EASTER DAY, Year A: March 23 2008
Preacher: Fr Eric Simmons
I want you to come with me on a journey to a city two thousand miles away on
the other side of Europe, to the fabulous city of Byzantium, re-founded in
330 and renamed by the Emperor Constantine as his capital, Constantinople,
and now called Istanbul.
It is a city ringed with ancient walls: a city of busy wharves and crowded
markets, gorgeous palaces and wretched hovels, mosques and minarets, domes
and towers. Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Empire after
the fall of Rome, and was from its inauguration a Christian city until it
was captured by the Turks in 1453. The great church of the Holy Wisdom
was turned into a mosque, and more recently has become a museum. But that
is not our destination this morning. I want to take you to another, smaller,
church, just outside the city wall — the church of Saint Saviour in Chora,
which means ''in the country'' or ''in the fields'', for
that is what it was when it was built about one thousand years ago, though it
has long since been swallowed up by the expansion of the city, and is now
tucked away down a warren of narrow streets.
This church too has suffered, becoming a mosque at the time of the Turkish
conquest in the 15th Century, and now a museum, a place to which tourists
come. But there is something here I want to show you, which neither Islam
nor tourism can kill, and which makes it a place of revelation, a holy
place.
We enter the church by the narthex at the west end, but we shall not go into
the main part of the building; rather, we turn to the right and find that we
are in another smaller church, and it is here that we shall find what we have
come to see.
There it is: in the semi-circular half-dome of the apse at the east end
where the altar would have been — it is one of the most wonderful and
moving paintings of the world, painted about seven hundred years ago, and
we have no idea who the artist was.
The background is a deep, dark, luminous blue; and framing the picture to
left and right is an inhospitable and desolate landscape, the rocks
contorted and shattered and split; something cataclysmic has just taken
place: a massive earthquake by the look of it. And, indeed, the artist
is depicting the cause of it.
Right in the centre of the picture, and striding forward, leaping forward,
to meet us is the figure of Christ. Surrounded by a nimbus of light, He
is clothed in a dazzling white robe. He is a strong, radiantly powerful,
figure, totally in command of the situation as He advances towards us across
two huge and massive gate-timbers which have been torn from their hinges
and which lie beneath His feet. And all around is a chaotic litter of
bits of metal — nails and bolts, the plates and pins, the wards and keys
of all the locks of hell. And lying beneath all the jumble, Satan,
trussed and bound and utterly powerless to prevent what is going on.
Here is that Strong Man of whom Jesus spoke, who keeps his goods, until One
who is Stronger than he appears, plunders his possessions, and makes off
with them.
And that is what Jesus is doing. He stretches out His arms to right and left,
and He is pulling out of their two tombs two figures — an old man and an
old woman. They are, respectively, Adam and Eve — the Man and his wife, the
Mother of all living, the parents of us all — and as such they include us
all.
The lids of their tombs have been pushed off, and Christ is pulling them up
onto their feet. And He holds them, not by the hand, but by the
wrist. They have no power of themselves to help themselves: they
are too weak even to put their hands into His, and in any case no mere
grasping of hands would be sufficient to raise their dead weight.
Christ's whole being is alive and vibrant with energy and movement; He seems
to be dancing on those shattered door-timbers, and He is looking
not at Adam and Eve but at us. His face is strong, His look is
penetrating and searching, and it is as though He is saying: ''You
are all right. I've got hold of you. Come on — get up. Rise up and come
with me.
Or as St John at Patmos heard Him say, 'Do not be afraid;
I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am
alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades'.
Other figures are present, and we can identify some of them. There is
righteous Abel with his shepherd's crook; King David and King Solomon; the
patriarchs and the prophets, among them John the Baptist. They crowd forward,
eager to be caught up in the Great Deliverance brought about by Christ's Death
and Resurrection. For the tyrant has been overthrown, life has been born in
the grave, and death has died.
Istanbul is on the other side of Europe, two thousand miles away. But close
to all of us is the citadel of our own hearts and for many of us, and for
many of our contemporaries, the citadel continues in bondage to fear and
death, bolted and barred against Him who is the living one, and who has the
keys of Death and Hades.
Dear friends, if only we Christians will
- believe and trust in the Jesus Christ we have come to know something of
over the years;
- believe and trust that He is indeed the one who was dead and is alive
for evermore;
- believe and trust His will and power to take hold of us and lift us up
into eternal life
what could we not do — what shall we not do — for Him and His world?
| 
