The Rector’s Reflection on the Readings for the Fifth Sunday of Easter - 2nd May 2010

As this season of Eater has progressed, the scriptural readings for our morning Eucharist have begun to subtly change. At the beginning they featured Jesus’ body. Mary Magdalene encountered the body of Jesus in the garden on the first Easter morn. And then the disciples encountered Jesus in the upper room without, and then with, Thomas. And then the disciples encountered Jesus by the Sea of Galilee.

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The body of Jesus was critical in all of this. It was a body that still bore the marks of crucifixion. It was Jesus’ earthly body and yet it was changing. Mary Magdalene could not cling to this body, and others could not recognise it until Jesus revealed himself to them.

I think it is significant that the two encounters that the disciples had with the risen Jesus in the upper room were on the ‘first day of the week’. In other word they met on a Sunday when the early church gathered for worship, and then they recognised Jesus when he ate with them.

The story that probably best sums up this transition is of course Luke’s story of the encounter that the two disciples had with the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus. In this story these themes are made explicit. Jesus journeys with the disciples, he reveals the scriptures to them and he makes himself known to them in the breaking of the bread. The Jesus of history is becoming the Lord of the Church, revealed to his disciples through scripture and sacrament

But of course much more is happening. Throughout this Easter time we have heard scriptures from the Old and New Testaments proclaiming that God is making all things new. After Easter nothing can be the same again. It is a pivotal moment, not just in human history but for God’s creation. Greek philosophy had tended to teach that each human being had a soul that was separate from the body and much Christian thinking has been influenced by this idea. In fact it became the accepted wisdom for many centuries and theologians would talk of the human person as body, mind and soul or spirit.

But the Jews never thought in that way. They valued the human body as part of God’s creation and imagined their relationship with him in very physical terms. Therefore when they began to reflect on what future life with God might be like they thought in terms of death and resurrection. In this process, the old body would die and a new body would be created that would live in a new way with God. And this would not just affect each individual human being but the whole of creation.

Therefore when St John has a vision of future life with God in the book of Revelation, it is not a vision of a disconnected spiritual realm where human souls live with each other and with God. It is rather a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. It is in fact a vision of a holy city, the new Jerusalem, that comes down out of heaven from God.

For me Revelation 21: 1-7 is one of the great passages in the bible. I use it whenever I can as a reading for funerals for nowhere else in the scriptures is the Christian hope so beautifully and profoundly expressed. But it is a hope that engages with our world and sees the future in terms of a city, a community, in which the relationship between each of us and between us and God finds its final and true expression.

And so it has been rightly said, the scriptures start in a garden and end in a city. The Garden of Eden is a place of innocence, but the city, the New Jerusalem is a place where human sin and division finds ultimate healing through God’s life-giving, saving power.

Modern science suggests to us that the Jews may have got it right. The more we know about human life and behaviour the more we recognise the influence that our DNA and our experience has on our formation as human beings. Therefore it is hard to talk about a disconnected soul. The truth is that we are intimately and truly part of our world and our task as Christians is to engage with it, live in it and die in it when our time is due.

But Easter tells us that death is not the end because all that we are, in our complexity is held within the memory of God to be created anew for life with him. The vision of the new Jerusalem perfectly expresses this hope and yet John’s revelation must be more than that. It must be a vision for which we continually strive.

And that is the point of Easter. Easter always starts now. It started with Jesus’ earthly body and its starts with our earthly body. But the hope of the New Jerusalem must be our present concern. Issues of justice peace and equality are for now. Issues of right, loving relationships between each other and between us and God are for now. Blake’s inspirational hymn rings true. We are called to build Jerusalem, in this pleasant land, here in Wrexham. And we are literally called to die trying, so that we might live in God.

Revd Canon Professor Mike West