Seeking the things that are above

Preached at St Catherine’s Church, Catherine-de-Barnes, Solihull
On Easter Day (Year A), 23/03/08 at 11am Eucharist.
Repeated at 6.30pm evensong in St Alphege Church

Readings: Acts 10:34-43 Romans Col 3:1-4 Matthew 28: 1-10

When I was a little boy, my brother had a pet guinea pig called Ginger. There was a very exciting time when Ginger was pregnant and expected, at any moment, to give birth to one or more baby guinea pigs. One morning my brother went out to feed Ginger and came back upset. I went out with him and looked in Ginger’s cage. Ginger seemed fine, much thinner than she had been. However lying in the middle of her cubby hole was an obviously dead baby guinea pig. We went and called Dad. Dad confirmed that Ginger’s baby was dead. He took the baby guinea pig out and buried it in the garden. My brother made a special little cross of wood to mark the spot. It was a very sad moment.
Later my brother was told to clean out the cage, because it was messy from the dead baby guinea pig. My brother started to clean out the cubby hole where the dead baby had been. He lifted up one of the supporting bricks, and to his great astonishment a baby guinea pig scurried out searching for somewhere to hide. Suddenly our sorrow was turned to joy as we realised that we did indeed have a live and healthy baby guinea pig. Then, when my brother lifted out the second supporting brick, exactly the same thing happened again. In fact we had two live and healthy baby guinea pigs, as well as the dead one.
It felt like a resurrection moment. Our focus on disappointment and death, suddenly changed to a focus on new life. It was wonderful. But it was surprising what a long time it had taken for us to realise what had happened and to grasp its full implications.
And I suspect it was a bit like this for the first followers of Jesus when they first discovered the empty tomb. To start with it was as very strange and disturbing discovery. What did it mean? Who had rolled away the stone? Why had it been done? What did all this mean? Had Jesus’ body been stolen? Then the angles appeared and explained things to them, and this amazed them, gave them great joy, but also filled them with fear. And then suddenly Mary Magdalene saw Jesus and spoke with him and held his feet and worshipped him. Later other disciples had encounters with the risen Lord. Then there was concern that they might have been seeing a ghost. Then there were more and more encounters, and more and more disciples start to believe in the resurrection. But this process took time. In fact the account at the end of Mark’s gospel, Jesus gets cross with the disciples because they are so slow to believe.
So it took the first followers of Jesus time to understand that the resurrection had happened, and what that really meant. It took them even longer to work out all the implications. In Luke’s account of the resurrection one of the main things that the risen Christ does is explain to the disciples all that is written about Jesus in the law, the prophets and psalms so that they could start to understand the extraordinary death and resurrection of the Messiah.
And actually I believe that this is true for us as well. It takes us time to really understand the implications of the resurrection. We have a big advantage over the first disciples, in that we live with the benefit of 2000 years of church experience. From when we are very young we are taught that the resurrection shows us new life in Christ, shows us that love is stronger than death, that sin has been defeated. We are taught that the resurrection means that we can have hope. But despite all this wise teaching there is a sense in which we each have to discover these things for ourselves and to work out their practical implications for our lives.
So how do we do this? Well, St Paul has some good advice for us in our reading from Colossians this morning. He says, “Set your mind on the things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Setting our mind on the things that are above, means putting love for God and neighbour in the first place in our lives, and not allowing earthly things (jobs, houses, families, food, health, schools, cars, holidays and all that) to get in the way. In fact we can use these earthly things in order to love our neighbours.
And the resurrection really helps us to do this. Sometimes our earthly life gets hard. Sometimes we get ill. Sometimes we have disappointments. Sometimes we have to let go of things that are good and precious. Sometimes we have to deny ourselves in order to love the people around us, sometimes our friends die. And we know that one day we ourselves will die. So undeniably our earthly life can be hard. But if, as Paul suggests, we are seeking the things that are above, then we start to discover the things that our above, our love for God and our love for our neighbours, and we start to find their value. And especially when earthly things let us down or pass away, we discover the enduring quality of the things which are above. As Paul puts it, we have died, and our life is hid with Christ in God. And when Christ’s resurrection life is revealed, the true value of the things we have above with also be revealed with him in Glory.
So let’s have the courage to seek the things that are above. Let’s seek always to grow in love for God and love for our neighbours, because we know that if we do this, though we might pass through terrible earthly trials and even through death itself, the resurrection of Christ assures us that the life we have in Christ will be revealed in glory. Amen.