Easter Day 2021
EASTER DAY 2021 – SERMON BY THE VICAR
The African American poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014) is a voice for our times, even though she died in 2014. She understands the fallen nature of humanity and wrote frankly about it in one of her autobiographies. Christian anthropology tells us that no-one is what they seem on the surface, and all have many different sides to their personality, most of which we don’t want to see the light of day. Angelou, a former prostitute and madam for other prostitutes in the sex trade, understood this well and wrote, “I have no skeletons in my closet. In fact, I have no closet.” Let’s hear her voice through her 1978 poem And Still I Rise read for us by a woman, like Angelou, of Ghanaian heritage. (Gloria Elliott reads And Still I rise).
Her words, “out of the nights of terror and fear, I rise” are the connectors, as we look beyond the nights of terror and fear of the pandemic. One of the lazy journalistic orthodoxies we hear, especially from the BBC, is describing the pandemic as un unprecedented. It isn’t. As we know, 100 years ago Spanish/ American flu took over 50 million lives worldwide, 18 million of them in India. Pandemics are part of the human condition as connected beings, as history tells us from the 14th century Black Death, through plagues recurring roughly every 100 years to the twentieth and twenty first centuries and the devastation caused by Aids, Ebola, SARS and MURS. Why speak about this? Because history teaches us that the resilience of human beings, as spiritual creatures created in the image of God, will see beyond the immediate and root ourselves in hope. When St Paul’s Cathedral was completely destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, it was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren and this image of the Phoenix was placed on the south side of the Cathedral. Under the image, the Latin word Resurgam was placed. Resurgam means “I will rise” and we take this as our motto at St John’s as we emerge from the destruction of the Coronavirus pandemic, with three elements – Resurrection, Resilience, Restoration. This Easter Day, these are my three words, as we launch our Resurgam programme.
Resurrection: The identity of all Christian Churches is rooted in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Without this, we have no identity and no future. Resurrection follows suffering and death, so it’s right for us to convert the suffering of the last pandemic year into hope for the future. This strong theological base for us is solid and unshakeable. Christ is Risen. Have no doubt. This is the most real thing we can experience – far more real than much of what passes for reality, which is at best ephemeral The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead hauls us out of our tombs, like those images in Byzantine iconography where the Resurrected Christ is manhandling Adam and Eve out of their tombs. They are pulled upwards in imagery which is full of strength and movement – they look startled and exhilarated at the same time. Our baptism into the death and Resurrection of Christ is the same. We are in this strongly upward movement. We are the captives being hauled out of captivity. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the cornerstone on which we build. This is the inspirational basis for our work going forward beyond Easter 2021 and we translate this into the specifics of our Mission Action Plan in the following ways.
Resilience: The experience of the pandemic has taught us that to be resilient as a community and as a Church we need to be aware of strengths and our weaknesses- the pandemic has ruthlessly shown us a society and Church where our weaknesses are. The divisions in our society - ethnic, economic, cultural, and linguistic - have been laid bare. The failure of leadership in our own Church at the highest level has been laid bare. The strengths and weaknesses of our own Parish have been laid bare. In terms of the finances of the Parish, the weaknesses which we have been shown are: reliance on cash collections at services (remedy- direct giving and an increased emphasis on Stewardship); partnerships with businesses which are financially precarious (remedy- build partnerships with new ones, the previous café and Nursery failed, and we have made new partnerships with more resilient ones). The pandemic has also shown us that we have sometimes taken our natural environment for granted (remedy- create a wildflower meadow, planters for herbs and vegetables and introduce bees, which will come in May). Our children’s work has been underfunded and under resourced (remedy- appoint a new staff member with skills in working with children, and actively promote our work in the neighbourhood.) Most of all, our resilience has been, and is, enhanced, by being open for live sacramental worship through this year of 2021. We have set our stall clearly, that live worship and Zoom or online worship are not the same and cannot ever be the same. The benefits to mental and spiritual health of communal worship are plain, and it would be wonderful, at some stage, to have some acknowledgement of this from the Church’s leadership. While I recognise that Scottish law and English law are completely different, the Judgment of the Scottish Court of Sessions, March 24th 2021 https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/search-judgments/judgment-search?indexCatalogue=court%2Dof%2Dsession%2Djudgments&searchQuery=closure+of+places+of+worship&wordsMode=0
that the closure of places of worship by the Scottish Government this year was unlawful, and above all that “Online platforms provided an alternative to, but did not constitute, worship.” are the basis of what we have held out for in this Parish, open seven days a week from morning to evening praising God and serving the community.
Restoration: The Parish has a symbiotic relationship with a separate Charity and Trust, The St John’s Restoration Fund. The Fund has recently received a generous donation which has enabled the Trustees to employ the services of an experienced fundraiser, who has already begun her work. The fundraising work in hand is for three projects to improve the building of St John’s for worship and community use. These three projects are:
· The restoration of the beautiful and inspiring Victorian decoration of the roof
· The installation of a new lighting system which will be more energy efficient and reduce our carbon footprint
· The introduction of a new 21st Century artwork, the Tree of Life.
We know that after the pandemic people will be longing to meet again in shared spaces, and shared spaces which are beautiful and uplifting. St John’s is already this, but these new elements will be significant improvements. This is not, as one senior cleric wrote “male clergy fetishizing their buildings” but because the continuing restoration of the building of the Church is symbolic of our commitment to the community, and physically shows the physical Resurrection in which we believe. It is not symbolic, it is real. The tomb is empty. Today is Easter Day when the Resurrection of Christ from the dead dramatically happens. And we celebrate this, not just in the 50 days of Easter, but every time we celebrate the Eucharist, in which Christ becomes dramatically present in the bread and the wine and in the community of the faithful. We are that community of the faithful. The Resurrection defines us and Alleluia! Is our song.
And now it’s your turn. Liturgy means simply, “the work of the people” so spend a few minutes, if you will, answering our three questions about the future of this community, post pandemic, and the welcomers will collect them in when you hold them up. We want to hear from you.
