Quail’s eggs and an elderly St Peter. Where should I begin?
Things are upside down at the moment. You go into the supermarket and you can buy quails eggs - but you can’t buy hens eggs for love or money. On Tuesday I bought this ….. I had never even heard of …. before . A luxury pasta from the region of… Had you heard of it? In normal times it is the sort of thing I might experiment with once a year for a luxury dinner party. Now it is the only pasta on the shelf in Tescos. The world has been turned upside down. A few months ago supermarket workers were the lowest of the low - “we don’t want immigrants coming in to do unskilled work like that”. Now supermarket staff are key workers vital to the nation - while bankers sit at home furloughed. The world has been turned upside down.
Easter turns the world upside down. I don’t know about you, but in my experience dead people don’t normally walk out of the grave three days later! The message of Easter is one of celebration, hope and the world being turned upside down.
When I was 22 I was an intern at Christ Church Highbury. I was given a list of elderly members to visit. There was one lady who I had been visiting for a few months when she developed a brain tumour. Over the months as I visited her she went down and downhill. As the tumour swelled she lost movement in her body. She began to forget things. Eventually she slipped away. I was with her an hour or so before she died and back within a few hours of her having died. Her’s was the first funeral I ever took. A normal day in the life of a 22year old? Is that the sort of story you expect in an Easter sermon. Is that the sort of story you expect in an Easter day sermon? Hell, yeah!
In the year AD 44 James son of Zebedee was executed by King Herod Agrippa
In the year AD60 Andrew was crucified in the city of Patras in Greece
In the year AD 66, an elderly St Peter was one of a number of Christians executed on Nero. Witnesses tell us that he asked to be crucified upside down because he did not feel worthy to go the same way as his master.
In AD 72, Thomas was martyred in Chenai in India
In fact of the 11 Apostles, ten were executed for their faith
Is that the sort of story you expect in an Easter day sermon? Hell, yeah!
Four years ago I sat by my mum’s bedside on an upper floor UCLH hospital for her final hours. I held her hand, I prayed with her. I read to her. I read from that beautiful passage from the end of last battle
“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
And with my brother and me beside her Mum slipped peacefully away.
Is that the sort of story you expect in an Easter day sermon? Hell, yeah!
Why do I keep telling you these stories about death in the middle of our Easter Joy. Well lets go back to one of the first accounts of the resurrection. Matthew 28:1-10
28 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead,* and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’ 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’
This is a story of frightened, grief filled people, and God’s words to them are same as God’s words to broken frightened people throughout the bible - “Do not be afraid”
The world has been turned upside down. A dead man has walked out of his grave. The old order just doesn’t apply any more. When you want chicken’s eggs, you get quail’s eggs. When you want spaghetti you get ….. The world has been turned upside down, and most importantly, death is no longer the terrifying thing it once was.
The fact that all but one of the Apostles were martyred for their faith is often mentioned in sermons. It is one of the compelling pieces of evidence for the resurrection. All they had to do to avoid getting killed was to say they were mistaken. In Mormonism in the 19th century a band of new apostles claimed God had revealed to them the Book of Mormon descending on Gold plates. Later all but one of the original band said “Actually we made it up” and they were not even faced with the threat of death. In Christianity not one of the 11 apostles recanted, ten were murdered for it and one faced life imprisonment.
But forget for a moment that that is evidence that they were not lying when they said they had seen Jesus alive. What did it feel like to them? On the first Easter Day they were terrified, hiding, locking the door behind them. 40 days of seeing the risen Jesus again - and they were no longer scared. The biggest thing in life to be scared of - death- was no longer scary. If Jesus had walked out the grave alive, then they knew that there is something the other side of death. “Do not be afraid”
That’s why for me sitting beside the bed of that lady in Highbury, by the bedside of my mum four years ago - they weren’t scary things. They were beautiful things. Sad yes - but also full of hope!
We talk about “losing a loved one”. I can’t promise you that none of you will have a loved one die during this Covid 19 crisis. But I can promise you, you will not lose them. As the old hymn puts it - “I once was lost but now am found!”
In this Greek icon of the resurrection - As Jesus emerges from the tomb, he lifts Adam and Eve and all the dead out of Hades and into everlasting life.
The world has been turned upside down.
I end with some more words from CS Lewis - this time from "the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe". The White Witch has murdered the lion Aslan on the stone table. The next morning the children come to pay their respects to their dead friend.
At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise—a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant's plate.... The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
"Who's done it?" cried Susan. "What does it mean? Is it more magic?"
"Yes!" said a great voice from behind their backs. "It is more magic." They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
"Oh, Aslan!" cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad....
"But what does it all mean?" asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward. And now..."
“Oh yes? Now?” said Lucy, jumping up and clapping her hands.
“Oh children,” said the Lion, “I feel my strength coming back to me- catch me if you can”
