RCL Reading Sunday 18 April
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-11-14
John 21:1-19

The Psalm (30) and the reading from the book of Revelation (5:11-14) both focus on praise – praise that emerges out of hard times. The psalmist has been in a desperate situation and now has been delivered out of it – it is a resurrection like experience and results in praise on behalf of the psalmist (v.1-3) and an invitation for the community to join in that praise (v.4). The nature of the trouble is not specified so as you read the psalm you can carry in your mind a specific trouble you have been through and let the psalm give voice to your praise.

The book of Revelation is not an easy book to read as much of it is written in highly symbolic language to describe visions that John has been granted while a prisoner doing hard labour on the island of Patmos. The difficulty has been added to by its inappropriate use and interpretation by some groups. Chapter 5 begins with a vision of sealed scroll in the hand of God (v.1) which represents the purposes of God, but there is no one worthy to open it and reveal them. John’s response is “to weep bitterly” (v.4). But there is one who is worthy and the highly symbolic language makes it clear that the worthy one is the crucified, risen and ascended Christ (more could be said about the symbolism!). The response is that the whole of heaven and the cosmos erupts in worship (v.11-14). Offer your praises to God using these words of heavenly worship.

The Gospel reading (John 21:1-19) is one that it is easy to picture in the imagination as the narrative unfolds, so read it slowly, see the scene and try to enter into the emotions that Peter has as this resurrection encounter is told. I invite you then to focus your prayers on three themes woven together within this reading: mission, restoration, and pastoral care. These three themes are common to all the resurrection accounts.

The account of the large catch of fish has always been understood as a symbol of the mission of the Church. What began in failure (a night without a catch) ends in an enormous catch. The turning point was the risen Lord and his instruction, which must have seemed strange to seasoned fishermen, but their willingness to obey resulted in the enormous catch. Much ink has been spilled over the significance of the 153 fish – the simple answer is that it probably had symbolic significance but the symbolism is now lost (despite the claims of some!). What is remarkable is that “the net was not torn” – the unity of the Church (see Jesus command Jn 14:12-17 & prayer Jn 17:20-23). Our mission stems out of obedience to the risen Lord. Pray for the mission and unity of the Church.

John 21:15-19 is a moving account of how Jesus restores Peter. By making him face his past failure (charcoal fire, three times asking ‘Do you love me?’) Peter is set free from it so that it no longer has the power to trip him up in the future. We can be set free from our past – it may be painful but remember who is there with you! Pray and visualise Jesus in the situations for release for yourself and others from past failure and its grip. Jesus is very pastoral in the way he deals with Peter – firm, loving, affirming. Pray for those who exercise pastoral ministry. Pray for your own pastoral ministry. Peter is given a three fold task “Feed my lambs”, “Tend my sheep” and “Feed my sheep” – pray for those who ‘feed’ the ‘lambs’ – those literally who are young and those who are young to the faith, pray for those who feed through preaching, teaching and house groups, and pray for those who are called to exercise oversight (tend) the Church.

Easter Morning


John 20:1-18

I always find preparing my Easter morning sermon difficult until I reach Saturday night and the early hours of Easter morning! So here it is finished while it was still dark!

“While it was still dark”

The thing that stuck me most powerfully this year as I read John’s account of that first Easter morning – an account I’ve read countless times without these words registering – was that Easter morning begins “while it was still dark”.

In John’s Gospel references to light and darkness are more than simply giving an indication of the time of day.

Remember the opening chapter:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  - a theme running through the gospel.

Now early on Easter morning Mary comes “while it was still dark”.

• Mary is in a “dark place” as that Easter morning dawns.
  
• It is hard, if not impossible, for most of us to even begin to comprehend what it must have been like for Mary to have witnessed the events of Friday – seeing the one she loved tortured before her eyes.
  
• For her that dark place is one of horror, grief, fear, profound loss, disorientation, and total uncertainty for the future.
  

But we have our ‘dark places’ …

·       Our dark nights of the soul

·       Times when we feel overwhelmed by what’s happening to us or to those we love

·       Times when the world seems a mad and even terrible place

·       Moments when depression sweeps over us

Our world too has its ‘dark places’ …

     recall the headlines of the last week's news

 

One cannot deny the darkness. Easter morning starts ‘while it was still dark’

Like me you have probable moved from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, but what about Saturday?

Where was Jesus?

In the tomb? Yes and no.

Our Christian theology and tradition speaks of him going to the place of the dead.

The Easter Saturday place

v  the fearful places

v  the ‘dark’ places

v  the inhospitable places

v  the lonely places

These are the places that so often grief takes us. They are actually important places. For they are places where the reality of loss is encountered in all its starkness and pain, where grief floods in.

The Saturday place is crucial too, for the pain and grief are the other sides of the coin of love – the cost of love. The Saturday place takes seriously all that sense of loss and it is a place where sometimes the darkness seems to be overwhelming.

Mary is still physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually in that ‘Saturday’ place as she journeys in the dark to the garden and to the tomb. “While it was still dark Mary Magdalene came to the tomb”

At the heart of the Easter Gospel is the fact that “while it was still dark” the tomb was empty!

But at this point Mary doesn’t understand. She thinks they’ve taken the body of Jesus away. She runs and fetches Simon Peter and ‘the other disciple’. But still she is in her dark place – the sense of loss and grief continue to overwhelm her. When the two disciples ‘return to their homes’ she remains and she weeps.

There is something incredibly powerful and moving about this scene in the early morning garden.

That second wave of tears. The Friday tears of the shock, the death, the awfulness of it all. The Friday tears of grief and possibly anger. The Friday tears give way to the darkness of Saturday when you are ‘teared-out’ – the grief, the pain, the loss, all weigh so heavily upon the heart and for the while tears may be impossible.

Then there comes that second wave of tears – as the daily reality and ramifications of the loss hit home. They come in waves. They come at unpredictable as well as predictable moments – welling up, flooding out.

So Saturday spills over into Sunday.

At the heart of the Easter Gospel, “while it was still dark”, the light of the risen Christ comes – comes into the darkness and into the shadows and “the darkness did not, could not, will not overcome it”!

The ‘dark place’ doesn’t have the last word.

• However awful it might be,
  
• however horrifying it might be,
  
• however inhumane it might be - and that’s what crucifixion was
• it is not a place from which God can be barred!
• Rather it is the place into which God in Christ-Jesus has fully entered

As Charles Wesley expresses it in that great hymn ‘God of unexampled grace’ (166)

Never love nor sorrow was

Like that my Saviour showed;

See him stretched on yonder cross,

And crushed beneath our load!

Now discern the Deity,

Now his heavenly birth declare;

Faith cries out: ‘Tis he, ‘tis he,

My God, that suffers there!

Our ‘dark places’, our world’s ‘dark places’, are not places unknown to God.

“While it was still dark” God was at work in resurrection power.

And it is the crucified AND risen Lord who comes and meets Mary in her ‘dark place’

• and he doesn’t simply draw along side – although he does do that
  
• he doesn’t simply accompany her in her darkness – although he does do that
  
• he also whispers her name! Mary! Mary!
  

For me that is the most amazing moment.

For me that is what Easter is all about:

• a God who loves so much, as to enter into our ‘dark places’
  
• a God who is so powerful as to empty the tomb – to rob it of its content, its power, its hold
  
• a God who enters our ‘dark place’ and dispels the darkness by speaking our name
  

The image of the one who comes ‘soft-footed’ and ‘whispering my name’ is the gentle presence of Christ who is there, whether acknowledged or not, sharing each and every moment. The dark moments, the senseless moments, the Saturday places. But also coming ‘soft-footed’ and drawing close, at first ‘unawares’, but then ‘whispering’ my name, your name.

Whispering our name and in so doing reminding us of the resurrection, of that new and fuller life, set free from all the constraints.

However dark it might get, or it might be, may you know “while it is still dark” the crucified AND risen Lord entering that darkness and in love speaking your name. For he is risen – alleluia!

Easter Saturday

In her book, The Celtic Wheel of the Year, Tess Ward (ISBN 978 1 905047 95 6) offers prayers for each month and each day of the week. Her Saturday prayers for April speak of a God who goes ahead, who enters the 'nightmare landscape', who visits all places and there is no place not visited. One of her prayers therefore concludes: there is no place that you have not visited with your light of way-through. The imagery of her prayers were particularly powerful for me as I was using them at the time I was sitting with my father during his final days here.

I offer you this reflection:

In the nightmare landscape
when the darkness
hides the chink, the crack,
the seam, the glimmer of light
The dark place seems so dark
and hope is hard to maintain.
There seems no ending,
no escape.
The darkness pervades all.
Yet you have visited it
Your Friday and Saturday
were spent there.
The darkness did not overcome
your light.
In the nightmare landscape faith
draws from your Friday and Saturday,
And waits the glimmer of
Easter dawn.

(Photo of part of a sculpture entitled On The Bench by Mackenzie Thorpe)

Good Friday
Three images - a triptych

Poppy
Flower of sacrifice
of loss
of carnage
From death's dark soil
You wave
flag like
in your thousands
Bespeckled field
of blood
now silent
save the breeze
that stirs your heads
and curlew call
that sounds
a distant warning
nature's last post.

Good Friday Mole Catcher

                              Dark night's work is done
                              Black pelts hung up to dry
                              Spiked against the sky
                              What was your crime?

                              Wayside Calvary
                              Dark reminder for all to see
                              Repulsed we flee
                              What was your crime?

                              Innocent upon a tree
                              Hung up to die
                              Spiked against the sky
                              What was your crime?

                              Wayside Calvary
                              So enter another night
                              We await the light
                              In your death was mine.

Primrose

You herald spring's rising
While earth is still cold
You emerge strong green leafed
Yellow flower reflecting early sun
and warmth to come.

You take us from winter's death
to spring's new life
In our Easter gardens
You proclaim another Son
Risen with promise and
hope to come.

(C) Peter Barber