The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

In a large public assembly hall in Moscow, a public lecture is being given by the Bolshevist Commissary for Popular Education. He is demonstrating to a large audience the obsolescence of Christianity.  This religion, he says, is a product of the capitalist classes for the oppression of the poor. It is completely irrational, and can easily be shown to be without any factual basis. The lecturer is very eloquent and the lecture seems to have gone down well. Feeling confident he invites discussion; anyone who wants to, can come up onto the platform, give his name and speak, though not for more than five minutes. A young priest – shy and awkward and clearly from a country parish – ascends the platform. The lecturer, feeling sure that such a man cannot pose any problems,  reminds him that he must only speak for five minutes; the priest assures him he wont need that long. He turns to the audience and says, ‘Brothers and sisters: Christ is risen!’ And with one voice the audience responds, ‘He is risen indeed’. The priest leaves the platform and the meeting is at once called to a halt.
I’m not quite sure why that story appeals to me so much. It speaks of course of a faith which cannot be suppressed. It demonstrates the putting down of the mighty and the exaltation of the humble and meek. It reveals the church as an Easter people – in whom Christ is risen. If parts of the Church of England feel like a persecuted minority at the moment they should, perhaps,  set those feelings against the perspective of what happened to the Orthodox church in the early years of the communist regime. Thousands of churches and monasteries were taken over by the government and either destroyed or converted to secular use. No new churches could be built. Orthodox priests and believers were variously tortured, sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals, or executed. And yet the Church survived.  The risen Christ lived on in the lives of faithful Russian Christians.
The young village priest in the Moscow assembly hall used the acclamation which we used at the start of this service. ‘Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.’ He did not seek to argue with the lecturer and try to prove him wrong. He used instead the power of a communal faith and tradition. He appealed to the experience of the audience who since their childhood would have attended the Easter services, joined in the Easter songs, given the Easter greeting to their family, their friends and  neighbours. In these ways they found at Easter a renewal of hope, an assurance of sins forgiven, a glimpse of joy and glory. In other words they would have known something of what  the disciples knew as the story of Christ rising unfolded on that first Easter morning.
In listening to Mary Magdalen’s part in that story this morning I wonder what goes through our minds? Do we picture for ourselves the rapid changes in her emotions? The desolation brought about by Jesus’ death, her anger that his body might have been removed, her puzzlement with this figure she takes to be a gardener, the joy of recognition, her need to prolong the encounter, the fear that she must take this unbelievable news to the disciples.
Or do we ask questions? Do we wonder why Mary Magdalen doesn’t recognise Jesus straight away? Do we want to know what resurrection involves? What sort of body does Jesus have or is this some kind of vision?
Or finally  do we approach this story wondering about its implications for us? Is this story the basis of our belief in a future resurrection for ourselves and those whom we have loved who have died?  Will we be raised as Jesus was raised to know a life outside time in the presence of God? Though we  cannot now comprehend such a life can we on the basis of this story approach death as a gateway to new life?
On Good Friday I asked what kind of community tells this kind of story – the story of Holy Week? The answer to that question for today is that we should be a community that enters emotionally and spiritually into the story; a community that is not afraid to ask hard questions of the story; and a community that can look death in the face with hope. And finally  we should be a community that is able to live the story in the present as that Orthodox community was living it in the lecture hall in Moscow.
If you come to church this morning having just heard some very bad news; if you come deeply worried about someone or struggling with a crisis in your own life; if you come with a passionate concern about particular issues in our world; if you come bearing the same old burdens that are always with you and which only seem to get heavier; the truth of the story we tell today must be true for your life too. Christ is risen today in your life. Christ is risen in you to be the strength you need, Christ is risen to be the power of prayer in you, to be the comfort and support you need from other people; Christ is risen to be in you the courage to do something that will make a difference.
When the Russian priest spoke to that audience, they responded with the words ‘Voistinu voscres’ which means not quite the same as our ‘He is risen indeed.’ It means, ‘He is truly risen’. And in speaking thus to the Commissar for Popular Education they were asserting the real, actual, eternal, truth of their faith. And even the arguments of a Commissar of Education cannot stand up to the faith of a people who believe in the Resurrection because Christ is risen in them and in their lives. Amen.