Easter Day

Sermon preached by The Reverend Dr Matt Bullimore, Chaplain, Corpus Christi College.

Listen for a moment. Listen for the sounds of resurrection. A garden at dawn. The quiet before the day begins, the morning chorus beginning to fill the air.

Or another occasion on the shore of a lake. Water lapping along the beach.

Listening in the peace, in the tranquility, there are other sounds too. There are men at work in a boat in the middle distance. Closer to hand there are footsteps in the sand. Then there’s a mighty commotion and a splashing. Voices raised in amazement. And later, the sounds of fish cooking, and the laughter and joy of friends.

Or in an upper room, the sound of anxious, fearful, women and men sitting in silence. Shuffling. Shifting. Fidgeting. Then the sound of them startled and frightened – lapsing into cries of amazement – and then friends laughing, cooking, eating, gabbling.

Back in the garden, behind the birdsong there is a woman quietly weeping. She is surprised by a man she didn’t see there. There’s a hurried and fretful exchange. And then he calls her name. Mary. It’s a voice she knows. It’s a call she’s heard before. He knows her, like no one else knows her. And she is undone and remade in the same moment. Wonderment and joy flood her: body and soul. It is her teacher, her Lord, her friend.

We’ll come back to these friends. But there’s more that has happened since the cross and the burial. At least, according to our traditions. Jesus has
been to one more place. He descends to the dead on that terrible Saturday.

I heard someone tell of a school assembly where they had been talking about the so-called harrowing of hell. That must have been quite the assembly.
And a braver person than me to tackle that. But they’d asked the children why Jesus had decided to go down to the dead after Good Friday. One child
raised a hand. The priest invited them to speak.

It’s so he could go and rescue his friend Judas.

And that’s about the best answer in the world.

In the fifth chapter of his letter to the Romans, St Paul talks about the effects of sin. How one man’s sin can have such far-reaching consequences. He’s
thinking of Adam. His sin leads to death, leads to that deathliness that comes from turning away so irrationally and absurdly from the life that God
offers humanity.

Deathliness then spreads, like a contagion, rippling outwards, deforming and distorting. It’s reach is catastrophic. And where there is death, there is sin.

Because sin is the result of us trying to shore ourselves up against death. It’s the pride and selfishness by which we try to make ourselves gods. The
pushing of others down so that we can be raised up. It’s the human propensity to seize control and independence. Oppression, lust, mastery,
colonization, domination, pride, subjection. All sins of seizure in one way or another, sins of desire for power, sins that take and sins that push others
down. Sins that, in the face of death, snatch at false versions of life, snatch at human mastery, but only spread deathliness further.

But, says Paul, and so much more powerfully, and more gloriously, one man’s act of righteousness, one man’s love, has brought life. The waves of life
spreading, overtaking, overcoming the ripples of death. Life abounding, flowing out in grace and blessing, and where there is life, there is not sin but
righteousness. Because no longer have we to try and shore ourselves up against death. Because death has been defeated. We can lose ourselves in the
downpour of life, letting it saturate us, see it spread, take hold of it and share it, passing it on in every act of love and kindness and compassion and
gentleness and joy that celebrates life.

The radiation of deathliness, of chaos and darkness, had spread so very far – the need of rescue so universal – that tradition tells of Jesus’ descent to
the dead, that he may find Adam, and Eve, and Judas; descend to humanity unredeemed, and all who have been overwhelmed by darkness – so he can
take them in his arms and release them as he calls them by name, calls them forgiven, calls them remembered, calls them friend.

So having rescued his friend Judas, having let life radiate into the farthest reaches of loss, he returns to his friends in Jerusalem who are waiting and
grieving. He returns.

Mary, in the garden, does what anyone would do. She runs to embrace him. But he asks her not to. Instead he sends her to his – and her – brothers.
He sends her to the community that will now form around his glorious and beautiful return. He sends her to the community that will exist in the
power of his Spirit, live with his risen life, love with the love he gives. Sends her to the community of all those who are his friends, and who are her
friends, and it is there that he can be embraced. Embraced as we love friend and stranger. It is there that she will find herself at one with him and them.
And us.

The waves of darkness, its flows and its undertow, continue to be felt. They will still try to drag us down. Deathliness still tries to disturb and deform
and destroy.

But life itself, life himself, has already reached the furthest and the deepest, gone all the way, and he has shone its light in the darkness. Deathliness can
still try but the shockwave of life is now too strong. The victory is already won. Never again will death be ultimate. No more can it have the last word,
for the last word belongs to the first Word, who was made flesh for our redemption. The light whom the darkness could not overcome. The one who
once – and still – and always will – call us friends.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed, alleluia! Amen.