An Easter - Not a Sermon But - a Cry

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs bestowing life!

Come, for forgiveness is risen from the grave!

Yes.

Yes, there are words of triumph here, which we can and should sing out with all possible Alleluias (sung and signed). But there are dangers - temptations, tests - here too. These dangers are here in all years, among them the danger that generous and life-giving triumph be reduced to narcissistic and life-limiting triumphalism. As if the resurrection accounts are all about Christ saying: "See, here is how you prove those who have the audacity to disagree with you wrong".

I feel that this year, the year of Covid19 and properly locked churches, this danger is posed in painfully sharpened form. If we do not take care, our triumph may simply be a theological or churchy version of Putting A Brave Face On It. It may be little more than our willing ourselves to scorn the virus - as if the virus cares if we scorn it or not.

The triumph of life, without any will to work ourselves up to triumphalism. This is possible. This is, as it goes, always truer (true) to the resurrection narratives themselves, which are - read them - all about a friend coming back to be with his friends, his typically treacherous friends. Without any game-playing, any ritual religious or psychological, he bids: "Come and have breakfast." So the overcoming of our fears, and all that is uglier even than fear, all that drives us to betrayal - these, our graves - are emptied out. Null. Void.

So this Easter Sunday evening ("Bright Sunday" in Orthodox terminology, although today is Orthodox Palm Sunday), I have a memory which has come unbidden (I do not say "out of nowhere"). It is this. Years - decades ago - I watched a documentary television programme on the reality of life on a "rough estate". (No viruses featured.) The programme hid nothing. (It was a late-night documentary.) It was hard to watch. And, then, at the end, to the credits, a child who had featured in the programme sang, solo and unaccompanied, the Taize chant, "O Lord, hear my prayer". I was stunned, There had been nothing formally religious or even spiritual in the programme itself. The editors presumably saw it as a way of sealing the deal on the viewer's empathy. The poor child! I was undone.

Today, I am undone.

I want to say that here is Easter. Easter doesn't turn death into a trivial move from this room to that. It doesn't take away our fear - I mean in the sense of the unpleasant gift of adrenaline to make us to act with urgency. It doesn't give Christians a banner to fly in the face of others, or their own doubts. Indeed, Easter doesn't magic away a single problem in our lives, personal or corporate.

The claim - the song, the alleluia - of Easter is rather that Gd promises that Gd hears our prayers. Gd honours our prayers. Gd attends to our prayers and tell us each of our pains (those imposed upon us by the powers, or personal cruelty and neglect, and those we are complicit in bringing upon ourselves, as the one so the other), will be transfigured, will enter into healing and glory. We will be able to bear our divinely graced beauty. We will be able to bear ourselves. We will get to have breakfast - en famille. And! And, as a foretaste of that, here is Gd praying with, alongside, in and for us, now. Lo, Jesus meets us, lovingly greets us.

Does the one writing this believe it? He knows himself to be typically treacherous. He also knows himself to be at root not able to throw away all hope that it is so. He is not so deluded as to deny when he is undone, and how good it is to be undone.

Risen one, hear my prayer.

Oh, and scorn - you scorn - this virus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f51n-yb11dY&fbclid=IwAR0yn62dRguO5vX7AMK0drwRuLPR35-yjyX48CPHxkQ4A3Mn3xD6J8YEZkg