Easter Morning Early Service
Posted Wednesday 7 April 2010 ~ 3:16pm
It was windy but not cold in the church yard
round the font
Easter Morning we began with a fire in the churchyard, processed with our candles to the font to affirm the creed then approached the altar for the sacrament of bread and wine. Michael preached a sermon about this:
Fire, water, wine, bread: Four wonderful symbols of life, vigour, freshness, celebration.
Fire, whose light is no static beam but an ever-changing, flickering, living flame; Christ the risen Lord, not some neat, boxed fount of predictable wisdom but an ever-living source of surprise, the light of truth on our lives just when and where we are least expecting him.
Water, rushing, flowing, origin of all life on earth and origin of each human life within our mothers’ wombs; Christ the risen Lord on whom our life depends, whose Holy Spirit is a well-spring of life flowing within our very hearts, so that we are able to live after the pattern of Christ’s self-giving.
Wine, a living substance, changing over the years yet retaining always its fundamental character; we drink it to bring out the joy that lies at the heart of our lives and to nourish our delight in each other; Christ the risen Lord, source of our joy and of our fellowship, giving life to the Church again and again as we change and adapt over the years of history so that we may remain true to our one, fundamental calling.
Bread, also a living substance, given life by the yeast that works within it, eaten in one form or another as basic food all over the world; Christ the risen Lord, rising like dough from the dead, nourishing people of every race and every sort with all that we need for our flourishing and health as human beings, living, creative images of God the Creator of all things.
But these symbols of life all have their dark side also. Fire and water, both as destructive in some circumstances as they are creative in others; wine, which can destroy a life as surely as it can enhance; even bread, which is all too easily the focus of injustice, those who have plenty enjoying their surfeit while others have nothing more than the scraps that fall from their tables. Yet even in their darkness, these are potent symbols of the living God, into whose hands it is said to be a fearful thing to fall. The risen Christ is no comfortable saviour, no safe option. In rising from the dead, he has not returned to live again among us as our ordinary companion; he has risen into glory, the eternal glory of the Divine challenge to all our injustices, all our comfortable complacencies, all our selfishness, all our content with half-life instead of the burning, rushing, intoxicating, full-filling life of God.
And so we hold these living flames, to burn up all that is cold and hard within us. Soon we shall renew the affirmations of Baptism and be sprinkled with water, to wash clean away every barrier we have erected to that awesome commitment. We shall drink the new wine of God’s kingdom, to replace our sober-sided reliance on our own ideas and preferences with the intoxication of the Holy Spirit. We shall eat the bread of heaven, to remind us that we also are beggars, not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under God’s table, that all the riches we amass for ourselves are nothing in comparison with the wealth that comes from God, a wealth which of its very nature spills out through our fingers unless we share it with all the other beggars of the world.
Christ is risen! He is risen to life, risen to glory, risen to bless, risen to destroy all falsehood and death! Alleluia!
Michael Kitchener
Easter Sunday 2010
Categories: Services