All our readings today are about what Paul calls giving life to our mortal bodies; they are a preparation for Easter Day. John takes pains to preface the farewell discourses which he ascribes to Jesus with the long story of the raising of Lazarus, so that the whole of the ensuing Passion narrative may be viewed in the light of resurrection. We are mistaken if we try to follow the story of the next two weeks on a linear basis, pretending that we do not know what is going to happen next. We must not ignore the fact that Jesus is the Lord of Life. It is because he is the Lord of Life that his sacrificial death is so momentous, but his death is only one episode in a single manifestation of himself which ends with the ascension of a living being into heaven. So today, as we begin our preparation for Holy Week, the Church gives us readings which enjoin us to shape our expectations, and with them our meditations, in the light of the resurrection. John regularly speaks of the Cross as a triumph; we cannot see it in this light if on Good Friday we refuse to look up to the radiance streaming from the Empty Tomb. We shall miss much of the significance of the Passion if we fail to accept that it is the Son of God who is suffering. For instance, I have always felt that it is a significant defect in eighteenth-century Lutheran piety that Bach?s great S Matthew Passion ends with the death of Jesus and ignores the resurrection. The final chorus talks of tears; it is only the exquisite tenderness and elaborate construction of the music that bring hope. (The S John Passion we are to hear next Sunday ends with a resurrection chorale.) But for many centuries Holy Week has been an occasion for unrelieved self-inflicted gloom. A Stabat Mater is no less melancholy than the Matthew Passion. Indeed, the Catholic tradition of displaying Christ?s body on the crucifix continually emphasizes his death at the expense of the teaching that he is risen. In saying this, I do not want to reduce the message of Christ?s death and suffering; I simply want to set it in the consoling framework of his resurrection which is often underemphasized at this time. We obscure the true character of the Christian message by emphasizing the misery rather than the joy.
But, you may
say, even Jesus was upset and wept at the tears of Mary and the professional mourners! I can recall devoting a whole sermon to the scholars? idea that what really upset Jesus was their failure to understand the true nature of death, and that the whole story is intended to show that in Lazarus?s death, for example, there was nothing to be distressed about. This idea is founded on the view that the meaning of the Aramaic original of the word translated ?deeply moved? is not that Jesus was sad but that he was angry. It is easy to misunderstand what the Gospel tells us and to get the proportions of the story wrong.
It is equally easy to misunderstand the Church. Our Eucharist this morning is a meal in which we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord. I fear that far too often we speak and think as if we are just reliving the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, when that Body was broken and that Blood was shed. This is because that is how Cranmer saw it, in accordance with the popular medieval Roman teaching in which he had been brought up; his Eucharistic prayer says: ? . . . grant that we receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Saviour Christ?s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood?. It is the image of the dead Christ on the crucifix again. In contrast, the Eucharistic Prayers in Common Worship are careful to stress that Jesus is the living Word whom God raised from the dead and exalted to his right hand on high. In some of the prayers the congregation is invited to declare that ?Christ has died?, yes, but also ?Christ is risen: Christ will come again?. ?We proclaim his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension? and unlike the Prayer-Book, the whole tone is that of a thanksgiving, which is what the word Eucharist means, and which reflects the joy of the early church before the medieval miasma of misery descended upon it. The Western Church is still very much under the influence of that misery. I do not suggest that we have yet achieved the joy again, but at least now we have got the words right.
?I am the resurrection and the life?. Insofar as Jesus is describing his own essence, I imagine nearly all of us believe this; we would hardly bother to come to church otherwise. Insofar as he is describing what he offers us, perhaps some of us are shy of the details. Myself, I am confident of living after death, but that does not mean that I believe all that sloppy hymns say on the topic. Equal, or perhaps more important, is the promise of life now. It seems to me a grave error, in a literal sense, to spend the few years we have here worrying about life after death. What Jesus is offering is life today. We should take him at his word, and grasp the opportunities for living in greater contentment that he opens up for us in the Eucharist. These are different for each individual; God did not make us all the same. But what is important is to recognize that Jesus came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly.
I am not keen on the image of Lent as a time when we give things up and thus narrow our life down; Lent should inspire us to do more, not less. Above all, it should not be a time of mourning, but of thanksgiving, not a time of self-regarding tears, but of response, not a time to concentrate exclusively on the dying Christ, but a time to join in communion with the Christ who was born, suffered, died, rose again, ascended, and is present in our worship, here and now, as the Lord who said: ?I am the resurrection and the life.? Amen
Alan Goodison