Sermons

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen

Preached by Fr. Paul Burrows on Easter Day (Sunday, April 4, 2010)

The day of Resurrection! If we were not all so exhausted from the long ceremonies of the past three days we might just be amazed at what it is we are here to celebrate. For here, today, we celebrate resurrection: the resurrection of the dead. The sheer physicality of it should scandalize us. Jesus walks among the disciples not as a vision or a spirit but as an actual physical body.

“Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayest rise:”

A real physical hand holding our real physical hand. But this is no conjuring trick with bones! Jesus is real and physical but he is also ‘other’ in ways we find hard to comprehend. He enters locked rooms, his closest friends do not recognize him, but he still eats fish in front of them and the holes are still there in his hands feet and side. His is physical, touchable, and has continuity with the physical Jesus that went before, but he is, in some indefinable way different. This physical being,

His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

There is no way we can apply logic and scientific method to these awesome events so we must resort to art; to music, to poetry, to imagery that points beyond mere depiction and celebrates a metaphysical world that we can only access through imagination, song, and letting our feeling be engaged. For now is Christ risen from the dead and life is transformed. Now are we changed for in this resurrection we ourselves are made whole and participate in the risen life of Christ.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.