On this day of days may we meet you, our Risen Lord in the joy of this day and in your living presence among us. Amen.
Easter should come with a health warning.
And it’s not just to do with the overindulgence in chocolate eggs that may well already have started in your homes first thing this morning, and that we are going to encourage you in at the end of this service.
Or for that matter, a larger than usual consumption of prosecco…which we are also assisting you with today!
And it’s not just to do with the vast number of services and events that leave clergy, churchwardens, choristers, servers, and many others of us here this morning rather fraught and exhausted in recent days!
All of this is part of it of course – but Easter should come with a health warning because it makes you ache.
Physically it makes you ache – there is much work, labour you might say – in all the preparations – lugging about furniture and other items in church, arranging flower displays, making endless cups of tea and coffee and serving hot cross buns, and setting up Easter Egg Hunts and other child-friendly activities.
For clergy there are the many things you have to carry – and believe me, the symbolic weight of them makes them even heavier than they really are – the jugs, bowls and towels for foot washing, the cross for veneration, and then the great Easter candle – lit anew and held aloft for all to see – the supreme symbol of the new life which is the joy we celebrate with overflowing hearts this morning.
And it makes you ache in so many other ways too – for in the journeying through Lent and Holy Week we are opened up to the deep hurts of the world, of our own lives and of all that led Jesus to the death of the cross. We are indeed crucified with him.
Yes, Easter makes you ache.
Ache with longing for things to be restored, remade, renewed, reborn – our relationships, our families and friends, our communities, our world – and ourselves.
Well, this morning as we celebrate on this most joyous of days – all this is so – all things have indeed been remade!
For this is what Easter means – new life, new hope, new beginnings – a new creation.
For us all, Easter is the answer to that ache, the pain of living and fear of dying.
For those who have been baptised and confirmed this Easter – this is their new beginning, now part of the new life of Christ, alongside us all.
At the Vigil last night the great Easter candle was brought into the dark of the Cathedral, and the new life of Christ proclaimed. Hundreds of candles lit from that one new light spread the light and excitement just as 2000 and more years ago the news of Jesus’s resurrection spread like wildfire, electrifying the whole of Jerusalem, and on and on across the world and down the ages until it light us up with the joy of new life today!
The whole world awakes and bursts into glorious new life and we are indeed reborn and remade!
And now we no longer ache but thrill with joy – for all our sorrows, all our pains, all our longings, are caught up in this awakening and arising.
On that first Easter Day – Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb in the dark of the dawn – her heart broken in grief, aching to be close to Jesus, her Lord, her love, even in death. She walks through the greyness of loss and despair, it tastes like ashes with the bitterness of myrrh and aloes, the spices of burial. The wetness of dew on the grass, and tears on her cheeks.
It is Easter Day – and Mary finds the one whom she was seeking – not lifeless in the tomb, but standing before her, speaking her name, radiant with love, bright with joy – fully, completely, amazingly, absolutely alive!
The grave has become the cradle of new life – the place of deepest loss the garden of delight.
How right then that we celebrate all this at the font this morning where we come to the living water for which we long, like tears rising up within us when we are touched in our deepest heart and soul.
Here is the place of rebirth – where we enter into the death of Jesus, as we have this Holy Week, where we are washed clean of all that would keep us from God and one another, and where we are reborn into the glorious resurrection of Christ – the Morning Star whose rising never again to set transforms the old order into the new creation.
The time of sadness is past, the time for singing and dancing has come. For today is Easter Day, and we are the people of Easter and we rejoice – for what was lost has been found and what seemed an ending is the beginning of everything.
In the garden as the sun rises and bursts into glorious life the Lord walks to meet us on the day of his resurrection.
Alleluia, Christ is risen, he is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Service: Reverend Michelle Dalliston. 9th April 2023. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)