Of his own will, he brought us to birth, by the word
of truth;
that we should be a kind of first-fruits of all his
creation.
James 1.18
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Welcome, happy morning! age to age shall
say;
Hell today is vanquished! Heaven is won
today!
Earth today confesses, clothing her for
spring,
All good gifts return with her returning
King;
Bloom in every meadow, leaves on every bough,
Speak his sorrows ended, hail his triumph
now.
So sang Fortunatus, the great sixth-century Latin
hymnographer, linking the feast of Jesus’ Resurrection with the glory of
nature’s resurgent springtime. And that is a connection which we, today,
(on this favoured island and in this gloriously decorated church) can hardly
fail to make. Open, then, the eyes of mind and heart, look and see. Look,
and see, and understand. This is no idle demonstration: here and all about
you is nature’s parable of Jesus’ Resurrection, and nature’s parable of our
own new and risen life.
Springtime is the season of new life, after the dormancy
and death of winter. A sleeping world awakens, and rises up with new
vitality. And the Church’s Eastertide is the springtime of the spirit, the
rising up from the icy grip of death, to the vibrant warmth and light of
Resurrection. “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light.”
In the cycle of nature’s seasons, this is the time when
we begin to plant our seeds. We bury them, deep down in the darkness,
underground, where the new and tender shoots, nourished by sun and rain,
will break through the rotting husks, and reach upward, to spread fresh
leaves and blossoms in the light of day. That is nature’s pattern of death
and resurrection. Nature awakens to newness of life.
In all of this – in “all this juice and all this joy”,
the poet Hopkins call it – in all of this the scriptures teach us to read
nature’s parable of Easter. “Unless a seed fall to the ground and die,”
says Jesus, “it abideth alone” – useless, unfruitful – “but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit.” And St. Paul, in I Corinthians, expands upon
that same parable: “That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which
shall be, but bare grain; it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed its own
body.”
Nature passes from death to life, in a travail of
rebirth, dying, and rising to life again. It is a miracle, no doubt; it is
the gift of God; but it is nevertheless, at the same time, labour and a
struggle. New birth is always a struggle, always a labour. T.S. Eliot, in
a spending line – now almost hackneyed, I’m afraid, says, “April is the
cruellest month, breeding lilacs from the dead land”, and that thought too
has its place in our parable. No new life, says Jesus, without the pains of
travail. No Easter without Good Friday. So it was, so it is, and so it
must be with our new life in Christ.
It is the gift of God; it is a miracle, yet it is not
without the pains of travail. There must be a dying, a painful sloughing
off of an old nature – a rotting husk; the old nature “which is corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts” – there must be a dying to old attitudes,
old habits, old perspectives, and a putting on of a new nature, “which after
God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
Holy Baptism is the sign and means and pledge of that new
birth in us. We are baptised into the death of Christ, that we might share
his resurrection. The seed of Christ’s risen life is sown in us. But that
miracle of birth is only a beginning, just a starting point. There must be
nutriment and training, a constant seeking of “those things which are
above”. There must be a shaping, a molding, and a pruning – often arduous
and painful – of our affections and unruly wills, that “our hearts may
surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.” “Yea, I die daily,”
says St. Paul, “I live, yet not I, but Christ in me.”
There must be a conforming of our minds and hearts to the
infinite and everlasting charity of God, shown to us in the dying of our
Saviour. “Be not conformed to this present age,” says St. Paul – do not be
conformed to its standards and its attitudes, its principles and
expectations – “but be ye transformed, by the renewing of your mind” as
newborn babes…
Easter is transformation: a transformation far beyond
imagining. “That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall
be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat of or some other grain; but God
giveth it a body as it hath pleased him.” The manner of God’s life-giving
transformation is beyond all explanation, and we know not what we shall be,
but we shall see our Saviour as he is, and we shall be like him. “Thomas
saith unto him, Lord…” God hath established resurrection in Christ, and
what is Christ’s, finally and everlastingly belong to those who are his, for
we are sons of God, by grace, and heirs of life eternal.
“See, beloved, see what manner of love the Father hath
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the Sons of God. And so we
are.” And we look for the fulfillment of our sonship. “For our citizenship
is in heaven, from which we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:
who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his
glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all
things to himself.” (Philippians 3.20-21)
The Easter transformation is beyond all explanation,
beyond imagining; but, even here, the parable of nature would instruct us
with a hint. As Dante puts it, in the Paradiso,
I have seen the briar, a prickly thing
All winter through;
And on its tip, a rose at close of
spring.
One final point: In the Gospel lesson for this morning’s
service, we have the story of St. Mary Magdalene, with St. Peter and St.
John, at the sepulchre of Jesus, bewildered because they could not find his
body. The disciples went back home, but many stayed there weeping. And
there she saw the Risen Lord, and in the blindness of her tears mistook him
for the gardener. But, you know, there is something strange and wonderful
about Mary Magdalene’s mistake. She thought he was the gardener. And sure,
in a higher and deeper sense, that is precisely what he is: he is the
gardener who sows the seed of new and risen life, deep down within the
darkness of our hearts, who shapes and tends and nourishes that life in us
with the word of truth, with the everlasting charity of his own body broken
and his own blood outpoured, to raise up soul and body unto life eternal.
Mary would cling to the earthly form of Jesus; but he
said no, “do not hold me”. Do not cling to earthly things. Rather,
rise up, spring up, seek in faith your risen and ascended life in God, the
everlasting life which is yours in Jesus Christ. Let nothing hold you
back. Death is conquered! Man is free! Christ hath won the victory!
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