extent for the sake of these children. The children can’t be schooled in Israeli schools (where Hebrew is the main language), so the Israelis assist with medical procedures and enable the Palestinians to provide the schooling.

Another case of the children (the most vulnerable) forcing the adults to work together?

Today was a day of contrasts. The relative peace of Gethsemane – and the place where Jesus looked over to Jerusalem and wept at its blindness to its vocation and its fate – to the messy disordered order of the Church of the Resurrection (known in the Western churches as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – do a theological deconstruction of that and the implications of the choice of emphasis…).

Yet, everywhere you go the paths are worn and the steps polished by the feet of people trying to connect somehow with the God who in Jesus entered the mess of it all, walking and weeping in these places. As long as this earth continues, people will still come here, treading the dust, feeling rocks and living with the mystery of the Incarnation in a place of occupation and ambiguous justice.

Our conversations are, however, haunted by the injustice of Israeli ‘creep’ in land that they know is not theirs. The Jewish graves are taking land up the side of the Mount of Olives – land that will not readily be ceded in any future ‘peace’ process: you don’t surrender the places where your dead are buried (unless, like the Palestinians, you have no choice). Secondly, Israeli settlements are being established in places that are clearly not Israeli – a claim to place that will be hard to dislodge, whatever is agreed on high.

The settlement below is just a bit further down the road from Princess Basma Hospital – firmly in Palestinian territory. Its flag can be seen from everywhere in Jerusalem.

The weeping over Jerusalem is set to continue where justice and mercy and faithfulness are made subservient to the craving for longevity.

 

Both sides now (Israel 1)

Sometimes it is hard to be impartial, hard to listen to two sides of an argument. But being in Bethlehem and Jerusalem today makes the apparent intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict depressingly real.

I am leading a group of 37 people from England on a visit to Israel-Palestine. I last brought a group just over two years ago and this time we are putting more effort into listening to those trying to live in this small land peacefully.

This morning we visited Bethlehem. These pictures are of the wall you have to go through to get in to the town.

Most residents of Bethlehem cannot get permits to leave the town. This wall is more than twice the height of the Berlin Wall.

In Bethlehem we listened to stories of hope. One project (located right up against the wall) we visited was absolutely clear on several points:

• Don’t just curse the darkness – light a candle. Being bitter about the ‘imprisonment’ will not change the situation, but will do damage to those who are bitter as well as their enemies.
• Create spaces for children to play and for olive trees to grow – speaking of a fertile future.
• These Palestinian Christians (who also work among Muslims) wish to live alongside Jews in Israel, sharing the land. They are not against Israel, but they are against the occupation of their land.
• There should be no hierarchies of pain or victimhood – these create only a vicious circle of hate and resentment and the circle must be broken.
• It is vital to work with young people and women, helping them cope with trauma and work for a dignified future.

Claiming, “we have an incurable malady called ‘hope’”, these people had one major complaint about the ‘west’:

Your media ignore the hundreds of constructive, positive and hopeful projects being run in difficult conditions, but a single molotov cocktail thrown by a young man will bring blanket coverage in your media. Why?

In the afternoon we visited the archaeaological sites at the City of David. This is run by Zionists. It was great to see Warren’s Shaft and Hezekiah’s Tunnel (which I realise sound like medical complaints) and see the work done to uncover these ancient ruins. But the preceding 3-D film presentation and accompanying guide narrative were shocking to many in our group who had come here with sympathetic and open minds.

We were given a perfect example of teleological story telling: start with your conclusion (the land belongs to the Jews and Jerusalem was, is and always shall be the ‘eternal capital city’), then fit the story to justify your end point. Not only was history re-written, the Bible selectively appropriated and political assumptions dripped in throughout, but there was a startling blindness to the inconsistencies in front of our eyes.

Jerusalem is a city of peace and a city of justice, we were repeatedly told. Yet, in all the hours we were there, not one mention was made of the Palestinians on the other side of the valley, those who had been removed from their homes in order to allow the excavations to be done or the injustices being done to Palestinians in relation to their land

If the people do not live justly, they will lose their city, said our guide – without either a hint of irony or any awareness of what was obvious to us observers.

This is just the first day and we are encouraging the group not to make too many judgements until we have seen, heard and experienced more. But, as we looked out over Bethlehem and saw the city-sized settlements (‘new facts on the ground’) dominating the lands, many in our group wondered why this is allowed to happen, why international agreements can be simply ignored and why people who have suffered grievously can be so willing to inflict suffering on others.

We had a de-brief session this evening to begin to process some of these questions and reactions. But, there is a long way still to go.

‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ (Psalm 122) has taken on new meaning and urgency for many in our group.