An Easter message from the interim Dean, the Very Rev'd Paul Kennington
More, not less.
One of the best Easter sermons I have ever heard was preached by Rhonda Waters, then a curate in Montreal. She apologised to a packed cathedral on Easter morning, saying that if they had come looking for Jesus they were going to be disappointed, because ‘He is not here. He is risen’.
There is a temptation to keep ‘our’ Jesus in the same place or manner that we encounter him on our own personal faith journey. We hold onto our experience as the definitive one. Christians tend to build churches or worship styles there, and there is always the danger of rolling a large metaphorical stone across the door so that Jesus doesn’t escape and appear to other people in ways we don’t like. It is so easy to become Christian gatekeepers, locking Jesus in and keeping people out.
But the Risen Christ is infinitely and more gloriously expansive and will not be held. He possesses us, we do not possess him. He even descended to preach to the dead, for goodness sake, in a place which the BCP Apostles Creed calls ‘Hell’.
So there really is no place in heaven, on earth or under the earth, where the Risen Christ, the divine, creating and redeeming Logos, is not found. Our task is to know and love Jesus so very well through prayer and worship, sacrament, study and service that we are able to recognise him more and more in many places and in many people’s lives, and then our witness is to help them see what we see.
Have a very Happy Easter,
Paul