Disjointed thoughts on wearing an apron on Easter Sunday and my months of magical thinking

A friend who is now working in Canada for the Naramata Centre, which looks like a wonderful centre for spiritual refreshment, posted to facebook about Resurrection as a spiritual practice. It set me thinking about what that might mean for me this Easter. I have been very aware of a personal anniversary on Good Friday and Easter Saturday, of a letter I wrote and sent a year ago and of its consequences.
Many of you will have gathered that in recent months - actually I'm shocked to realise that it is not only recent months but quite a lot longer than that - things have been difficult. I've been fortunate that I have never entirely lost my laughter but I have struggled with desperate sadness, depression and suicidal feelings for long months. Some of it has its roots situationally, some personally.
During this time friends and mere aquaintances have seen me in tears more often than I can remember crying in the whole of the rest of my adult life. Some mornings I would wake up already weeping and not knowing why. Despite "knowing" quite a bit about depression I found experiencing this very distressing. Even now I wonder whether it is the path of integrity to try to write about it, and please I don't want sympathy. There was one day when I realised that I was living without any sense of future - for any serious theologian this is a pretty shocking realisation. Fortunately I'm not all that serious ... :-)
In "resurrection as a spiritual practice" this in particular triggered something for me "Find meaning in your experiences and speak the truth to power, and you help put death in its place."
It reminded me of standing next to many gravesides and throwing in earth, a way of both symbolizing and making real the fact that even though we love the one who is dead we are not buried with them.
Sometimes the only way we can put death in its place is by that separation. Sometimes the only thing to do is to shake dust off your feet and name the forces of death for what they are and put them in their place. I was struck by this at morning prayer today as we read St John Chysostom's Easter sermon - repeatedly and poetically he puts death in its place: "hell was in turmoil having been eclipsed." Resurrection begins when we name and identify death for what it is, leave it in its place and let life surge beyond and above it.
Sometimes of course part of that death which needs to be put in its rightful place is within each of us, is within me. When you're depressed dealing with that in a guilt free way is particularly difficult.
On Sunday I put on an apron as I was cooking - I am a very messy cook and should acutally wear an apron more often than I do in the kitchen. The apron says "woman with attitude", I was still wearing it when our guests arrived and it made them smile. Throughout all these months I have been fortunate to have remained in some way myself, essentially a woman with attitude, but it has been hard at times. And I think that the worst times have been those times when I have begun to take myself and my pain too seriously. I'm sure I have been desperately boring at times.
The apron belonged to my friend Suzanne, who took her own life. Wearing it on Easter Sunday was a tiny act of resistance against the forces of depression and death. Even when I weep I shall be a woman with attitude. Also I was able to wear her apron because I know that I have, so far at least, received enough support not to take the same path she did.
Somehow I find strength in vulnerability and hope to rediscover generosity.
This morning we listened to the story of the resurrection in Mark's gospel - the empty tomb. The emptiness of possibility, the void, the germ of transformation, the menace or threat of resurrection.
Joan Didion called the account of grieving for her husband the Year of Magical Thinking and I have understood that more clearly as I ploughed through these months of mess. Depression is in some way magical thinking. Learning to leave behind the obsessive meandering of the the grief-stricken depressive mind is perhaps the threat of resurrection for me this Eastertime - and please don't get me wrong this is not a judgement on others, just my path now. I hope.
So I suppose that this writing is in someways also more magical thinking. I know that as I have managed to get back to blogging I have begun to feel better and that as I have returned to reading I have felt the same. I also know that I have been very fortunate, I have not lost laughter or love completely and I have been blessed with friendship.
I wish I could say I feel I am a better person for going through all of this but I know quite clearly that I am not. Perhaps when I am at last able to forgive myself for that as well as much else I shall truly know that I am feeling better. John Chrysostom put it like this:
Let no one mourn that (s)he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Each of us has to find what works for us. May you find yours if this is has also been part of your experience. May forgiveness of ourselves and of others rise from the grave for all of us.
Let's be people with attitude!

Easter blossoms, church going and festivities ...

Menu:
Starters and appetisers
spicy beetroot blinis
Lightly poached green and white asparagus
fresh organic turpips
Italian plum tomatoes with basil
homemade mustard and balsamic mayonnaise
sour cream

Main course
Roast lamb
new potatoes
broad beans
gravy
Cardomon, pistacho and turnip greens fritata - the vegetarian option

Cheeses
Bleu de Termignon
Stilton
Laguiole
brie à l'ail de l'ours

desert
chocolate mousse
strawberries in cointreau and passion fruit

Coffee - much needed!
find our wine here!

Word of the day la Glycine - Wisteria blossoms in Ferney Voltaire - the locals certainly know how to "cultiver leur jardin"

These pictures of just one of the local wisterias in flower were taken on Easter Sunday as we walked down from the temple. There is an even more impressive wisteria growing across the driveway in the house just opposite this one. Back home in the rue de Versoix, our neighbour planted a wisteria which is finally flowering this year and has already reached 15 foot up to his kitchen window.
So sad I cannot post the scent of these glorious blossoms via my blog. Once though, many years ago, I did preach a rather good ecumenical sermon about the glorious honey made from the lilac, wisteria and blackthorn flowers intermingled in an Oxford college garden - the sermon however was preached in a French roman Catholic church!
For now I just concentrate on the wonderful dancing beauty of these ephemeral blooms and I hope that something in this Eastertide will be blooming and perfuming your lives with hope, meaning and glory.

Easter bunnies on the communion table ...

The service yesterday morning in Ferney was really good, great music, a very mixed congregation with lots of children, a good sermon grappling with resurrection in a time of bad news, reference in the notices to the upcoming Peace Convocation in Jamaica, coffee and Champagne served after the service ... and bunny rabbits and orchids on the communion table. I just had to get a picture ...

Baptism with flowers or at the ocean

Last Sunday in Pankow there was a baptism as part of the Easter service. All of the children at the service - and there were lots there - were invited to come forwards and decorate the baptistry with flowers. We were sitting so far back in the packed church that we didn't see what it looked like until we went forward for communion. It's a lovely way of involving people it also reminded me of the German tradition my father brought into our family of decorating the table place of the person whose birthday it was with flowers from the garden. Baptism is about rebirth, a new beginning with Christ so I think this is a lovely tradition particularly for churches which have large old baptistries like this.
Meanwhile David Ker baptised his children on Easter Sunday in the Indian ocean. Read about it in a great post called "what water baptism means to me", sounds like a wonderful way of making baptism both special and part of life. The photos are beautiful too.
Of course you can find different perspectives on Holy Water over on Seven Weeks for Water. Next year we really must get someone from the Pentecostal churches to write a meditation for us.

Resurrection - Easter, Emmaus and Ecumenism in a sermon by Theo Gill

My own resurrection moment was to be sitting in Cafe Einstein eating my fresh fruit muesli this morning and thinking about colleagues gathering in the chapel and not having to worry about any of it! I do admit that I was a bit sad not to be able to sing one of my favourite hymns "Now the Green Blade Riseth" but it is wodnerful to be on holiday. Yvette Milosevic prepared the service and Theodore Gill preached on the Emmaus text and on Psalm 118: "A Song of Ascents". I wasn't there to experience him preaching but judging by the very approving text messages I got it obviously all went well. [Yes, the stranzblog has spies everywhere! ;0)]
More to the point Theo just sent me the text of his sermon and it was a very enjoyable read and had me chuckling. It makes some very good points about whether we really will all be able to recognise Christ together in the breaking of the bread if our ecumenical fellowship remains incomplete at Christ's table. Easter, ecumenism and Emmaus - are we on the way to full eucharistic fellowship, do we even want to be on that way?
Full text of Theo's sermon can be found here, but here are a couple of extracts:

those two travelers on the road to Emmaus were not the last would-be followers of Jesus to go wandering off on their own, in the wrong direction…
(my wife and I spent Easter weekend in Avignon – a majestic medieval city, but also something of a hiccup in the history of western Christianity… a bridge too far…)
No, they would not be the last to head the wrong way, only to be pulled up abruptly, to be forced to turn around and start over again on the ascent to community.
Nor were these the last disciples to be found standing, sad and dejected, so absorbed in a sense of confusion, doubt and abandonment that they momentarily lost the plot of the gospel narrative. Maureen Dowd, a columnist for the New York Times, wondered just this past weekend: “Why does the church seem more prone to self-pity than self-reflection?” I believe the answer to that question is that disciples are only human – and we disciples require regular doses of revelation to rekindle our hearts and minds.
...
Sometimes disciples go astray. For more than sixty years, the constitution of the World Council of Churches has held out as a chief goal of our movement the establishment of one, common eucharistic fellowship, so that we together may join in sharing the one bread and together may recognize Christ in our midst. We feature this vision of “one eucharistic fellowship” in our WCC promotional brochures, but…
What have we done about that goal, lately? Have we made six decades’ worth of progress in this area? Or four-and-a-half decades’ worth, since Vatican II?
My wife and I have known one another for forty years. She comes from one tradition of Christianity, and I come from another. Whenever we have taken communion together in the same service of worship, the action has been considered illicit by someone or another. Will we ever share the same bread, licitly? Perhaps at the feast in the kingdom of heaven…? Again, I wonder: What are we honestly doing to hasten the day of a common eucharist, in this life?

Can death overcome death?

This morning Father Daniel Buda led our prayers in the chapel and we began by lighting candles and passing the light of Christ's resurrection from one to another in this symbolic way.
There were powerful prayers and songs as we contined to affirm Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!
There are several lines in the liturgy which say:
trampling down death by death …Christ has destroyed death by death.
On the bus in the morning I'd begun reading Becoming Divine by Grace Jantzen and was as I walked into the chapel trying to get my head around her idea of natality rather than mortality. I suppose it's not really surprising given those circumstances that I found the idea of death triumphing over death or death destroying death a discontinuity.
For me it is Christ's love, Christ's giving, Christ's following and faithfulness that triumph over death. If I had not heard and read the words the order of service this morning I'm not sure I would have so quickly understood what it is Grace Jantzen is driving at in her development of a feminist philosophy of religion.
Life, love and hope tramples down death but then I suppose my mystical meta-narrative would discern and fashion things in such a way.
Anyway despite these thoughts triggered by stray words in the liturgy I still felt connected rather than disconnected through worship and prayer, the message of the resurrection held things together for me.

Morning service in remembrance of Stanley Spencer

The Resurrection, Cookham, 1924-7, oil on canvas, by Stanley Spencer, Tate Gallery
It's difficult to get a real impression of the power, whimsy, humour and beauty of this painting in this small reproduction. I'm always sad if it is on loan when I go to the Tate Gallery in London. Like almost all of Spencer's work it has a wonderful naive magic realism and is completely rooted in his native village of Cookham.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Spencer's death and you can listen again to the service from Holy Trinity Church (which is depicted in the painting). Spencer's religious paintings often depict Christ incarnate in Cookham, carrying his cross through the village street, preaching the beatitudes next to the Thames.
I hope one day to visit Sandham Memorial Chapel and see the extraordinary murals of the resurrection Spencer painted there. They show the troops from the first world war rising up out of the trenches from underneath rows and rows of white crosses. I do not understand resurrection or rising in glory in such graphic physical terms, yet Spencer's earthy contextual pictures of the resurrection speak to me, making me smile with understanding of I am not sure quite what.

Out of silence ...

Given the Easter season I have been thinking - as have others - about the ending to Mark's gospel, the empty tomb and terror. How out of the silence of the empty tomb comes resurrection. So often clergy feel the need to fill the silence rather than let it be for a while. What is our problem with the void, why do we need to fill it?
Talking about the gospel, remembered Bible and narrative theology with Janet on the phone tonight I realised that allowing silence, letting silence happen, being comfortable with it and uncomfortable with is in some way allowing the resurrection to happen. If you fill the silence the other person may never speak. If you always fill the silence the other person may never pray.
I'm also thinking back to our conversation about both of us feeling reticence about "branding" the church. Janet even told me about how she had once asked a group she was doing Bible study with to tell her what the Jesus' gospel brand was. "Not one of them came up with 'The kingdom of heaven is like...' you know. There was a load of stuff about organic niceness though."
Thinking now after our energetic conversation - try getting a speech therapist and an interpreter together to reflect about silence, I promise you there won't be a dull moment - and about the empty tomb and the late industrial obsession with branding, with getting our name out there, I wondered whether the idea of branding isn't sometimes silence that's broken far too early. An inability to let things become, to let content or the idea speak for and prove itself.
Anyway, my conversation with Janet had its hilarious moments as she read out words in German for me to translate, all about the difference between remembering and memorising, remembering and the study of history.
Then in the silence of my remembering I remembered that I began my day reading this via David Ker's blog - "A brave man's words keep his memory alive". Sometimes it's vitally important that not just the story but also the text gets handed down to us - for us to be able to remember.
Out of silence ...
"Gibson Elliott made an impression with his clear mission to bring peaceful change to his battered nation. 'I just can't work with people who kill people,' he said. And he didn't, no matter what."

An Easter sermon on Luke 24

Where are you with the Easter story?

Are you still looking at the outline of the three crosses against the sky, wondering about the terrible communal and individual violence that led to a prophetic leader being brutally and slowly publicly executed?

Or are you with the women carrying creative pungently perfumed spices - terrified and shocked to not be able to anoint the dead body in the tomb.
Either way the focus seems to be violence and death.

Yet somehow the words of the two men (were they angels?) dressed in dazzling clothes begin to convince the women that this is not a story about death but about the risen one. The terror is replaced by a remembering of what Jesus said to them while he was with them, and the women leave the tomb of death and tell their story to the eleven who dismiss it as an idle tale.

Yet because the women have dared to listen to the angels,
dared to remember what Jesus said to them while he was alive,
dared to return to relationship and to tell their story in the face of ridicule,
the story of the resurrection gets out of the tomb
And there's something about the idle story that sets Peter's feet running
Something about the grave clothes that makes him wonder …
Was it really just an idle tale?

Christ's resurrection was never a conjuring trick with bones
but was always about the triumph of relationship, humility, beauty, audacity and creativity over the obsession with death and violence.

The Canadian theologian and Quaker Grace Jantzen begins her highly erudite and very intuitive book Foundations of Violence: Death and the Displacement of Beauty by telling this story and asking these questions:

"At the height of the bombardment of Sarajevo, so the story goes, a string quartet visited that city. One morning, as bombs were falling, the cellist look his instrument out into a square and began to play. Soldiers, hearing him, rushed to order him to take shelter, 'You are mad.’ they said; 'get inside. Look! Can't you see what's happening?'
'Yes’ he said. 'Look. Can't you see what's happening? And you say that I am mad?'
Who is mad and who is sane in a world in which beauty confronts death, and violence silences creativity? How can we learn to name what is happening, and find resources for transformation? Where are the springs of hope, that could bring newness and flourishing into a death-dealing world How can newness enter the world? Where may we look to find the resources for redeeming the present?"

Of course the cellist playing did not immediately stop the bombs
And of course perhaps it is just an idle tale and he never really played in the war zone

The resurrection is about beauty and creativity, perfume and tears being the key resources for redeeming the world

So the story of the cellist is still being told
And the story of the bread breaker, foot washer and tomb quitter from Galilee also still goes on

In our language about resurrection we so often get lost in triumphalism,
Talking about the mighty event of the resurrection

Yet actually resurrection is about a remembered promise in an empty tomb
It is by humble word of mouth that the idle story that changes the world will be told

Most of us will not play cello to make beauty sound out while the bombs fall
Though some of us in this amazing international place may have done even more beautiful and audacious things than that

Resurrection is about relatedness,
The joyous beautiful sound of laughter
Random acts of kindness

An encouragement to all of us to go on telling the idle tale
To overcome obsessions with death and violence and to feed Christ's resurrection creativity and beauty back into the world

So where are we now with resurrection?
Still stuck at Good Friday or daring to threaten the world of violence and death with our cello tunes of beauty and creativity against bombs, bullets and stabbings?

Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed!
Let us in joy greet one another with this Easter affirmation – Alleluia!

Sermon preached in the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva Tuesday 14 April 2009
copyright(c) Jane Stranz/WCC

Further reading:
Grace Jantzen, Foundations of Violence – Death and the Displacement of Beauty, Routledge, 2004.
Janet Lees, Word of Mouth, Wild Goose Publications, 2007.
Kennings and Cookies
On the Vision4Life website

Musings on the resurrection

It's been a glorious resurrection day. I've enjoyed the sunshine and watched wagtails and blackbirds in my garden as the forsythia and cherry blossom light up the springtime urban landscape.
In an idle way I've been musing on resurrection, on the rather militartistic language of triumph we use to talk about the mighty resurrection of Christ. I've been thinking about how we remain rather obsessed with the image of the cross and seem unable to cope with the image of the empty tomb, the upright, masculine image of the planted cross is clearer than the more hidden and feminine image of the empty tomb.
Over the doors of the Protestant Church here in Ferney you can just decipher "nous prêchons Christ crucifié" 1 Cor. 1.23 and whenever someone suggests regilding the lettering I try to resist, wishing it rather said something about resurrection or love and not more concentration on the crucifixion and Good Friday. Our German guest at dinner yesterday said that he even now had the feeling that Good Friday was really the holiest day of the year. My rather speedy reply to that was well of course you're a German Protestant! Yet the piety that focuses on Good Friday means that the joy and exuberance and beauty of the resurrection sometimes never really touches people as deeply as the pain of the cross. Many German Protestants may only take communion on Good Friday, which doesn't really give them a fully rounded experience of the eucharist.
Today I've been reading what is available to read online of Grace Jantzen's book Foundations of Violence - Death and the Displacement of Beauty. I feel both challenged and reassured by her insistance that we are natals not mortals, concerned about my own obsession with death rather than with life. I've been wondering if I am up to the feminist challenge of preaching in a way that believes in beauty rather than is obsessed with death. I've tried a bit in my sermon for tomorrow morning, but I suspect in the end I am not radical enough, too loyal to the institution. Grace was a Quaker.
Anyway here is how Jantzen's erudite and intuitive book begins - I've just ordered a copy and have discovered to my delight that volume two has now also been published, real resurrection good news.
"At the height of the bombardment of Sarajevo, so the story goes, a string quartet visited that city. One morning, as bombs were falling, the cellist look his instrument out into a square and began to play. Soldiers, hearing him, rushed to order him to take shelter, 'You are mad." they said; 'get inside. Look! Can't you see what's happening?'
'Yes" he said. 'Look. Can't you sec what's happening? And you say that I am mad?'
Who is mad and who is sane in a world in which beauty confronts death, and violence silences creativity? How can we learn to name what is happening, and find resources for transformation? Where are the springs of hope, that could bring newness and flourishing into a death-dealing world?
Not all sources of hope are intellectual of course; but my concern here is with what intellectuals offer. It is my belief that what the world sorely needs from intellectuals is an analysis of how the thought patterns of the west!have shaped and mis-shaped the world, and how they might be changed to enable human flourishing. There is a widespread 'demand for a transformative practice of philosophy that would be capable of addressing criticizing, and ultimately redeeming the present' (Critchley 1998: 10). How can newness enter the world? Where may we look to find the resources for redeeming the present?"

Happy Easter

Our narcissi are still just blooming, despite what A E Houseman wrote about the Lent Lily dying on Easter Day.
We enjoyed going to church on this hopeful morning. It's interesting how the Orthodox tradition of saying "Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!" has found itself into many Protestant Easter liturgies. By which I probably mean even ones not put together my me! I always try to include it throughout the Easter season, it adds lift and a different frame to worship at this time of resurrection. It also adds a smile which to me is essential for resurrection worship. There's even a tradition of Easter Laughter in Germany. Banned by Pope Clement X according to information here, so another good reason to laugh at Easter tide.
Walking back from post service coffee and celebratory champagne I realised what a privilege it is in France to be able to walk to Protestant church from my home, how lucky I am to live where I do and how good it is to be locally connected and linked in.

On the way - a sermon and liturgy for Easter 5

This week we are praying for Somalia and Djibouti in the ecumenical prayer cycle. You can find the liturgy and my sermon here.
It is Holy Week this week for Christians who follow the Julian calendar and yet Christians who follow the Gregorian calendar have been singing alleluia and saying "Christ is risen" for over a month. This made me realise once more how deeply resurrection and bearing witness to it have to be rooted in the passion and in the suffering of the world.

An encouraging Emmaus meditation from Ted Karpf

“How foolish are you and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.”

Rev. Ted Karpf preached at a service for World Health Day this morning. Coming from the World Health Organization which is just a few hundred metres from the Ecumenical Centre chapel he reflected on how he had begun his international career as a WCC intern. He gave a cogent and passionate sermon on the challenges of recognizing the links between health and climate change and noted that this year marks 60 years of the WCC, the WHO and many UN institutions.
It was good for those of us currently working in the ecumenical centre to be linked in to our own history of engagement, campaigning and prophetic action on health and climate change and to link all of that to the pressing need for meaningful action in our own time.

Let's hope we will be wise enough to listen to all that prophets have spoken.

You can read the whole sermon here but here's a taster:

"Can you not call all of us to a reckoning of our spiritual and material values, which if left untended can lead us down the road of apocalypse and destruction? I call upon you in your capacities for justice and peace, for prophetic witness and faithful caretaking to be a model to the world, a light to the nations of what people can do to address environmental degradation and human consumption. Forget not your high calling and faithful witness. Let your hearts burn with demands for restoring to the creation to wholeness and shalom."

Peace be with you to incarnate the resurrection

My colleague Shanta Premawardhana preached an interactive Easter sermon on Monday (click on the link to read the sermon). Shanta began by greeting us with the words Salaam alleikkum and encouraging us to greet one another:
"Let me greet you with the words our Lord Jesus Christ used to greet his disciples when he appeared to them in the upper room: Salaam Aleikkum. If the risen Christ were to approach you in the guise of your Muslim neighbour, he might greet you in the same way. And of course, most of you know the correct response - Aleikkum Asalaam! Would you turn to you neighbour and say Salaam Aleikkum and respond with an Aliekkum Asalaam!"

This way of encouraging us to share Christ's peace with one another, made me think once more of how Christ's followers are called in some way to "incarnate" the resurrection. (I think my use of the word incarnate is a poor translation of the French incarner - probably the English should be embody.) Perhaps incarnation of the resurrection is what makes for the mission of God which Shanta speaks of later in the sermon.

Following the sermon we said an interesting affirmation of faith which included this:
"We believe in Jesus, the risen Christ -
who meets us on every path;
who greets us with respect, names and calms our fears,
and bids us walk and talk as
children of the Light;
who is always going before us into our workplace and playspace."

You can find the whole order of service and full text of the affirmaiton of faith here.

So, salaam aleikkum, peace be with you!

In-between ecumenical Easter

In recent years the celebration of Easter according to the Julian or Gregorian calendars has not been five weeks apart like this year. It's strange to be singing alleluia and yet know that many Orthodox brothers and sisters are still fasting. Four days after Orthodox Easter this year the western calendar will mark Ascenion day.
In coming years - 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2017 - the two calendars will celebrate EAster together but as Dagmar Heller wrote in 2001

"The fact that the two dates coincide in 2001, at the beginning of the new millenium, has raised the hope that this could be the start of a common celebration of the central event of our Christian faith every year. But at the same time it is already clear from the recent discussions taking place in the ecumenical movement, that a decision among the churches concerning a common date for Easter will not happen in the near future, although there is already a certain history on this topic and a proposed solution is on the table."

So we will just have to find a way through this inbetween time. One of the things I've appreciated about it is that it can also be a time to learn from other traditions. Even through Lent the resurrection grants hope and light.

Meanwhile this week my colleague Yvette Milosevic has been leading morning prayers which I've posted to the documents section. I particularly appreciated this prayer:

Prayer
Lord Jesus, bruised for and by our iniquities, risen for our salvation, please receive our prayers for all your world. Especially we pray this Easter for those members of your human family who are dying, and for all who are grieving their passing.

Wherever this day death arrives with the roar of bombs or the rattle of machine guns, come risen Christ Jesus;
Come quickly living God with your Easter light and salvation.

Wherever today death arrives with the malnutrition and disease of refugee camps, come risen Christ Jesus;
Come quickly living God, with your Easter light and salvation.

Wherever today death arrives with the assassins knife or the bullet of the hit man, come risen Christ Jesus;
Come quickly living God with your Easter light and salvation.

Wherever today death arrives with the swallowing of illegal drugs or the insertion of an injection needle, come risen Christ Jesus;
Come quickly living God with your Easter light and salvation.

Wherever death arrives today with the squeal of car tyres or the shouts of an alcoholic brawl, come risen Christ Jesus;
Come quickly living God with your Easter light and salvation.

Wherever death arrives today despite the best of medical care, and watched over by loved ones, come risen Christ Jesus;
Come quickly living God with your Easter light and salvation.

Whenever death arrives today as a most welcome friend to those whose bodies are wasted and who long to go home, come risen Christ Jesus;
Come quickly living God with your Easter light and salvation.

Wherever death has left in its wake desolate loved ones, desperate orphans, or angry people looking for revenge, come risen Christ Jesus;
Come quickly living God with your Easter light and salvation.

God of Easter, let it be written indelibly on our mind and soul, that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, nothing can sever us from your grace. Let is be so written that we awake each morning with faith and hope ingrained, and with love ready to flow through every deed we do, to the glory of your wonderful name!
Amen.

Resurrection

I have begun Easter Sunday morning by listening to a long interview with Desmond Tutu on the Something Understood programme on BBC Radio 4. I'm not normally a great fan of Mark Tully's continuity announcement approach to global spirituality but Tutu is always worth hearing. An icon of our age, you can listen again here.

And now I've been reading a review by Ziauddin Sardar in the Times online of Geza Vermes's book Resurrection. It shows why it is perhaps difficult for clergy who have studied the scholarship on the resurrection to always preach good Easter sermons - will have to see if mine from last year passes muster 12 months on. We'll nevertheless be off to church later and then have friends round for Easter lunch. However no Easter egg hunt more like a snowball fight in the garden. More snow has fallen overnight.

Here is how Sardar ends his article, I fear I may have think about buying this book too...

"But Christianity does not hinge solely on the claim that Jesus “defeated death”. One does not have to believe in literal, physical resurrection to be moved and influenced by the teachings of Jesus. Faith may involve a leap into the spiritual and metaphysical realm, but it cannot avoid evidence altogether. The worth of a faith is judged by how it makes good things happen, not by how it sticks to things that did not happen. And how much attention it gives to respectful and reverential critics such as Geza Vermes."

From Christmas to Easter with Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger is a Swiss typographer and artist. For Easter the Eglise Réformée de France has put this series of images called "From Christmas to Easter" on its webiste.
I really like the way the resurrection is echoed in the incarnation - and vice-versa; the way the theological idea of the work is developed like an alphabet but over 7 days (like creation perhaps?) rather than over 24 or 26 letters also interests me. I've become increasingly interested in the alphabet since starting calligraphy a decade ago - unfortunately I'm still a débutant.
Looking at Frutiger's images made me wonder about whether resurrection is a form of "ex-carnation" - or perhaps that's what ascension is.
The photos of the work are by my friend and ERF colleague Jérôme Cottin who was one of the founders of Protestantisme et Images, an association which tries to get art and images to be take more seriously within francophone Protestantism. These days he also lectures at the Roman Catholic university in Paris. Together with his wife Bettina who is also a minister and orginally from Berlin, they translated into French the letters between Bonhoeffer and his fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer.
Anyway, for some rather more erudite and thorough-going discussion than is available from my keyboard, and for review of the theology of resurrection (and much else besides) I really recommend Simon Barrow's recent postings on his Faith in Society blog. Always stimulating. Here are two tastes from his recent output which has been prolific both in quantity and quality:

"There is a terror to the Easter message, and it has nothing to do with resurrection as a 'get out clause'. We will come to that issue later. First, thanks to Rob Telford, I chanced upon Kim Fabricius's passionate Palm Sunday sermon, Lose Your Faith. There's a we bit of, um, overkill here, maybe (aagh... I can be very English), but the assault on sentimental religion and the recognition of Jesus' death as an assault on false gods, many of them perpetuated in his name, is sound. I have often described Christianity, rightly understood, as the most effective way of not believing the kind of nonsense perpetuated by so much religion, Christian religion included. But in the pity is also the possibility, the echo of a future not our own. That, rather than the consolation of magic, is where we en up later in the week." (You can read the whole post here)

This quote comes from a later post by Simon entitled Facing the crucified - and the crucifiers:
'In her excellent article Being on the side of the crucified, which will also appear in the Sewanee Theological Review, Savi Hensman raises questions highly appropriate to the narrative, message and calling of Good Friday. She asks:
"How highly do we prioritise the preservation of the current order and protection of existing patterns of wealth and privilege, which may benefit us individually and institutionally? In providing pastoral care to the privileged and powerful, are we able to remain detached from their outlook and encourage them to seek a higher good? Do we tend to adopt society’s values, dismissing as unimportant the hardship and injustice endured by the poor and marginalised, or are we bearers of good news even in bleak situations?"'

The earliest Mardigras and Easter since 1913

Easter is really early this year, you can read some of the history and background to why the date of Easter changes in an article by Jay Scott Newman here.
I should really have started by saying Easter is early in the western church, because this year as most years Christians will celebrate Easter on two different days. So the western date this year is March 23rd but the date in many Orthodox churches is April 27th. You'll need to understand things about the Gregorian and Julian calendars, the vernal equinox and the Jewish feast of Passover and also about how the moon and planets move.
Confusingly the western and eastern calendars sometimes work in such a way that Easter does fall at the same time, like last year and then again in 2010 and 2011.
My colleague Dagmar Heller from Germany has written a good background piece about the challenges and issues involved in trying to agree a common date for Easter you can it read it here.