FEAR AND JOY

‘…they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy.’ Matthew 28:8

There are some people who have a naturally grumpy face. I am one of them. If you were bold enough to look around you now, I have no doubt that you could spot others. And now everybody is going to smile.

For those of us who have this affliction, it is a burden we just have to bear. I was given a gift from my wife - a hat which says on it, back and front, ‘Grumpy Old Man’. I don’t think I am grumpy really. But when I smile, I am told, I look normal. For the rest of the time, I look as if I have indigestion.

I am, in fact, quite a jolly sort of fellow, or so I believe. I like to rejoice about the good things in life which I experience. I enjoy a good laugh. But I do hate false jollity, the kind which warm-up comedians whip up before TV recordings, or which you see from time to time in Christian circles where people walk around feeling that they have to grin constantly. Or those badges one used to see which said ‘Smile, God loves you’.

Well, God does love me, and I rejoice in that. But that isn’t the whole of human experience at any given moment. There is a lot more going on the world which tempers my joy at knowing that God loves me. Life is a mixture of hopes and fears, of joys and sorrows, of good and bad. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry.

In our Easter Day gospel, as recorded in Matthew’s gospel, there was this mixture of fear and joy. At dawn, the two Marys, who had been watching the burial of Jesus two days before, go to the tomb just to have a look, and there is an earthquake. That tends to make people afraid. They see an angel. That would give me the heebie-jeebies! The guards, who had been put there by Pilate at the request of the chief priests and the Pharisees, were so afraid that they fainted. The angel tells the women ‘don’t be afraid’, because they must have looked terrified. They look in the tomb, see that Jesus is not there, and, with a mixture of ‘fear and great joy’, they run to tell the disciples. On the way, Jesus appears to them, and still, it seems, they are afraid.

Matthew does not tell us how the disciples reacted, but Luke does, and their response, according to him, was ‘silly women – what do they know’. Now isn’t that typical? But I’m not going to get into that this morning!

In fact, though they could scarcely have been expected to take it in, this was above all things the one great event to put a smile on the faces of the disciples. For the one they had pinned their hopes on, (and their hopes were quite diverse), the one they had abandoned and then followed to the cross, the one they had seen die before their very eyes, was not dead. He was, it seemed, very much alive. Mind you, they weren’t all convinced (Matt.28:17), and no doubt they were the ones with faces like mine.

Now, every Easter when I preach, I am at pains to point out that trying to prove this phenomenon scientifically is not a helpful exercise. It can’t be done. Neither is it helpful even to speculate unscientifically about what might have happened. What we need to take on board is the profound truth that, as we shall sing next week, ‘Christ is alive!’

I would not even begin to try to explain that in a sermon. What I want you to do this morning is to open your hearts and minds to the possibility that this is indeed true. We are 2000 years down the time line, and we are still here, celebrating this mystery. If we do not believe that Christ is alive, what in heaven’s name are we doing here?

Like most aspects of the Christian faith, to say nothing of the Bible, Easter is both a multi-layered and a multi faceted event. Christianity, is rarely plain, and never simple, or to be taken at face value. If you do try to make it simple, you can end up either missing important parts of the message, or even missing the point altogether. In the 2000 year history of the church, much has been added, but very little taken away from the Easter message. The kernel of this message is still plain – the powers of evil have been defeated, and Christ is alive.

What we are celebrating today is our belief in a Christ who is not bound to a distant land a long time ago. He is for all humanity now. He is not just reigning with God in some mysterious place we call ‘heaven’, but he is in the here and now, in our daily life. He shares our pain, our suffering, he is with us in good times and bad. He is affected by our failures, the sins with which we are all afflicted, and, yes, we continue to crucify him. Yet he loves us more and more, day by day, until we submit ourselves to that love, and to his power to remake and refashion us. Fear and joy – there it is again.

But above all, the victory of the Cross and Resurrection is the victory over the powers of evil now, in the 21st century. It is victory over environmental chaos, over poverty, violence, injustice, war and human degradation. In our society, which has become coarse, vulgar, rude and uncouth; where so many lives are brought to ruin by hedonistic excess; yet where the self is so often degraded, this cosmic dimension is not to be ignored. We celebrate the resurrection as being the key to the redemption of the whole of creation. It is not just something personal – about me. It is about the loving purpose of God, restoring the world to eternal friendship with God. The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus is part of that purpose. That includes you, in your small corner, and I in mine, proclaiming this good news. Fear for the future? Maybe. But there is also hope and joy.

As Christians we hold fast to this – it is a rock to which we cling, even when the odds seem to be against such a notion. Week by week, day by day, we experience the real presence of our Lord in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. We meet him in the poor and the oppressed. When we feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, visit the sick or the prisoner, we are doing it to him. For those who are devoted to him, he is alive in their hearts. He is not far from us at any moment. All this, but there is more. That last enemy, death too, has been defeated. As Wesley put it in our first hymn this morning:

Love’s redeeming work is done
Fought the fight, the battle won
Vain the stone, the watch, the seal,
WHY? Because:
Christ has burst the gates of hell

This is the message of Easter – that Christ has been let loose in the world, and that his Spirit burns throughout this and every age. Joyful news indeed, for today is Easter Day.

Alleluia! And a very Happy Easter to you all.

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