Turning
the World Upside Down
Easter
Day 2020
Friends this
is the strangest of Easter Day’s of any
I remember, instead of a church full of candles and flowers, hymns and
rejoicing here we are, it almost feels like we are in that Holy Saturday
suspension, waiting, waiting for that first day of the week when we can burst
from our confinement , and yet Today is Sunday and Christ is Risen.
So, it seems
ironic that we should be celebrating in the midst of sorrow pain and death.
But you know last year I wrote these
words in the April edition of our magazine and I quote:
There is a profound irony in the
story of Holy Week and Good Friday which tell us that it is the perpetrators of
violence against the man who takes up his cross to Calvary, who claim to be
agents of light: the keepers of the peace, the protectors of the faith and the
saviours of the nation. And the irony continues as on any human calculation
these claims are reasonable: for the
Chief Priest and Elders, to wish to protect the nation from further violence or
from the wrath of the Roman occupiers is humanly commendable. But in the end it is Christ who, in the
darkness of agony and crucifixion discovers the hope for the world as he takes
its darkness into his being and transforms it, bring new life and hope into the
world on Easter Morning.
Irony indeed
but truly the message of Easters is that
Jesus by taking the darkness of the World into his being and by rising again
transforms it, forever offering through selfless love life and hope into our
world.
But the
nature of the story doesn’t promise eternal sunshine and green pastures what it
does is offer the promise that the day of resurrection has transformed all days
forever, this is most beautifully expressed in
poem Easter by George Herbert
Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing
his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou
likewise
With him mayst rise.
That, as his death calcined1 thee to
dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much
more just.
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy
part
With all thy art.
The cross taught all wood to resound
his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all
strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high
day.
Consort both heart and lute, and
twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or since all music is but three parts
vied
And multiplied;
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his
sweet art.
I got me flowers to straw thy way:
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with
thee.
The Sun arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th’East
perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.
Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.
In the poem Herbert askes ‘ can there be any day but
this’ showing that from the darkness of the cross and the tomb the day of
resurrection bring us back to the cradle of new birth and turns us and our
world upside down. For Jesus was dead, now he is alive, from now on there is
but one day the single, eternal day of resurrection and in its light nothing
will ever be the same again.
Alleluia Christ is Risen
He is Risen indeed Alleluia. Amen
