04.04.2010
This is the Ireland that Requires the Good News - Archbishop of Dublin's Easter Sermon
Preaching in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin on Easter Day (Sunday 4 April 2010), the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr John Neill said that "We are part of a society that has seen staggering levels not only of greed, but also of corruption. We are part of a society that has produced social conditions that have destroyed hope for many, leading too often to the total alienation of large numbers of women, men and especially of young people. We have witnessed the growth of fatal addictions, and the cheapening of life. We hear daily of murder and too frequently of the tragedy of suicide."
He continued, "This is the Ireland that requires the Good News – the Gospel of the Risen Christ as much as ever. We have no power of ourselves, but nor did those few disciples of the Risen Christ – but they had what we can have – the power of the Risen Jesus to point to a different way – to hear again God’s Easter invitation – Come and share life in the Risen Jesus – the firstfruits of a new beginning. Easter is about hope – but it is about having the courage to hope. That courage requires that those who claim to hope are willing to be transformed in their way of living into signs of hope and indeed of Easter Joy. The celebration of the Risen Christ is an invitation to you and to me to reach out and receive something of that transforming power experienced by the first disciples, that we may indeed be instruments of God’s new beginning."
Concluding the Archbishop said, "Transformation and Renewal – Resurrection – can only speak to others – if it is something we know ourselves. May God grant to you and me the hope, the joy and indeed the life offered us at Easter – to share in the firstfruits of the new creation – Jesus Christ raised from the dead."
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The Most Revd Dr John Neill,
Archbishop of Dublin
Christ Church Cathedral
“Christ has been raised from the dead, the FIRSTFRUITS of those who have died”
(I Corinthians 15:20)
It has seemed a very long winter. I remember well the first snowdrop appearing in the garden – a little sign of hope – but far removed in time and reality from the full experience of spring, in all its glory. One of the earliest written reflections on the Raising of Jesus comes in a letter written to the Church at Corinth – where the Risen Christ is described on several occasions as the FIRSTFRUITS – not just a sign of hope like that small flower, but a truly new beginning.
The story of the Christian Church, the story of the followers of Jesus, has sometimes been true to that utterly new beginning offered in the Risen Christ, but at others we have all fallen far short of that transformative and life-giving power at the heart of Easter. We have sometimes thought of it wistfully – like that lonely snowdrop peeping through the snow in January.
The raising of Jesus of Nazareth is quite different from and far more than any tale of resuscitation, different from the story in the Gospels of the raising of Lazarus, or that of the daughter of Jairus. The raising of Jesus of Nazareth is God’s invitation to share through Jesus in a life that transcends and transforms mere existence. One way of expressing this, so aptly chosen by the apostle Paul, was that the Risen Jesus was the firstfruits of a marvellous harvest to be realised throughout the world. Those who were “In Christ”, baptised into his death and rising, were themselves to be raised to a quality of life that is eternal.
We are urged as those raised with Christ to a new scale of values – to seek those things that are above. We are called as those raised with Christ to a way of service and discipleship that refuses to accept that which destroys and limits life in all its fullness. The Risen Christ faced all that at its worst on a cross that Friday afternoon – the Resurrection is God’s answer to that encounter.
At its best, the Church is called to be not only a sign of the firstfruits of a new creation, of God’s Kingdom or Rule, but also a means of bringing it to fulfilment in broken lives and broken societies. The extraordinary thing is that God can use even broken lives and broken churches in the fulfilment of the divine purpose – but only as those lives are offered in all humility for a fresh outpouring of the spirit of the Risen Christ. One the evening of that first Easter Day – St.John presents us a picture of the rather frightened band of disciples – who a short while before in the hour of greatest need had forsaken their Lord and fled away – been affirmed by a fresh outpouring of the Spirit and charged with the message and indeed the power of forgiveness.
It is not from our perfection that as Christians we challenge what destroys and inhibits the purposes of God for the world in which we live – but it is as those who have been given hope through the Risen Jesus that we can point to a way that is different, and a way that is on offer in that same Risen Jesus.
We are part of a society that has seen staggering levels not only of greed, but also of corruption. We are part of a society that has produced social conditions that have destroyed hope for many, leading too often to the total alienation of large numbers of women, men and especially of young people. We have witnessed the growth of fatal addictions, and the cheapening of life. We hear daily of murder and too frequently of the tragedy of suicide.
This is the Ireland that requires the Good News – the Gospel of the Risen Christ as much as ever. We have no power of ourselves, but nor did those few disciples of the Risen Christ – but they had what we can have – the power of the Risen Jesus to point to a different way – to hear again God’s Easter invitation – Come and share life in the Risen Jesus – the firstfruits of a new beginning.
Easter is about hope – but it is about having the courage to hope. That courage requires that those who claim to hope are willing to be transformed in their way of living into signs of hope and indeed of Easter Joy. The celebration of the Risen Christ is an invitation to you and to me to reach out and receive something of that transforming power experienced by the first disciples, that we may indeed be instruments of God’s new beginning.
The Resurrection event was not seen by any individual, its evidence was slow to sink in, even for those who had been close to Jesus. As it became a reality for them, it transformed them, and it was only as they were transformed that they began to make a mark on the society in which they lived.
Transformation and Renewal – Resurrection – can only speak to others – if it is something we know ourselves. May God grant to you and me the hope, the joy and indeed the life offered us at Easter – to share in the firstfruits of the new creation – Jesus Christ raised from the dead.