We live our lives in a nest of intersecting cycles. There is the earth’s cycle of day and night, fitting into the cycle of the moon, giving us our weeks and months. That in turn fits into the sun’s cycle, which gives our years and their seasons. There appear also to be lengthier cycles of global warming and cooling, not yet fully understood, but at least confusing the issue of global warming caused by human activity. Then there are the even larger, in fact unbelievably large, cycles of the birth and death of stars, which themselves fit into the cycle of big bang and final collapse. Physicists tell us that the beginning and end of this cycle are singularities beyond which it is impossible to pierce.
In the other direction is the cycle of life, vegetable, animal and human. Seen from a physical point of view it moves through birth, life death disintegration and absorption into new life. If I remember my biology correctly, it is called the carbon cycle, though those of us whom England and especially Yorkshire nourished, know it better from the song “On Ilkla Moor bart t’hat”!
Human organization seems to mimic this cyclical nature of experience. Empires, cultures, societies and institutions are born, grow and decline. Perception of these cycles also changes. Until the seventeenth century of the Common Era, it would have been almost universally assumed that the world was in decline, moving further and further away from a golden age in the past. But the advent of the new learning, with its science and technology, turned that around, and at least until World War Two, the holocaust and Hiroshima, it was fairly confidently assumed that things were getting better and better. It was perhaps this more than anything else this technological optimism that eclipsed the appeal of medieval Christianity with its message that the present declining world would be replaced by a new world, and meanwhile we could all look forward to life beyond death.
The message of Easter, nevertheless, has often been, and still is, tied into this cyclical view of the world. If you have looked in the Easter section of greeting card displays, I guess you will have seen more pictures of eggs, daffodils and rabbits, than of empty tombs. A major difference in the modern age has been that, with the solipsistic concentration on my survival after death, the Resurrection has been presented primarily as the guarantee of my personal future. Its significance as the first event in God’s creation of a new world has been almost completely forgotten..
But in the big picture, the Holocaust and Hiroshima have changed things round again. We may not quite have returned to an image of the world as in decline. We may still have great confidence in the future possibilities of science and technology. But we cannot look back on those events, and others subsequent, without pondering on the presence of radical evil in the world. In the post 20th century view of the world, we are still aware the cycles of growth and decline in human life and institutions, but we tend to see the big picture, if we see a big picture at all, as one that is very confused, blurred and shaken. And as we look at the smaller cycles, in the west generally, and in Quebec more particularly, we are certainly aware that the church is in decline. In Montreal, we are acutely aware of the decline of the Anglican Church.
Two weeks ago, I spoke about the story of the raising of Lazarus being symbolic of the possibility of new life rising out of the old, and of the church, like Lazarus, being unbound of the impedimenta which have brought us into this decline. Let me read a couple of sentences from that story:Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." …So they took away the stone. And Jesus…cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
John 11:38 ff NRSVIf we continue reading John’s Gospel, we find that he carefully contrasts that resurrection with the resurrection of Jesus. On the first Easter Day:
(The other disciple) bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.
John 20:5 ff NRSV
This little detail also occurs in Luke’s account, which read as our Gospel of our Eucharist this morning.
But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
Luke 24:12 NRSV
I believe that the tradition is signaling to us that there is an enormous and highly important difference between these two resurrections. The raising of Lazarus is an event within the world. It belongs to the small cycles of life and death, growth and decay. It required human help as well as divine intervention to open the tomb, and then to unbind Lazarus. One can assume that Lazarus eventually died again a normal human death. It is therefore is a story about how we need to be unbound in this life, and given new life. It is a story about how our societies, institutions and churches need to be unbound in order to receive new life.
But the resurrection of Jesus, which we celebrate today, is of another kind. The stone is rolled away, and the bindings are left behind without human intervention, for this truly is God who has suffered for us and has risen. This is an event not within or bound by time and history. It shares with the beginning and end of the universe the mysterious nature of a singularity, which no human reason can understand, or no research uncover or define.
I want to suggest then that what we celebrate today is something far greater than anything that can be symbolized by eggs or rabbits or daffodils. They belong to the small cycles of winter and summer, birth and death, growth and decay, and their figurative counterparts in the rise and fall of societies, organizations and institution. Let them be symbols of the Lazarus resurrection. That is not unimportant – indeed it is the kind of resurrection with which we need to be concerned in most of our day-to-day life. So don’t worry children: there will still be chocolate eggs at the end of our celebration!
But we need to see Jesus’ resurrection in the greatest cycle we can imagine, the cycle of the creation and recreation of all that exists through all of time. Easter celebrates a mysterious mid- point of existence, in which the new creation begins while the old continues. It is an event both within and beyond time and history. What we see, with the disciples, is an empty tomb. What we experience, with the disciples, is the mysterious presence of the risen Christ among us. But the totality of this event is a singularity beyond either their comprehension or ours.
But we can realize, as did the Gospels, that this event points us to the source of all existence, the source of all power, beyond anything we can ever know or understand. Jesus resurrection enables us to see that this is truly the Word made flesh, a disclosure to us, in human terms of this unimaginable power, made known to us as creative, healing, loving and good. This is the power which turns water into wine, heals the sick, cures the lame, returns the outcast to the bosom of the community and raises Lazarus. And although its totality is always beyond us, yet we are called to experience this power as the living Christ opens our eyes, heals our fragmented souls and societies and raises us from spiritual and organizational death. The creative and redemptive power of the almighty, loving God is that which fuels the smaller cycles, whether they be physical or figurative. Today we celebrate the gift of God, which guarantees that, however grim things may look now or at any time, we shall live again. We shall and can known this New Life powering our lives, powering the life of our societies and churches, the foretaste of the recreation of the universe.
So, enjoy your eggs!
Christ is risen
He is risen indeed
Alleluia
Lent 5 and Maundy Thursday, 2002
The Very Rev Michael J.Pitts, Dean and Rector
Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal