12.04.2020
An Easter Like No Other – Easter Day Sermon of the Archbishop of Dublin
Archbishop Michael Jackson, presided at a very different Easter Day Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral this morning, Sunday April 12, 2020. Joined by Dean Dermot Dunne and the Revd Abigail Sines but with no choir or congregation, the service was broadcast live on the cathedral’s webcam at 11am this morning.
In his sermon the Archbishop urged the virtual congregation to take their bearings, in this time of Covid–19, from Mary and Jesus during their encounter early on Easter morning. The Risen Jesus meets Mary in her grief and calls her by her name.
“We have the opportunity together – to keep forming a new community of response to a danger that faces everyone and confronts the vulnerable and the forgotten, those who can all too easily disappear from our personal landscape as our discourse becomes more aggressive in an environment of terror. Whoever we are, we can take our bearings from the encounter of Mary and Jesus: recognizing other people, remembering their names, not brushing them aside, treating them as we should like to be treated, going the extra mile for and with people who are totally lost in this new–look society,” he said.
The Archbishop continued: “Let us commit ourselves to bringing and holding together common courtesies and bare necessities. Let us share a gladness of life at its most personal; living at its simplest and at its most direct in a time when self–isolation has had to become the new gregariousness, when living together has had to become living apart. Let us also remember the words towards the end of St Matthew’s Gospel:
… when I was hungry, you gave me food; when I was a stranger, you took me into your home; when naked, you clothed me; when I was ill, you came to my help; when in prison you visited me. (St Matthew 25.35, 36)
Are not these the hallmarks of the COVID 19 family on Easter Day 2020?”
The full text of Archbishop Jackson’s sermon is below:
Short Reflection for Sunday 12th April 2020 Easter Day
Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
Archbishop Michael Jackson
Reading: St John 20.1–18
St John 20.16: Jesus said to her, Mariam! She turned and said to him, Rabbouni!
EASTER DAY AND SOMBRE HOPE
The Gospel for Easter Day captures something of our sombre hope today. While Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and while this is and remains our central focus, we gather to worship in the shadows, more than in the bright light, of a new dawn. The dark cloud of the coronavirus meets us every morning. Our fears do not fade. Our fears grow longer. And how could they do otherwise? We are involved in a race against time within time itself. We are met every day by a disease for which you or I, or indeed anyone else, has neither cure nor vaccination right across a very untidy world whose peace, at the best of times, is an uneasy truce. It is a global pandemic. None of us has been here before. No Easter has been quite like this. The cry of hope I continue to utter is also a cry of lament; it is the same cry I uttered some weeks back. It is from Isaiah 40.1 and 2:
Comfort my people; bring comfort to them, says your God; speak kindly to Jerusalem …
It is in Jerusalem that we meet Scripturally this morning. It is in Jerusalem that we have been Scripturally throughout Holy Week from the early days of the now tattered and dismembered Triumphal Entry.
A DAY OF GLADNESS
I offer you all, wherever you may be as you listen, The Easter Greeting, a Greeting of gladness, a Greeting that will uplift us daily between Easter and Pentecost:
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Today is a day of gladness. Gladness itself is a generous word and a kind word. It carries an innocence and a warmth deep within it. It is a word that is no longer sufficiently effervescent for our superlative world. But our superlative world no longer exists. Like the Triumphal Entry, it too is tattered and dismembered. We are already realizing that we have to start again all over again, and start again with kindness. I suggest that many of us would now be delighted to be able to be glad. The greedy spikes of COVID 19, the psychedelic conker that has fallen from the tree of viral contagion and infection, mean that sooner or sooner we all know someone affected by the virus and we are drawn into their story. Many of us too have had our own brush with it. The Garden of Resurrection tells its own story today and, thank God, it is a story where we learn gladness. It is a place where teacher and pupil are reconnected. It is the place where preparation for the new world unfolding begins in a gladness burgeoning from grief.
The Garden is quite a crowded place early on Easter Morning. Mary comes to the tomb and she finds the stone removed. Mary goes to tell Simon and John this story. They come and they go. Mary remains and then she meets someone she assumes to be the Gardener but who, in fact, is the Teacher and the Lord. There is as much ignorance as there is insight. You and I are not alone in not ‘getting’ the resurrection straight off. Throughout the Season of Easter, we all have more than one chance to learn the new ways of faith.
TRANSFORMING RECOGNITION
One thing we can all take away from this Gospel Reading, whatever we bring to it in terms of expectation or belief, is the power that recognition has to transform. At the end of the running to and fro, the going here and there, Mary stays behind weeping. The Risen Lord meets her in her grief and uses her name in addressing her directly. This recognition of her by him brings her back to the old days. Yet this is not where the Risen Lord wants to bring her. He wants to bring her forward. She calls him by a name she would have used in the days before The Crucifixion: Teacher. He leads her into the new world by telling her that everything is now different, he is now different; she cannot touch him; he has more work to do and it is called ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. The great thing for us to see, and the true message of hope in this Gospel for Easter Day, is that The Risen Lord continues as The Teacher in a new guise. He continues to teach his disciple Mary in the new world. She then goes to teach the other disciples. The relationship is restored but it now has a quite different content and a different direction. It is about living the life of resurrection here on earth in the confidence that my Father is your Father, my God is your God.
This is the great gift of Easter and this is its enduring quality. Death has no sting. Grave has no victory. Resurrection connects crucifixion and ascension. Resurrection ushers in Pentecost. In these times of fear and grief, we are being prepared by Mary for the reality of God in our midst and in our lives as Risen Lord and Present Spirit.
COVID 19
We stand worldwide at the heart of an international public health crisis. Many people lie ill and dying. Thousands have died already. Those of us who are up and about ought to be thankful that the sun has risen on our lives today. We feel powerless. We are not. We have the opportunity together – to keep forming a new community of response to a danger that faces everyone and confronts the vulnerable and the forgotten, those who can all too easily disappear from our personal landscape as our discourse becomes more aggressive in an environment of terror. Whoever we are, we can take our bearings from the encounter of Mary and Jesus: recognizing other people, remembering their names, not brushing them aside, treating them as we should like to be treated, going the extra mile for and with people who are totally lost in this new–look society. Let us commit ourselves to bringing and holding together common courtesies and bare necessities. Let us share a gladness of life at its most personal; living at its simplest and at its most direct in a time when self–isolation has had to become the new gregariousness, when living together has had to become living apart. Let us also remember the words towards the end of St Matthew’s Gospel:
… when I was hungry, you gave me food; when I was a stranger, you took me into your home; when naked, you clothed me; when I was ill, you came to my help; when in prison you visited me. (St Matthew 25.35, 36)
Are not these the hallmarks of the COVID 19 family on Easter Day 2020?