Choral Eucharist

10.00am Live Broadcast BBC1

Preacher: The Dean

Texts: Acts 10: 34 – 43; Mark 16: 1 – 8

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.

I’m going to talk about fear.  Fear plays a large part in the Easter story. The bible starts when Adam in a garden chose to disobey; Last Thursday Christians remembered Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane choosing to obey, one of the most critical gospel moments – making humanity at-one-with God, 'atonement'.  Jesus was afraid.

That is immensely reassuring, Jesus knew fear and yet he decided, ‘not my will but yours be done’ – or, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’  Really brave people are not the ones who leap in to some frightening scenario without thinking, which is courage of a sort; far more courage is needed when you see the danger, calculate the odds, and still persist; that is bravery.

Fear is an important element in the professionalism of soldiers.  Mountaineers, extreme white water canoeists, Formula One drivers, all know what fear demands to become bravery.

In today’s lesson Peter says, ‘God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’  For the Christian, fearing God is a complex mixture of respect, awe, and fright.

In today’s gospel fear features several times; the women are anxious ‘Who will roll away the stone?...’ they saw the young man and ‘they were alarmed’, he said to them, ‘do not be alarmed’; ‘they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement has seized them; they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid’ – ‘fear’ is the very last word of the gospel*, even in the original Greek text**.

In today's first lesson St Peter is breaking boundaries.  Cornelius is a Roman, Peter responds to his call and baptises his household. When the ancient Hebrews went in to battle, in places like Jericho, they followed the call of the horn.  Cornelius means, ‘the man of the horn’;  Cornet, Cornwall and Cornucopia have the same root. This is the outrageous moment Christianity breaks out. By baptising Cornelius, Peter breaks down the walls which separate Jew and Gentile, he opens Christian faith to everyone who ‘fears’ (God). He also overcomes his own fear of foreigners and he starts a battle within the Christian Church about who can be a Christian. This is a story about Christian courage overcoming fear. On the night Jesus was arrested Peter knew fear, now he knows courage.

Sadly, the Christian Church, is still fighting those battles two thousand years later.  There are plenty of Christians keen to draw boundaries, build walls, make faith exclusive.  Parts of the Church still discriminate against race and tribe, women, or homosexuals. We sometimes forget, ‘God shows no partiality.’

Today’s lesson reminds us that the resurrection story did not stop on that first Easter morning.  It is not just Jesus who burst out of the tomb; the Christian Church went on to burst barriers of division and discrimination. It started by overcoming its innermost fears.  Full inclusion is a frightening adventure.

Today’s gospel story has three words for fear, and four descriptions. – The women were anxious, in the tomb they were alarmed, then they fled in terror and amazement.  The word translated amazement is ‘ecstasy’.  This earliest moment of the Christian Church has fear mixed with ecstasy.

It is women who discover the resurrection, they counterbalance Eve in her garden at the beginning of the mythology of sin, they show the way out.  Jesus’ ministry shows us God works most where people suffer. On Easter Day we see that brilliantly clearly, but it does not stop.

Much that happens in the world is fear-driven. The disgraceful division of the Holy Land is fear-driven; Zimbabwe's President fears the loss of power so he suppresses his people; terrorists trade on fear.

The message of Easter morning is that admitting to fear opens the way for courage, courage for bravery, bravery for breaking down the walls which divide us; that way new life explodes on an unsuspecting world.  Easter is a morning which is terrifying in its wonder and ecstatic in its results.

The young man in the tomb says, ‘Do not be alarmed’.
Christians should take courage this morning.

AMEN.

*In your bibles you will find another ten verses that don’t match up at all with the passage we heard this morning, scholars agree these ten verses were added later to answer the question ‘If they told nobody then how did the rest of the disciples learn about the resurrection?’  They are not unimportant verses however, because, quite apart from that, they show us how foolish it is to read all the text uncritically and take it literally, it simply does not work like that.  They also show us a church that was in some ways afraid, of being misunderstood, of being charlatans and they sought to remedy those accusations.

**ephobounto gar