RISING FROM THE ASHES

A SERMON FOR EASTER SUNDAY

Of all the sermons of the year, I somehow find the Easter sermon the hardest to write.  The reason is purely psychological—somehow, in the midst of all the sorrowful meditations of Holy Week I have to come up with something that conveys the pinnacle of joy.  I have to forcibly switch mindsets from the horrors that surround the most terrible deeds of history, to write about the most glorious event of that history.

But that’s Easter, isn’t it!  It’s not like Christmas, where we anticipate the joy of the holiday through the whole of December, putting up decorations, lighting Christmas trees, planning gifts and parties for everyone.  We follow Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, with the anticipated joy of their soon-to-be-delivered baby, who will be the Saviour of the world.  But Easter, that’s a different kind of story altogether.  We start with Shrovetide, and the anticipation of the Lenten fast.  Ash Wednesday comes all too early and we’re reminded that we’re dust and unto dust we will return—not a happy thought, really, but one which is designed to motivate us as we launch out on the path of penance.  Now we’re following our Lord into the wilderness, with the prospect of a forty-day fast in front of us.  We eventually arrive at Palm Sunday, and we follow Christ into Jerusalem, singing with trepidation our Hosannas, as it hits us like a kick in the stomach that the last week of our Saviour’s life has begun, and that something most terrible is about to happen.  This year was more terrible than most when the very day after Palm Sunday, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris was horribly disfigured by a fire that came very close to reducing the structure to the same ashes that were placed on our foreheads just a few weeks earlier.  But the destruction of a building, no matter how venerable and hallowed, is as nothing compared with the murder of the Son of God.  We now reach the very depths of the liturgical year, those terrible three days of darkness, the Sacred Triduum on which our Creator suffered in far worse ways than any of us poor creatures ever will.  And he suffered because ofus poor creatures, that’s the worst part of it!

But then comes Holy Saturday, and from the absolute lowest point of all history, there is a flash of light in a distant tomb, and we gasp to catch our breath as our Saviour walks out of that tomb, transforming death into life, and all our sorrows into joy.  No theme park roller coaster can ever reproduce the rush of exhilaration we feel as we acknowledge that Christ is risen, and we force our lips at the Easter Vigil service to pronounce once again that forbidden word, Alleluia!

But from alleluia to alas!  For we human beings are so very shallow, are we not!  No sooner do we recover from the shock that the Lenten fast is over, the covers have come off the statues, and we’re back in white vestments, than it’s back to business as usual.  Sure, we offer our annual tributes to the Easter traditions, painting a few eggs with the kids, then hiding them, then looking for them, never actually eating them though. We might even go so far as making a leg of lamb for dinner.  But let’s face it, we didn’t find it any easier to get out of bed this morning than any other Sunday, we still have work tomorrow, and of course we’re still getting older, with more aches and pains every week.  On a far more serious level, our friends are still dying, a cathedral in France is still, and will be for a long time to come, a skeletal ruin of its former glory.  So really, at the end of it all, are we any better off than when we let the good times roll on Mardi Gras forty days and forty nights ago?

The answer, my friends, is staring us in the face, if only we would stop and think for a moment, and then acknowledge it in all its glory.  Christ is risen!  Risen from the tomb where he lay dead.  By his glorious Resurrection he has transformed death, conquered death!  He has transformed our despair into hope. Notre-Dame Cathedral will no doubt rise again from the ashes—they’ll rebuild the roof and the spire, clean up the stained glass, repair the organ.  But far more importantly, those friends of ours, those loved ones who await death from terminal cancer or heart disease or whatever, they too will rise from the ashes. And so, my friends, will you and I. When I placed those ashes on your forehead on Ash Wednesday, I told you to remember, man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.  But today on Easter Sunday, I tell you this:  Remember man, thou hast a soul, and though your body may return to dust, your soul shall live forever. 

Even that very dust of which you’re made, that too will one day rise again. For our faith tells us that we believe in the “resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come.  Amen.” This is how St. Paul describes that glorious day: “Behold, I tell you a mystery, says St. Paul; “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”By rising from the dead, our Lord and Saviour has shown us that death is not the end, death is not the victor over life.  When we die, it is not because we have failed to stay alive any longer.  “Death is swallowed up in victory!” says St. Paul, and the end of our lives is actually the beginning of something far greater.  

Our faith in the Resurrection, then, must transform our attitude towards the daily pains and grief we suffer into nothing more than the price we pay for our eternal reward.  Sure, Christ paid for these himself by his own sufferings and death, but let’s not forget he admonished us that we too must take up our cross if we would his disciples be.  It is not for us to sit back in our recliners, sip our gin and tonic, and smugly claim that “we’re saved”.  It is for us to join our Lord on our own path to Calvary, because it is in the Holy Cross we find there that we come to really understand why we must first die if we are ever to rise from the dead.  So let’s embrace that Holy Cross and exalt that it today stands empty!

From Christmas to Easter we have come full cycle.  “From the Virgin’s womb to an empty tomb.”  It has been a long and sometimes difficult journey, filled with joys and sorrows, much like our own journey from womb to tomb.  But it is a journey that, because of the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead, we now know is one that ends in glory.  “Thanks be to God,” says St. Paul, “which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”Listen now, and watch, as our Lord reveals to you this greatest of all mysteries, that no matter what sorrows await us in this vale of tears, we will one day rise again from the dead to join him in everlasting glory.  If we have followed him to Calvary, we will surely follow him to heaven.  This is our future, this is our destiny.  It remains for us to do our part.