HOLY SATURDAY 2020 - Sermon for All Saints, Blackheath

“Let him Easter in us,

be a dayspring to the dimness of us.”

X

INTRODUCTION

So wrote Gerard Manly Hopkins in his epic poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, a ship that, in 1875, floundered off the coast of Harwich and in which five Franciscan nuns, fleeing persecution in Germany, were drowned.   ‘Let him Easter in us’

It is such an odd use of the word; surely ‘Easter’ is an event, not an experience; a noun not a verb?  Yet, here is Hopkins inviting us to let Christ ‘Easter in us’.   But it’s a great way to look at the truth, the transforming reality of Easter.  For Easter is about an activity that does not apply to something we do but something ‘he’ does in us.  Let Easter get into us.  Let Easter come and live where we live.  Let Easter permeate our souls.  Let him Easter in us; be as a new day to the darkness in us.  

Tonight we normally gather, after the long rigours of Lent and Holy Week, to do just that.  To let Christ ‘Easter’ in us.  Not to wistfully recall a long-ago episode, affirm our faith or even to worship at a powerful and moving Liturgy.  But to be present before the One who can Easter in our lives; we gather because we want to be transformed, given new life, find meaning and purpose.  Isn’t that what each of us longs for?  What we really want?  To know Easter in us.

Poetry, of course, takes us to places that prose cannot.  It is a way of painting with words and, like any painting it looses something when you try to explain its meaning.  Its power lies in the way the words effect the soul.  It’s the difference between the women described in tonight’s gospel reading from Matthew (28.1f) as running from the tomb with great fear and joy, and the description of Mary Magdalene, in the gospel for Easter Day (John 20.11), standing alone and encountering the risen Christ who forbade her to touch him: she needed to take that encounter to heart, not to make sense of it.

St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans hints at something similar: ‘For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his’ (6:5).  Hopkins, on the other hand, reflects that same faith in fewer words: ‘Let Him … be a dayspring to the dimness in us.’

So here we are, like Mary Magdalene, before the mystery at the heart of our Faith, a Faith that is not focussed on the way we should live, or on the quality of life; not on creating a particular social order or helping people deal with pain and sickness, though it involves all of that and more.  Rather, ours is a faith that is centred on the death and resurrection of Christ.  It asks you and I to stand before that one event (for the two are one, though separated in time) and gaze upon it with loving eyes in the belief that that which you desire, that upon which you set your heart, will change you.  ‘Let him Easter in us.’

BAPTISED INTO LIFE IN CHRIST

This year we’re unable to celebrate this mystery with symbols that speak to us about life: fire and light; bread and wine.   We can’t encounter these sacramentals, as Mary Magdalene encountered Christ, material things which don’t speak into our understanding, but into our heart.  Although there is one symbol we can use – water.   If you can, go now and fill a glass bowl with water … 

We use water to wash and cleanse, to drink and enjoy.  But water also ends life, as it ended the lives of those Franciscans – and it can restore to life.  It is the ocean of birth and the river of death.  Hopkins was moved by the drowning of those five sisters, but he understood their death to be the fulfilment of baptism into new life, their rebirth into Christ, so concludes his poem:

Now burn, new born to the world,

                                                Doubled-naturèd name,

                        The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled

                                     Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,

Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!

Hopkins saw in this wrecked ship the lot of a world gone astray.  He compares it with the ark of salvation, the barque in which we’re saved.  He saw in the water the womb of Mary and the birth of Christ, and beneath the waters of death saw the ground of our being – what he called the ‘granite of God’.   Tonight, we can affirm our own faith in the granite – the Christ-rock: just dip your fingers into the water and make the sign of the cross over yourself …

None of us are immune to the ravages of existence; all of us are at risk of infection.  Sometimes it can feel as if we, too, are drowning beneath the terror of it all.  There will be moments, maybe days or weeks, when we seem to be existing beneath a dark pall, when it seems as if the storms of life will never pass.  That is when we need to hold fast in Christ. 

Eventually the storm will pass and calm will come; it’s then we need to make sure that that which holds and carries us, the faith which we profess, the hope which we have and the love which holds us in his hands, lies at the heart of our attention.  And there will be moments when we just need to bask in the sun of God: ‘Let Him Easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness in us.’

CONCLUSION

So, let’s live as Easter people!  Live the faith we profess tonight: Christ is risen. For “… if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Roms. 8:5)

This is the night when first you saved our fathers:
you freed the people of Israel from their slavery
and led them dry-shod through the sea.

This is the night when Christians everywhere,
washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death

and rose triumphant from the grave.

Christ is risen, and hell is cast down!

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen, and life reigns in freedom!

Christ is risen, and the grave is emptied of the dead!

Let him Easter in us as we gaze upon him, not seeking to hold him but, rather, to be held in him who is our life and who offers us Easter.

Alleluia!!