Sermon at Portsmouth Cathedral's Easter Eucharist

John 20:1-10

When I was a student, I used to go and spend the occasional week-end with an old priest who was a bit of a character. In a large Victorian kitchen, we would trade friendly insults with each other, and I would listen to his many – often hilarious – stories. To all who got to know him well, he conveyed a deep faith, which was laced with a strong streak of scepticism – especially about the ‘latest’ fashionable view on anything.

On one occasion, he was talking about what it was like being a chaplain in the trenches during the First World War: ‘When suffering’, he said. ‘loses its dignity, all you can do is hand it over to God.’ On another occasion, he told me of a tradition about St John the Evangelist. As a very old man he was taken into a gathering of Christians, where he was asked to give a sermon – always a risky business with any cleric. Confused about his surroundings, he apparently came out with just three words – ‘Love one another.’

In the long-list of pieces of baggage that I could bring with me to the Tomb of Christ this Easter morning, these two stories come out on top. On the one hand, a warning about not ignoring the reality of suffering and death, and how they can still both be redeemed in the most awful circumstances; on the other hand, the command emphasised in John’s gospel, that we should love one another, the hall mark of the Easter community. Both stand up well in front of the empty tomb, yet both require unpacking and digestion.

That is exactly why we have an Easter Day every year. The risen Christ is not something that we get to ‘do’ once and for all, like ticking a theological box, and needing to get on to the next stage, preferably as quickly as possible, because our lives are so busy and hectic. The Easter message is so central to our human nature before God that the world will take all time to unpack it and digest it; that may explain why John’s gospel ends by saying that if every one of Jesus’ words and deeds  were to be written down, the world itself would not be able to contain the books that would be needed.   Just look at this morning’s gospel-scene for evidence of that unpacking and digesting process. Peter and John go the tomb, the younger John running faster than the older Peter, and they see the same scene – embalming cloths but no body – yet they don’t cotton on to what has happened. The resurrection isn’t doled out to them once and for all. Each of them behaves in character at the tomb, impulsive Peter in a hurry, reflective John holding back. All they can do as a result is to go off home – and miss the next episode, where Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, who had been there already in the pre-dawn darkness. Jesus’ top male brass are in such a dither they have to wait for help from others.

And that is what is always going to be the case. Our struggles with suffering and death, and our piffling attempts to try to love one another – whether as families, groups, nations, international economies – continue to baffle us into a dither of superficial answers, or of broken promises and strained relationships.

No wonder, then, that many people reject Christianity – and often for two main reasons. The easy reason is the sheer, crass humanity of the Church, with our genius for wasting time and energy on matters of no lasting importance. The more difficult one is that our faith might really be about the possibility of suffering transformed, and love transcending difference and conflict. Yes, there are other answers to these dilemmas, and many of us have tried them. But I keep coming back to the all too human Church, the community Jesus began to found that first Easter morning.

What gives me added hope is that he did so on such improbable foundations: in Mary Magdalene, a marginalised figure now made centre stage, and then in Peter and John, who had been really close to Jesus, and who ought perhaps to have grasped the message well ahead of her. There at that tomb, and here in this community, I can take all my baggage each year, where my questions may not all be answered, but my faith – our faith - can indeed be nourished and sustained.

+ Kenneth Portsmouth