Easter Sermon

I had a number of requests for the Easter Day sermon because it reviewed things we had learnt about Jesus during Lent in the gospel readings, reflections and Richard Rohr's book Wondrous Encounters. The best I can do is these notes:

Things the gospels teach us about Jesus:

• He was not a Christian. He was born, raised and understood himself as a Jew.
• He rejected personal power - we saw this explicitly during his temptation in the wilderness.
• He was against all forms of hierarchy, religious or cultural divisions, means of exclusion, or ways of stigmatizing people. Where does that leave us - we love all that stuff?!
• He is more concerned with healing now than salvation later.
• He heals us in our darkest and most vulnerable places.
• He has no test or criteria for healing - you just have to ask.
• He seeks out those who have been cast out (remember the man healed of his blindness who was cast out by the Temple authorities - thats when Jesus sought him out).
• He teaches us to confront our all-consuming fear of death ( the story of Lazarus).
• Jesus was non-violent.  His suffering and death was the supreme example of this.

By entering into the journey through Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, we learnt that:

• God would rather suffer at our hands than inflict suffering on us.
• We must confront our own dark side.  We have to accept our potential to betray and abandon (Judas and Peter), and to crucify the innocent.  Until we accept this we cannot begin to grow.
• We must accept death and resurrection as the essential pattern of all life.  We have little 'deaths' and 'resurrections' every day. Death is never final.
• With this understanding we can learn to live by Jesus' most common one-liner - "DO NOT BE AFRAID"!