Christ tells us in today’s gospel, “There are many rooms in my Father’s house”. We often hear this reading at funerals – and rightly so, for it is comforting and true, and puts into context the promises made to us and for us at our Baptism, that there is a place for us in the world yet to come and that we belong in the heart of God, indeed that there is a place individually prepared by Christ for each one of us, which may seem to bear little relation to the place where we are now. But there are only two places in St John’s gospel where the expression “my father’s house” appears. One is in today’s gospel, from Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples in the Upper Room. The other occurs much earlier, where Jesus has a rather different sort of “farewell discourse” as he throws the moneychangers and those selling animals and birds out of the temple. “Take these things away,” he says; “you shall not make my father’s house a house of trade.” So the Father’s House is – or was - both the Temple in Jerusalem, and the heavenly abode of those whom Christ calls to the place individually prepared for them. It is also worth meditating on the beautiful fact that He gives this promise in the very room He will come back to three days after His death. The Temple, the ‘other place’ which the Cenacle, the Upper Room, prefigures and eventually at Pentecost floods the world with, was failing to live up to its role as a sign of heaven, so it is abandoned and forsaken by God. Not as a punishment but because the new Temple to which we are called is what St Peter today calls a “spiritual house” built from “living stones”. That is, we are the Temple in Jerusalem, the ‘New Jerusalem’ as it is put, because we not only know there is a place made ready for us in Heaven, but that we are part of it now, and that we are building it here now, of living stones, meeting in but not contained by this building now. We don’t merely dwell in a room in the Church, but we become part of her dynamic fabric and structure. In our baptism and confirmation we are consecrated and anointed as individuals, but also to be part of the spiritual temple dedicated to Christ. So too in the Church we need to recognise our interdependence. We must provide for and support those in need, recognising that while we have different functions, we are equal in dignity and equally requiring physical and spiritual nourishment, whether we are Hebrew or Hellenist, Apostle, Deacon or Widow, Cradle-Christian or Convert. So today we hear this Gospel in faith and hope as we come to elect new PCC members and church officers, because all this is part of our equality, our interdependence and the building of the Kingdom. It would be a fanciful image if it were built on our human frailty, but as the living stones are built on Christ, we must strive to make sure that we are built not on His foundations, but that we are built into an image of Him, in whom all find a home and in whom all have a place prepared out of love. Building anew, as we are called to do, is hard. If you want an example, then travel back two thousand years and explain to the Temple authorities in Jerusalem that their building will be demolished and that our building here in Blackpool will be of equal value and filled equally with the presence of God. They would laugh at you, and probably kill you, as they killed Christ for saying, in another way, just that. So it will involve continual change, because God is alive and so are we. And that’s hard because we tend to think that the past was better than the present, and we can become fearful that the decline will continue in the future, and that what we perceive to be decline actually is decline.There’s a great danger of idealising the early Church. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that the Christian community was of one mind and heart and held everything in common but in today’s first reading we learn of a failure in the life of the early Church in Jerusalem. A very vulnerable section of its community — poor Greek widows — was being neglected. Converts overlooked the widows in the daily distribution of food. That showed a serious lack of care and concern and undermined the unity of the community. Not surprisingly, there were complaints. But more importantly, when the Church recognised its failure, it immediately took steps to remedy the fault. And it used imagination in finding a solution.Seven deacons including Stephen were given the task of caring for the widows. By allotting different tasks to different people, the life of the Church developed. What had started as a failure became an opportunity for growth. And we must expect this process to continue in the future. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church should recognise new needs and may find unexpected solutions. That’s a sign of its vitality — not by trying to recapture an idealised past, which never existed. So today and every day, we commit ourselves to following the changing power of God in making Him known on earth, here, as He is in the place He has made ready for us.
The nonrecognition of Jesus by the Disciples can seem unusual, difficult to understand. Context is of course important to any recognition – if you’re in what is thought to be the ‘wrong’ place or in the ‘wrong’ clothes, it might be easier to be uncertain who you are. When I lived in London, this was telling – it’s a big place and you might catch a glimpse of someone and not be sure who it was, and if you are to be confused anywhere, a busy capital city with millions of people walking around continually seems a good enough place as any. But then you speak t someone you know, walk with them – well maybe one or two people might be uncertain, but a handful? Seems unlikely, especially when the person you’re talking to is the very person you are fleeing from being recognised as a disciple of! But they recognise him when they eat, sometime later. That’s quite beautiful and unites the Disciples with the feeding of the five thousand – in that people can ignore the teaching, the discipling, but hang around for the free buffet – so we are not alone in occasional despair – but it was precisely at the physical feeding that, after all those years, they were genuinely converted and literally and spiritually turned themselves around to face the work of discipleship. They recognised Him in this meal, and here we are, doing the same thing in this rather peculiar way now, some two thousand years later. As they drew near to Emmaus, Jesus “made as if to be going further”. The disciples got him to stay with them, but, like Mary Magdalene that morning, they could not keep him with them for long. For Jesus was then a pilgrim; he was on a journey, an urgent one; he had to go further and the disciples – that is, we ourselves – must follow him. But, so to speak, we can’t keep up with him.Jesus went further, went ahead, in two ways:That morning, he had told Mary Magdalene, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father”. Jesus had to take his glorified human Body out of this cosmos, which is subject to decay, into God’s own glory. This was to establish the state of glory that we hope to share when he comes again to take us to be with him where he is, when he comes to transfigure our lowly body after the pattern of his own glorious Body. He has not come back for them, he has gone before them, to prepare a place for them and us in His Father’s house. As He promised. We are still on pilgrimage; we are like the disciples who cannot recognise Him, except through this meal – and I do not mean only in the bread and the wine, but in our sharing of it, in our fellowship. The Bible contains all that is essential for salvation – how could it not, as it is what He left us as our guide on this pilgrimage He has shared with us – and it also contains the establishment of the Church, and the gathering of her people in the Eucharist, so we are to recognise him here, in each other as well. We are the Body of Christ, and we are, as He was, on a pilgrimage that will end up united to the Father through the Son, guided by the Holy Ghost in the Church of God. Jesus went ahead of his disciples in another way. He went out from Jerusalem into the whole world. The power of his Cross and Resurrection has radiated from Jerusalem throughout all creation. Even those who lived as God’s friends before Jesus came, were drawn on their journey of faith and hope, drawn into God’s friendship, by the Sacrifice they glimpsed from afar, like Abraham and His sons forever. Jesus still goes ahead of his disciples into the whole world; the power of his Cross and Resurrection still resonates to draw all humanity to the true God, each person who has ever lived is drawn to the Cross, and here we make it visible in our lives so the world may believe – this is the first calling of the Holy Church of God, to be witnesses to the resurrection. The disciples at Emmaus would follow Jesus on that journey into the world. First they had to go back to Jerusalem to re-join Simon Peter and the other Apostles – to be one again, as we are called to be one. There the Holy Spirit, the great Gift won for us by Jesus’ Sacrifice, would form them into Christ’s own Body. Then they would be able to go out and preach the Good News, and from that beginning, here we are. In our mission, we are following Jesus, and he still goes ahead of us. We are, each of us, charged in some way to bring the Good News to those who need it, and this is because we are caught up in Christ’s own journey to each human being. When we reach anyone, however, we will find that Jesus has got there first. Jesus and the Spirit will be there already, awakening the thirst for truth and goodness, and it is therefore our calling to show how we live out our discipleship – and then the Kingdom grows, and we grow, and Christ lives in us and we in Him. And here He is, indisputably, in His body and blood and in His people, called and chosen to walk with Him on the road to salvation, and to turn back from seeking safety in Emmaus and seek people wherever He sends us.
I’m sure at some time or another we have all had a beautiful piece of pottery or ceramic or porcelain which has been dropped and broken. Heartbreaking. Devastating, especially if said item was an heirloom or a piece of nostalgia. We try to get the pieces back together, align them just right, use minimal glue, but strong glue, and hope that the join is invisible. That the item looks as it was before the break. I’ve done that, for sure. A number of times, with, I have to say, little success in hiding the blemish.But there is a Japanese process, artform, called kintsugi, which seeks to give prominence to the breaks. The pieces are indeed put back together but using resin mixed with gold. This results in the scars of the restored piece being accentuated. If the severed pieces are fixed back together with resin mixed with gold then they can’t help but be visible. But that is the whole point. Not only has the broken piece been mended but it is arguably more precious than before due to the gold. And it now has a story to tell. It has a history.Our Lord has risen from the dead. He has been crucified but He is back with His disciples in the upper room. He is whole again. His broken body is restored. But – he still has the wounds of His ordeal. He has the holes in His hands and the spear wound in His side. And these are precious because they tell the story of His salvational act on the cross. Even though His body, His resurrected body is His glorified body, the wounds that remain in His hands and His side are a testimony to the act of love in which He died. The wounds that the disciples see indicate that the person of Christ that they see, resurrected to glory, is in fact the same person who died on the cross. And in this way, the wounds also signify that the mystery of the resurrection comes only through the cross.I’d like to take a small side step here and think a bit more about Jesus’s hands. I read about a Dr Paul Brand who is a hand surgeon and who visited leprosy patients in Vellore, India. While he was speaking to these patients he discussed Jesus’s hands. How at the start they were infant hands, small, helpless, reaching for the comfort of His mum, Mary. Then as a boy, clumsily learning the art of carpentry, learning to write, learning dexterity. And then the adult hands of Jesus the carpenter – likely as not rough, gnarled, scarred with hammer wounds or chisel wounds. And then Dr Brand contemplated the healing hands of Jesus during His ministry. Such tenderness and compassion in those hands, infused with the Holy Spirit so that when he touched the afflicted, they were healed. And finally, Dr Brand, the hand surgeon contemplated Jesus’s crucified hands, hurting at the thought of the nails being driven through the mass of bones, tendons, ligaments, nerves etc that go to make up the hand and wrist. What those healing hands went through for us, sinners like us.The wounds in Jesus’s hands are beautiful. They tell a story. They have not been healed over; His hands have not been fixed so that the breaks can be concealed. No. They are very much there. The rest of His wounds, the lashings, the bruises, the stripes by which we are healed, have gone. We can surmise this because Mary didn’t recognise Him initially on that first Easter Day. The two disciples on the Road to Emmaus didn’t recognise Him. He was as unblemished as could be seen, except for His hands and His side. And this is not a ghost who appears in that upper room. This is not someone else pretending to be Jesus. This is Him. Right there with His disciples, minus Thomas, of course. This is the body, complete with wounds, which the grave could not contain any longer.So when, later, Thomas pretty much demands actual physical proof of Jesus’ resurrection, is adamant that he will not believe until he has seen the wounds and put his finger into the holes or his hand into the wound on Jesus’ side, he gets exactly that. He gets to see that proof, whether he actually did put his finger into the nail holes in Jesus’s hands or put his hand into the spear wound in Jesus’s side or not. And when he does see, he exclaims the most robust expression of faith in the gospel ‘My Lord and My God’. He identifies the risen Jesus as the Lord God, as Yahweh. My Lord and My God. Thomas makes the most direct, personal affirmation of Jesus’ divinity, and brings fulfilment of the entire gospel of John, a gospel which focuses on establishing the divinity, as well as humanity, of Jesus, and which begins with the statement ‘The Word was God.’Thomas knew Jesus. He will have heard, almost certainly, when Jesus had told His disciples that He would die and on the third day, would rise again. But still, he would not believe until he had seen actual physical proof. Today, we do not have the physical Jesus but we do have written testimony of His life, His teachings and His resurrection within the pages of the Bible. But despite what we do have, many simply do not believe. Many find faith difficult because they cannot see or touch Jesus, much like Thomas at first complained. Many doubt, many Christians may doubt at times. And this is not to be condemned because doubting can lead to a stronger faith. It can lead to questions which in turn lead to answers which, if accepted, means that doubt has done good work. The Holy Spirit works in us and through us to allay fears which may arise as a result of doubt. And as Jesus came to Thomas, so He will come today to those who seek Him, truly seek Him with their hearts. Though we cannot see Him, or touch Him, He makes Himself known through the work of the Holy Spirit. Some may see doubting as a flaw, as a weakness. Some may ask God to remove such weaknesses. But that’s not how God works. His power is made perfect in weakness, in our visible weaknesses. So let’s embrace our character flaws, our little foibles. Imagine them highlighted in gold. Let us offer them up to Jesus, who is God, so that He can use us, in all our brokenness, to reveal the glory of the resurrection.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. There is something deeply familiar about Easter morning. The lilies. The music. The brightness of the church after the restraint of Lent. For many of us, Easter carries layers of memory, childhood Easters with Chocolate gifts & easter eggs, family gatherings, new clothes, perhaps the echo of voices now silent but once singing beside us. Easter connects us not only to an event in Jerusalem, but to our own story, to Easter Sundays of years gone by.And yet Easter is never simply nostalgia. It is always new. In the Gospel according to Gospel of John, we are told that Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb “while it was still dark.” That small detail matters. Resurrection begins in the dark. Before proclamation, before understanding, before joy, there is confusion, running, breathlessness, linen cloths lying where a body had been. The beloved disciple “saw and believed,” we are told and yet, in the same breath, we are reminded that “they did not yet understand the scripture.” Faith often begins before comprehension. In the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter stands in the house of Cornelius and does something extraordinary. He tells the story again. “We are witnesses,” he says. Not philosophers, not strategists, witnesses.In the Letter to the Colossians, we hear those striking words, “Seek the things that are above… for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” A new creation has begun, perhaps that is why Easter coincides so beautifully with our season of spring. The first shoots pushing through cold soil, blossom where there was barrenness, something awakens, life which seemed buried, rises. Over these past eighteen months, as you have welcomed me into the life and worship of St Stephen’s, one of the things I have come to cherish deeply is your rich Anglo-Catholic heritage. Not a nostalgia for its own sake, but a living beauty a respect for tradition . Incense rising, candles burning, the rhythm of liturgy that is older than any of us and yet received by us afresh.This year, our diocese marks it’s centenary, indeed next year St Stephen’s will also marks it’s 100th anniversary, the first new parish, in the then new diocese of Blackburn. That sense of perspective has felt especially poignant to me as I’ve reflected on Easter this year. One hundred years, think of the lives contained within that span, the baptisms, marriages, funerals. The wars endured, the celebrations shared. The quiet, faithful Sundays when perhaps only a handful gathered and yet the Eucharist was offered, and the light was kept burning. I sometimes smile when I think of the 1970s, my father’s flared trousers and kipper ties. At the time, they were entirely current, entirely convincing. But fashions are ephemeral, what feels essential one decade becomes quaint the next. The Resurrection is not like that, the stone the builders rejected, sings the Psalm, has become the cornerstone.Across a hundred years in the life of our Diocese and two thousand years in the Church, empires have shifted, cultures have transformed, technologies have redefined daily life. Yet each Easter, the same proclamation, Christ is risen. And each generation must hear it anew. One of the quiet wisdoms of our Christian inheritance is that we are not owners of the Gospel, we are custodians. The light of the Paschal candle, newly lit in the darkness, is never meant to remain in one place. It is passed, from taper to taper, from hand to hand, until the whole church is illuminated. That gesture is not decorative, it is theological. The light we guard is not ours, it is entrusted to us.Those who sat in these pews fifty years ago once held it for us. Those who laid foundations a century ago carried it through uncertainty and change. They brought to Easter what we bring, their fears, their hopes, their questions, their gratitude. And they proclaimed, in their time and in their context, that Christ is risen. Now it is our turn, in our homes, in our conversations, in the way we live, in the way we worship with reverence and joy. The Resurrection does not ask us to be fashionable. It asks us to be faithful. Mary came in the dark, Peter ran in confusion, the beloved disciple believed before he fully understood. The Church has always lived in that space, between darkness and dawn, between partial sight and full glory. And so this Easter morning, surrounded by beauty that is both ancient and fresh, we give thanks, for a faith that is ever ancient and ever new. A beauty that does not fade with fashion, a Lord who does not remain in the tomb. May this centenary year not turn us inward in preservation, but outward in proclamation. May the light we have received be light we gladly share. May the familiarity of Easter never dull its wonder, but deepen it.For this is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia
