Easter Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

Christ the Morning Star by Fr Robert Gibbons painted 1982

March 31st 2024

Holy Pascha

We seem not to be in a good place these days, for our world is in a great and messy place, not least because of the instability brought about by politics, greed, and yes, climate change and our inability to actually pay attention to what is happening and do something about it all! It is interesting how we tacitly accept the need for change; agree to it, we yet remain fixed in our own selfish ways. I live in an Oxfordshire village where we agreed to change to a 20 mile an hour limit, and from my viewpoint, much needed for so many reasons. It has been in place for over a month, yet about half of all our village cars speed through at 40, even 50 miles and hour, as though this new ruling does not apply to them.

That's a type of problem within our society today, we claim to be individuals with needs and rights, but we seem unable to accept that we are also part of a larger whole, a community in which we also have obligations to others. Is there anything that can help us sort out our individual selfishness; well yes, if we think hard about Easter and it's meaning, we find that will and Christ can rescue not only from evil, but also from our worst selves!

The great liturgies of the Triduum are the story of one person, Jesus the Christ, facing the negative weight of human corruption in all its appalling mediocrity and winning a victory despite the overwhelming odds. It is not a fairy tale, but it is the triumph of life over death, of light of darkness, of faith, hope and love, over unbelief, despair and hatred. We see what he faced in the religious superiority and exclusiveness of the Sanhedrin and Levitical `priests. We glimpse the weakness of human personality in the cowardice and corruption of Pilate, and in the defeated and lost Judas (who I sympathise with) dismayed at finding that Jesus will not deliver the freedom he wants, nor crush the yoke of Roman occupation, and in his anger gets entangled in a bribery story. We find the lack of moral backbone in Peter and the disciples who flee from the mob, pretending they do not know Jesus at all. And yes, it is there in there in the story of those women going to the tomb, who were afraid, and in Mary of Magdala lost and grieving in the garden, needing and wanting Jesus as he was only to find he had changed. Apart from Jesus, and the figures of Mary and John at the foot of the cross there are no great heroes or heroines in the story of Holy Week, only human beings, found as we so often are, in that mixture of the best and worst in human nature, a picture that lays bare all of us in our natural fragility.

The gospels of the Vigil and of Easter Day and the great week that follows, bring us to the witness of that moment when fearful, damaged, lost and hopeless people find that something touches them, and they are changed, healed in ways they did not expect.

I do not struggle with these stories of the experience of meeting the Risen Jesus. It is true that for us he is a Jesus we cannot see in the same way as those who met him risen and glorious. And yet he is there, he is in all those moments of our lives when a window or door to somebody's heart and soul is really opened. We may doubt, but like Thomas we meet him in the sick and dying, the newborn child and the elderly relative at the end of their days. I have met him in friends and kindnesses of people who have helped me even if for a moment. The Emmaus Gospel is a favourite of my own for in those two disciples I see myself, on a journey undertaken piece by piece, hearing his words and having the scriptures explained to me as I walk on our road of faith. I have so often desired that my heart too be on fire with the words of Christ. But lets think about you but yourselves. On this night on this great day and in the great weeks that follow I pray you will discover Him speaking to you from your gospel.

In the great song of the Exultet the Easter Vigil we hear word Rejoice and then a great song of thanksgiving for the LIGHT that never sets, a light that burns in our world wherevers we come together in the Breaking of the Bread and in the prayers, whenever we love out the Beatitudes and in different ways wash the feet of others by our tears and love. I leave you with two extracts one from the Exsultet and one from Bede the Venerable, they are my prayer for you all this Easter:

May this flame be found still burning
by the Morning Star:
the one Morning Star who never sets,
Christ your Son,
who, coming back from death's domain,
has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

R. Amen.

May Bede's prayer be a blessing on us all:

O Christ, our Morning Star,
Splendour of Light Eternal,
shining with the glory of the rainbow,
come and waken us
from the greyness of our apathy,
and renew in us your gift of hope.

Amen.