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Worcester College 2^nd June 2013

Mark 3: 7-19

 

Thank you for the invitation to be here this evening.  It’s a real joy to be able to come into this beautiful chapel and to hear such wonderful singing.  It’s something we don’t really get in my little country parishes but, having worked in Durham Cathedral some years ago, it’s something I really miss.  So thank you.

When I was at Durham we used to view visiting preachers as something of a mixed blessing.  It may be that you are the same and wondering just what the experience of the next few minutes is going to be like.  You might have pricked your ears at the mention of a few minutes – clearly he at least thinks that he isn’t going to be talking for too long.  That’s encouraging.  On the down side II have to tell you that a parishioner brought be a little present last Christmas.  It was a book – called ‘101 things to do during a boring sermon.’  Many of those who came to the Cathedral obviously came with the view that they needed to preach the best sermon of their life – the trouble was that they tended to preach three sermons in one slot!  So, with that in mind, I will try not to take up too much of your time and will endeavour to say something of some interest.

I have to say when I took a first look at the readings for this evening that I wondered whether that was going to be possible.  Cain’s murder of Abel and the ensuing consequences didn’t seem to me to provide the sort of material needed to say something encouraging.  It’s all a bit hopeless.  Cain killed his brother out of jealousy – killed him simply because his offering was found to be more acceptable by God.  There was a bit of denial – ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ – before the realisation that what he had done was wrong and wad going, in today’s terms, to attract a life-long tariff.  There was to be no end to his punishment for as long as he lived.

It’s a really depressing story – but it’s one which continues to be reflected in today’s society.  There are those who, for whatever reason seem to believe that they have the right to take another life.  We only have to watch the news or to read the papers to see that is true.  Whether it be the death of April Jones, or Lee Rigby, or Georgia Williams or any of the countless victims who never make it into the media there is, for many of us, a sense of shock and revulsion, helplessness and even numbness.

But it isn’t just the violence that we see against individuals which must give us pause for thought.  I don’t want to rehearse the politics of Afghanistan or Syria – I don’t see much point in trying to work out who is at fault because all I know is that day after day people are suffering loss – whether of life, of home, of livelihood or of loved ones.  Their blood cries out from the land every bit as much as Abel’s did.

And if our first reading doesn’t help us to find some encouragement then what about the second?  One the face of things it’s a bit bland.  Jesus performing some more healing miracles and being ready to get into a boat followed by what feels a bit like the calling of a register at school – the names of the twelve whom he appointed as apostles.

I was lucky enough to be born and grow up in a place called Alnwick up in Northumberland.  Around ten years ago it was voted as the best place to live in England.  It’s a market town and the home of the Dukes of Northumberland in their splendid castle.  The people are friendly and there certainly used to be a whole range of independent shops selling pretty well everything you might need.  The local butchers full of beautifully reared meat and game.  Fish from the coast five miles away.  Tea rooms, tourist shops, pubs and restaurants and even a toy shop to rival anything outside Hamleys.

And we had all sorts of choices about where we might like to go.  The beaches of the Northumbrian coast are gorgeous – mile upon mile of golden sand raking back from the into sand dunes where young boys and girls can play for hour after hour.  Or out into the wild beauty of the west of the County – rolling hills and the history of Roman occupation and the Roman Wall.  Or up into the border country – or to Lindisfarne, seat of Christianity and home in days gone by of Aidan and Cuthbert, two of the great northern saints.  Or up into the Cheviots, the hills that stand at the northern end of the Pennine way.  The town is a lovely place – but the area in which it is set is even better.

And so there’s a part of me that feels that I fully understand why Jesus would want to take himself off up a mountain and call those who were close to him to be with him.  It had been a long day with people clamouring for his attention.  Why wouldn’t you want to enjoy the beauty of their surroundings and take a little time to rest and relax – to recharge batteries?

But then, if you look a little closer you’ll realise that’s not right.  If you look closely, you don’t see a group of men relaxing at the end of a day – you are far more likely to see them engaged in earnest conversation.  Jesus might be doing most of the speaking with the apostles asking the odd question.  What we are witnessing is not something ordinary – we are witnessing the start of something truly extraordinary – something which is going to turn the old order of things on its head.

As we heard, there were those who had seen Jesus in action who were beginning to realise his significance – to understand who he was – the Son of God.  That isn’t news that he is ready to be heard widely because both the Jewish and Roman authorities weren’t likely to react well.  And as the Son of God gathered around those who were closest to him, it is no coincidence that they were twelve in number – corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel.  What is very clear in the symbolism of what we see is that Jesus isn’t simply here to heal – he is here to bring about a restoration at every level and he goes up the mountain with his disciples to shape the movement that is about to launch.  It will challenge society at every possible level and will herald a new relationship between God and His people. 

What we see in our two readings are, if you like, the two extremes, the highs and the lows – the worst of what has been and the best of what can be.

In a very real sense it is for us to play our part in making possible the best of what can be.  It is for us to play our part in dismantling the barriers which cause so many of our troubles – whether between people of different race, or different religion, different sexuality or even different gender.

Last summer the Olympic Torch relay came through the village that I live in and we decided at church that it would be good to offer tea and cakes to those who came along.  Initially we thought it would be a good fund raiser but one member of the congregation challenged us with the idea that this was, perhaps, an occasion when it would be better simply to offer hospitality – in other words, rather than selling tea and cakes we should simply give them away.

It seems like such a small thing but I was struck by the reaction of many who came along – struck by the massively positive reaction of the majority to a simple bit of hospitality freely offered.  And with that simple thought it seems to me that we glimpse a way towards achieving the best of what can be.  A spirit of giving, a spirit of hospitality, will play a huge part in bringing people together and breaking down the barriers. 

And isn’t that what we all hope for?

“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine…But…we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ”

 When I was a child I thought as a child. Specifically, when I was about 9 years old I went through a phase of refusing to wear any clothes that weren’t either white or black.

 Now that I’m an Anglo catholic priest of course I have left childish things behind me, but at the time my sartorial choices were strongly influenced by a desire to emulate Han Solo – the hero in my opinion – of the Star Wars films, although in truth I also very much wanted to be a Jedi Knight, like Luke Skywalker, the official blue-eyed boy of George Lucas (soon to be extended) Sci-Fi series.

 And the Jedi bit was trickier to pull off. Not having any diminutive Jedi masters at my disposal, my training in the ways of the Force consisted of blindfolding myself and, using one of my Dad’s golf putters as a ‘lightsabre’, hurling a tiny rubber ball against my bedroom wall, and trying to deflect it by ‘reaching out with my feelings’, whilst it hurtled unerringly towards where my dressing gown offered scant protection to my feelingest reaching out parts. 

 Fortunately, it wasn’t just the swordsmanship that appealed. After all, who wouldn’t want to be able to levitate, or have Jedi Mind Control at their disposal, but, I think it was the combination of chivalry and spirituality that really fired my lasers. If there had been a Shaolin Monastery in Southport-on-Sea (they were the only actual Warrior-Monks I’d ever heard of), I would have shaved my head and signed up on the spot.

 Even so, as I say, these weren’t straightforward fantasies – it was still Han with his wisecracking worldliness that I admired most, not the airy-er, fairy-er, Luke, for all his latent Jedi tendencies. It was a confusing time. It’s a miracle I turned out to be so stable…

 What I needed in those days, of course, was Han’s ability to realise that life isn’t always black and white, and Luke’s ability to recognise that clothes needn’t be either. But in truth, thinking in excessively black and white terms isn’t reserved to 9 year-old Star Wars fans. It is something human beings are always strongly disposed to doing, and transcending those categories can be even more demanding than the Jedi ability to defy gravity.

 Which brings us to the story of another sky walker, to the Ascension, and to the numerous challenges it presents.

 At first glance we might be tempted to dismiss the details of Luke’s accounts – in our Gospel tonight – and at the beginning of Acts – as the stuff of childish thinking. Heaven isn’t in the sky, and ideas of Jesus making his way up into the clouds seem more like Jack & the Beanstalk or the Indian Rope Trick than grown up religion. But the Ascension, like the whole story of the man Christ Jesus, is one that deliberately defies black and white thinking.

 Above all, the Ascension, and the ensuing outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, completes the work of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of our Lord, in undermining the black and white divisions between heaven and earth, between humankind and the Divine. And it does so by adopting, and subverting, our most basic religious vocabularies. 

 Of course a god, or a deified human would rise into the sky – after all in nearly every culture, the earliest gods worshipped, have been variants of a sky god – as though people looked up at the roof of the sky, saw light coming through it, and jumped to the obvious conclusion: that somebody must be home.

 Indeed, a great many of our more sophisticated expressions of worship have maintained something of a fixation with height. We’ve built towers or totem poles; our Holy men have gone up mountains or our gods frequented them, and our angels or messengers had wings and come down from on high. And at the same time our fear of crumbling back into the earth, has made soaring into the air a basic human aspiration. So, naturally, our heroes from Etana to Superman are skywalkers.

 But whilst the Judeo-Christian tradition is not less, but more keen to emphasise the otherness of God, his exalted status as set apart from his creation – the Ascension is neither about a rare individual attaining the status of the divine, nor a divinity returning home after a brief visit to the shop floor; any more than the resurrection is about a hero entering the underworld to rescue some treasure from its clutches, and return triumphant.

 We have such stories, but they only serve to reinforce the distinctions between high and low, life and death, sacred and secular, and to buttress the human hierarchies that arise from those ideas.

  No, this story is about the separating veil between the celestial and terrestrial being torn apart, about the beginning of a process that will see death destroyed, the heavenly city descend, the most high god make his permanent dwelling in the midst of his creation, and humanity itself bodily taken up into the eternal godhead.

 Just as the Incarnation saw the Divine and the human joined inseparably in the person of the man Christ Jesus, so the Ascension marks the beginning of humankind being taken into God through his dying and rising again. Just as the resurrection opened the grave, so the ascension opens heaven, not only for the Risen and Ascended One, but for all who are become part of his risen and ascended life – as inseparably, Paul says, as a body is part of the life of its head…

 There have been a great many mythologies and philosophies which have grown up out of the foundation stages of human thinking – that inevitable tendency to categorise, and divide this from that, out from in, white from black; there have been no shortage of sages calling for a blurring of those boundaries, no shortage of heroes transgressing them, or prophets refining them, but the Ascension reveals the possibility of finally uniting those things that we have had to hold separate, and transcending those categories our nature requires us to create.

 It calls us not simply to grow up in our thinking, but to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, the one in whom God is reconciling all things to himself. It calls us to live even now lives that defy the old distinctions – the eternal life of heaven itself, in the down to earth realities of the here and now.

 When I was in my black and white phase, I was unwittingly enacting a very old idea – one deliberately woven into the Star Wars story in its homage (witting or otherwise) to the Ascension – by trying to put on the clothes of my hero…

 In the first film the young Skywalker’s mentor mysteriously disappears leaving only his cowled Jedi cloak behind, and several films later, we see Luke wearing just such a cloak, having literally taking up his master’s mantle.

 The writer of the screenplay, just like the writer of our Gospel, no doubt had somewhere in mind – Elijah’s ascent to heaven, the passing on of his cloak to his young apprentice Elisha – which gave us the phrase that, as it happens, has filled our papers in recent weeks.

 “Moyes takes on the Masters Mantle.” “The Mantle passes to a new Pope…a new Archbishop…”

 We refer to Elijah’s Ascension more frequently than anyone might reasonably expect, but, in so doing, we remind ourselves of the core message of our Lord’s Ascension also.

 That where he goes we are to follow.

 That the whole reason for his going is precisely our following, not simply to demonstrate his exalted status, but to pave the way for ours. That in his going we are called to take on his mantle, we are ‘clothed with power from on high’ to take up his mission, to live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

 And we are challenged, not to look up into the sky, but to grow up, together, into the likeness of the One who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things

 Finally, corporately, to be conformed to the image of the one who is above all, and through all and in all.

 “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine…But…we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

 

 

University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford – Three Choirs Festival Service (Britten’s God) 1 May 2013

 

Tiny and apparently simple, but perfect.  Composed in a few hours in the sick bay during his last school term at Gresham’s, the 16 year old Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin – as you heard it just before the Gospel reading – is a jewel.  It may well have had more performances than almost any other Britten piece, but because most of these have been at church and carol services they largely escape the official tally.  As John Bridcut the filmmaker and author of an excellent companion to the composer says, ‘New Britten listeners can start here – but it still works wonders for old hands too.’

 

And it’s that reason that points us immediately to why we’re celebrating Britten particularly this evening in this musical feast.  It’s not only that he was born 100 years ago – there’s plenty of recognition of his centenary in concert and festival programmes throughout the year – it’s also because his creative gifts continue to intrigue, delight and inspire performers and listeners alike.  As I stand in this pulpit tonight, having heard that sequence of Britten anthems sung by our three excellent college choirs, my mind goes back to when I preached a few years ago at the Aldeburgh Festival in the parish church renowned for its John Piper memorial window to Britten and where the composer is buried.  I confessed to an extraordinary sense of marvel on that occasion – and I do so again!  ‘Marvels unfold’ declares the mysterious Traveller in the opera ‘Death in Venice’ when he first appears to Aschenbach – and they have!  The music of Britten evokes for me the huge East Anglian skies and the bleak and stony Suffolk beaches.  I live in Buxton on the edge of the Derbyshire Peak District – as far from the sea as you can get.  We have our own Festival – not as old as the Aldeburgh Festival – but equally full of surprise and delight, and a few years ago we put on ‘Noye’s Fludde’ in the town’s Georgian parish church.  As I watched it, I remembered the art historian Kenneth Clark’s description of how he sat in his pew in Orford Church, dutifully awaiting some spark of divine fire.  And it happened – an overwhelming experience during one of the early performances of that Chester miracle play so brilliantly set to music by Benjamin Britten.

 

The extracts from Britten’s cantata ‘St Nicolas’ we’re hearing tonight remind me of the Saint (sung by Peter Pears) standing again in that Aldeburgh pulpit, and the Pickled Boys walking up the central aisle singing Alleluia.  And I remember above all a concert in that church with the Britten-Pears Chamber Choir when I felt very honoured to be asked to sing the short bass solo in ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’ – ‘For H is a spirit and therefore he is God’ – those strange words of Christopher Smart which point to the mystery of the God who is all around us and also the very breath of our life.  H – huuh….

 

Now it would be far too easy to spend this entire sermon reminiscing – which would be very self indulgent for me and very tedious for you!  But allow me just one more memory:  the year when I was a music student working at the Aldeburgh Festival – 1976 – a long hot summer – the last Festival that Benjamin Britten was alive and the joyful garden party at the Red House we were invited to when the announcement of his Life Peerage was made public and we were able to talk to the great man sitting, smiling in his wheelchair in the bright sunshine.  During that extraordinary week the twelve students I was with thought we might put together a little concert of chamber music, songs and piano duets and present it on the stage of the Aldeburgh Cinema.   It’s now a regular feature of the Festival I gather, but it was quite a novelty then.   I was the compère and I recall my panic when I walked through the curtain and saw in the audience, sitting side by side on the front row, Peter Pears, Mstislav Rostropovich, Joyce Grenfell, Laurens van der Post the travel writer and Mary Potter the artist – all of them sadly no longer with us.  All I can say is that they were incredibly gracious………

 

‘I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly,’ said Jesus in our Gospel reading tonight.  And the Greek phrase for having something more abundantly means to have a surplus – a superabundance.  I certainly had that in the summer of 1976 – it took me months to come down to earth!  And for the Christian, to be a follower of Jesus – to know who he is and what he means – is to have a superabundance of life.   Whenever I’m deeply moved by a painting or a poem or particularly a piece of music – as I have been many a time when I’ve listened to something by Benjamin Britten – I know that I’m living with some immense significance surrounding me, something that points towards what is infinite and eternal and awe-inspiring – something, that in the language of faith, speaks of the glory of God, of abundant life.   But for the artist, the writer, the musician who strives to create that painting or poem or piece of music – as I heard Jude Kelly, the distinguished artistic director of London’s South Bank Centre, say at a Radio 3 gathering we had some time ago – they mustn’t be afraid to go to the heart of things in search of that creativity, maybe to hard places of doubt and darkness.  ‘Artists cannot expect to live with certainty,’ she said.  ‘That’s protecting their self interest.  If you’re going to change the world, you need to go through the darkness so you can proclaim the truth.’

 

In other words there’s a cost.  And that’s really the essence of what I want to say this evening – to acknowledge that cost.  Of course it’s the same for all who would call themselves Christians.  Jesus never said the way of discipleship would be easy, but what he promised at the end was abundant life, eternal life.  Meanwhile we hang onto those glimpses of what we’re promised that we’re granted by the grace of God.  Glimpses of glory, moments of transcendence – this is what makes the arts so vital to our well-being.  They’re able to lift us above the humdrum and the ordinary to the level of the sublime.  But let’s not deny that there is a cost.  I don’t just mean a financial one either: I mean the emotional, the spiritual cost.

 

Benjamin Britten knew that cost all too well – and he often wrestled at a deep level with doubts and depression.  Peter Pears, his partner, ascribed Britten’s strong moral sense to his evangelical upbringing – the strictly disciplined work schedule he maintained throughout his professional life.  But, as has been extensively chronicled, his identifying with Christian values fluctuated so that there were times when relationships would sour or suddenly be brought to an end.  ‘Britten’s corpses’ as they sadly became known.    He did occasionally reflect on the nature of God though – particularly with his good friend, the then Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Leslie Brown.  They talked about God the Spirit – the energising, inspiring, giving power that takes over people.  Britten said on one occasion: ‘I’m coming to feel more and more that all my music must be written to the glory of God.’  And when, as his life was drawing to a close, Bishop Brown brought Holy Communion to his bedside at the Red House in Aldeburgh, after reciting the service from the Book of Common Prayer, he asked him, ‘Is all well, Ben?’  Britten replied, ‘How could all not be well with those wonderful words ringing in my ears?’

 

At his funeral, Bishop Brown gave the address and said that attempting to describe Britten’s music was like ‘trying to keep sunlight in a string bag’ – what a marvellous perception!   But he also pointed out that Britten was scrupulously honest about his faith. He looked back nostalgically to the clear untroubled trust he had as a boy.  Whilst he believed deeply in a Reality which works in us and through us and is the source of goodness and beauty, joy and love, he was often uneasy because he wasn’t sure that he could give the name of God to that Reality.

 

But that’s the experience of so many.  ‘If you’re going to change the world,’ said Jude Kelly, ‘you need to go through the darkness so you can proclaim the truth.’   Jesus did precisely that.   Like a true shepherd, he unhesitatingly accepted the rigours of a tough life with the inevitable risk of rejection and suffering.  In that total commitment to the Cross we see the truth of God’s sacrificial love.  Jesus went through the darkness in order that we may have life, and may have it abundantly.   Pray then that each of us may know that abundance, even though sometimes it may seem far away – that each of us may discern God’s will – his plan for us in the fullness of time. And may the music of Benjamin Britten inspire us in our quest.     ‘Ben will like the sound of the trumpets,’ said Bishop Leslie Brown at the end of the funeral address, ‘though he will find it difficult to believe they’re sounding for him.’   They’ll sound for us too – be sure of that – though maybe not quite so loudly!  So let’s be ready for them.   Amen.

 

Sermon April 21^st 2013, Worcester College Chapel

Isaiah 63: 7-14; Luke 24: 36-49

 

As out introit suggested, the wintry earth is beginning to wake up, bringing us expectations of new life; I’m sure Simon and college gardeners are pleased that, at last, the gardens are budding with new life as we enter the Trinity Term. It is just such lovely Spring weather that we associate with Easter, the season of new life, which emerges from the ground and in the nature around us, which is both wondrous and, at the same time, predictable. It comes around every year. It is exactly what we expect to happen at this time of year, even if we have had to wait longer for it this year. But the resurrection of Eastertide, the physical appearance of Jesus to his friends, is a completely different matter. It goes against every empirical scientific evidence we possess. What a fantastical idea to posit, especially in a secular age! The most problematic of paradoxes, as set out in the final words of Luke’s Gospel that we heard read tonight, is surely at the heart of the Christian faith and, as such, these few words are some of the most important in the whole of the scriptures. If they are true, then they are surely the most fundamentally significant words in any literature, of any time and in any language.

 

Indeed, how hard it was for the disciples to comprehend the fact of Jesus’ appearance to them. After his death, from which they feel lost and dejected, confused by Jesus’ apparent failure on the cross, there He is, in the midst of them. What are they supposed to think? They do not have a set of cultural, historical and theological references to make any sense of it. There is, as yet, no Pauline theology, no Church or Christian tradition, not even the second instalment of Luke’s narrative, the Acts of the Apostles, to offer any explanation, just a plain fact: the presence of Christ, in physical form, in front of them.

 

Not surprisingly they think he is a ghost, perhaps a figment of their imagination or wish-fulfilment, a vision of their beloved friend and leader to comfort them in their grief. But this will not do, Luke tells us, Jesus confronts their emotions: ‘Why are you frightened; why do doubts arise in your hearts?’ Surely fear and doubt are the obvious reactions. Where is the evidence for such an
occurrence? Why would they accept something which is clearly outside the realms of known reality. So the empirical data is offered, as Jesus invites the disciples to look at the wounds in his hands and feet and side, to touch them even, although, like the story of doubting Thomas, we are not told whether they do in fact place their hands on the wounds.

 

With the disciples in a state of joy mixed with doubt and wondering, Jesus offers more evidence by eating cooked fish in their presence. Luke is at pains to emphasise and re-emphasise that Jesus was really there, not metaphorically or in spirit, but physically present. Indeed, at the beginning of the book of Acts he again relates that: ‘After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.’ For better or worse the disciples are forced to accept what is in front of them. But to what end? For it is clear, in Luke 24, that they lack understanding. They haven’t the faintest idea of what is going on. So Jesus has to explain: ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.

 

His presence there is the fulfilment of something they should know about: their Jewish history. The history which includes the acts of love shown towards the people of Israel which we heard from the prophecy of Isaiah 63: an unfailing love that liberated them from Egypt, to lead them to a better future. Everything in the law, the prophets and the psalms culminates in this moment. So Christ explains the scriptural and historical significance of the current event: ⁴⁵‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah^* is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’

 

Thus, in his explanation, Jesus moves the story on from one of remarkable resurrection to future meaning and action: the whole incarnational process has a richer meaning, that forgiveness of sins has been achieved, that the relationship between humanity and God has been re-established, that eternal life with God is here. The disciples are therefore to be witnesses, but Jesus ends with a riddle: ‘⁴⁸⁴⁹I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high’,  a power that the disciples will not comprehend until they experience the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

 

Christian faith doesn’t depend for its existence on belief in the miracles that Jesus did during his ministry, or other supernatural events, such as whether or not Jonah literally spent three days in the belly of a giant fish. Christianity does rely, however, on a belief that the crucified Jesus rose from the dead by the act of God, attesting to the truth of his message and the meaning of his death as a sacrifice for human sin, and inaugurating an ultimate redemption of the world from sin and death.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the British journalist Frank Morison was convinced that supernatural religion was a myth, although like a good liberal he admired the historical teachings of Jesus. So he set out to write a book about the real human drama of Jesus’ last days, stripped of the superstitious legends. Morison wrote

 

‘I wanted to take this last phase of the life of Jesus, with all its quick and pulsating drama, its sharp, clear-cut background of antiquity, and its tremendous psychological and human interest-to strip it of its overgrowth of primitive beliefs and dogmatic suppositions, and to see this supremely great Person as He really was.’

 

The strangeness of the Resurrection story had captured his attention. His research, however, led him to discover the validity of the biblical record in a moving, personal way. The result was a book called: ‘Who Moved the Stone?’, which became a classic apologetic for the Resurrection.

 

Treating the Gospels as human documents subject to historical analysis and verification, Morison was forced to conclude that the literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead was believable truth, which the Gospel writers correctly report and interpret. If Morison is right, then the consequences are astonishing, because it means that the life and teaching of Jesus has to become the central starting point for our understanding of ourselves and our world. It was just such an understanding that inspired the early deeds of the disciples, as Morison put it:

 

‘The facts were so well known that the campaign they undertook could positively be conducted with greater success in Jerusalem, where the abandoned tomb lay, than in any other place in the world. It was this that enabled them to concentrate (as Acts clearly shows that they did) on the two vital contentions that ultimately rent Judaism asunder, viz., that Jesus was the promised Messiah, and that life had been raised by the direct hand of God. They could surely never have reached this advanced stage of the discussion so early, if the physical vacancy of the tomb had not been common ground.’

 

The historian in me is always asking: so what? What if there is truth in the story, what does that have to do with me? If the reason we read history is to learn from the past to inform our future, then perhaps it is time, in this new season, to tackle the evidence of the scriptures and the early Church head on, and to ask what we learn from this story, and to ask ourselves honestly what was it that motivated the disciples in their mission which led to their suffering and martyrdom? Was it just about an assurance of the hereafter and a nice cosy forgiveness of sins in a future life or is it about the heralding of new life in the here and now? For as one former Chaplain of Worcester College, Tom Wright, has written:

 

‘The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven …
it is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven … Our task in the present…is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.’[1]

 

As we continue our academic work, whether in the lab, or for tutorials, thesis-writing, publication or exams this term, I urge you to consider the essence of the Gospel, to read it, research it and find it for yourself, in order to make up your own mind and, just maybe, to bring that resurrection reality of new life and the kingdom of God to this college, here and now.                         Amen.