Sermon for Easter 2 2020 -19 April 2020
FIRST READING Acts 2.14a, 22–32
GOSPEL READING JOHN 20.19-31
Failure is often the making of our heroes.” wrote the Times columnist Matthew Parris yesterday.
Thinking about our readings - St Peter addressing the crowd and St. Thomas
How does this description “Failure is often the making of our heroes.” - fit Jesus’ disciples?
Especially St Peter?
What is the legacy of the disciples?
How does this legacy impact on our daily lives?
Mathew Parris writes: “Taking life’s heroes as our sample, it seems you often have to hit the buffers, reach a dead-end, fall over, come right off the rails, pick whatever metaphor we choose, before you take life back to first principles: before you ask what your life is for, or how the world can become a better place.”
He then lists as examples, Martin Niemoller, Simon Bolivar, Frida Kahlo, John Profumo, Jonathan Aitken and Thomas Paine and Ian Harvey as examples.
Parris concludes:
“So three cheers for those who having fallen down a well halfway through their lives, looked up and for the first time noticed, really noticed the sky.”
I suggest the disciples, more than stand alongside Parris’ heroes – indeed they have been a direct inspiration to some of those named by Parris.
In our first reading we have Peter confronting the crowd in Jerusalem about the truth of the recent event of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Many in this crowd were the same people who had called for Jesus to be put to death.
This crowd that Peter had been so terrified of that he denied any association with Jesus. Yet here he is standing, not in a locked room “for fear of the Jews” but directly addressing them.
What had enabled Peter, to take Parris’s words that remind us of the Ascension “to notice – really notice the sky?
The answer comes from Jesus when he says: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit.” The gift of the Holy Spirit –which is also given to us.
Fortified by the Holy Spirit, Peter, Thomas and the other disciples are freed from the cowering atmosphere of self-isolation and emerge into the streets of Jerusalem fearless.
St. Peter asks the crowd to recall the words of King David. They come from Psalm 16.
He explains that David was looking beyond his grave to the new era of the resurrection of the Messiah. Jesus, who this very crowd had sent to death and has risen from the dead. Jesus is the Messiah. The fulfillment of the oath given to David.
These words of David, quoted by St. Peter can, I suggest, provide comfort to us too at this time of “lockdown” and spur us on our earthly pilgrimage to the path towards radiant faith
Lockdown for some of us is a time of trial and intense competing priorities.
The forced removal of elements of life we took for granted, of “the busy world being hushed.”
However, this peeling away, may give space in our schedules that was not there before.
If that is your experience, then these Eastertide weeks provide a real opportunity to make time to be quieter and to spend time in prayer and study –perhaps to pull out a long left alone book on Christian faith.
Listen again to David’s words from Psalm 16:
- My heart was glad
- My tongue rejoiced
- My flesh will live in hope
- You have made known to me the ways of life
- You will make me full of gladness with your presence.
Each new day is a chance to thank God for the wonder of this life.
Over the last few weeks here at the United Benefice we have seen dramatic growth of attendance at our weekday services with people joining us online or by telephone, giving shape and routine to the day – elements of the monastic life gifted to us by lockdown..
On Friday we read the words of a former Bishop of Oxford:
“How hard a lesson (it) is – to keep still, to trust, to be quiet, to let God be God. We live in an agitated age, when activism is a virtue and silence is a threat…. The interesting thing about religion is God, wrote mystical writer Evelyn Underhill. I suspect a Church knows how to be still and go deep is even more in tune with the needs of our time.”
I want to conclude with an example of the Holy Spirit bringing the witness of the Christ to the ends of the earth.
At the time of his Ascension Jesus said: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
1800 years later, along the Nepean River to the west of Sydney in New South Wales, the Cox family were establishing pastures, orchards and vineyards. At Mulgoa, the family gave a plot to the Anglican Church. A small gothic church was built of Sydney sandstone, with stumpy pinnacles on the corners of the tower. It was designed by the first vicar. His name was Thomas Makinson. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the church was dedicated to St Thomas and there it stands to this day, 9000 miles from Jerusalem fulfilling the purpose for which the Holy Spirit is given, to bear witness to Christ “to the ends of the earth.”
We pray that in our daily lives, we can keep still, go deep and we too may bear witness to Christ.
Fr Peter Wolton