Easter Monday

1993 (Year A), 5 April (Easter Monday)

St Peter de Beauvoir Town 

This week, in church, we recall the passion of Christ. The central days. The most important days in the life of Jesus, and if we’re Christians, the most important days in the whole of creation. I come to them, as I always seem to do, in trepidation and confusion and I expect we all experience some of the same kinds of difficulties. Sometimes it just seems so remote from our ordinary life that it becomes unreal, almost irrelevant. In an effort to think ourselves back almost 2000 years our imaginations are stretched to breaking point.

And even if we are able to use our imagination to get back to those times we have to use other people’s recollections and imaginations to get back to Jesus. All the time the distance between us and God who is present in these events, seems to be growing.

How are we to think then, about what, when all is said and done is the crucial story in our shared faith? Now of course, I could spend the next few days getting us to think about the church’s teachings of what happened, but I guess that would just ensure that I was talking to myself from tonight onwards, as you all vote with your feet and decide not to come. I could spend time getting us to think about the suffering of Jesus and his crucifixion but it seems to me that this often leads to somewhat unhealthy thoughts as we begin to wallow in all the pain and grief of undeserved suffering.

There are times when our imagination seems to take over and we feel ourselves transported back in time. There are times when it works. We are closer to God. Doors are opened and we begin to understand something of the mystery of God’s saving love in Jesus. Whatever our response we still have to relate what happened those two thousand years ago in the passion to what happens now. The Passion has to mean something in Fermain Court, Hertford Road, De Beauvoir Place, otherwise it’s just what we’re doing is academic study, or worse, some self-indulgent interest in another person’s agony.

I think first of all we have to establish exactly who it was that hung on that cross. Now of course you will immediately say, ‘Well you great fool! It was Jesus.’ And you’d be right. But let me ask the question another way. Who do you think the Jewish authorities thought was hanging on the cross? Who did Pilate think was being condemned to death? Whose blood did the crowds bay for? Who did the disciples see hanging there? Who does the church see? And lastly who did Jesus think was there? Lots of questions. Some can perhaps never be answered satisfactorily, but even if they could each question would be answered differently. Mary’s son, would be one answer; My friend would be another; A Political Agitator; The Son of God; the Messiah; A Jewish Freedom fighter; A Slave; All those definitions would describe Jesus adequately – it just depends on your point of view – where you stand in relationship to Jesus. They are all true.

And to that list, which is by no means exhaustive can be added one more, which I would like us to think about now. The man who hung on the cross on that first Good Friday was a martyr. Jesus died the death of Mary’s son, he died the death of a slave, of a friend and he also died the death of a martyr.

The church of the martyrs is an ancient and honourable title. It describes the common destiny which the church shares with her Lord. The dictionary definition of a martyr is someone who voluntarily undergoes the penalty of death for refusing to renounce their faith. A witness. To be killed or to slayed by cruel death. All of those definitions can be accurately used for Jesus. Jesus was supremely a Martyr.

Why is it important? Firstly because I’ve never used the word to describe Jesus before. Secondly it has great implications because I think it will enable us to relate to the events of the passion more easily. I think we’ll see the great barrier of history begin to melt away.

There have been martyrs throughout the history of the church. Let’s look at just briefly now. Paul Schneider was born in 1897. He was a reformed pastor in the Protestant church. A member of the Hitler Youth had a fatal accident and was buried. At the service a leader of the local Hitler Youth rose to say that ‘Horst Wessel was now amongst the heavenly storm troopers.’ Schneider stood to protest. It led to his expulsion from his province.

Despite the expulsion he returned for the Harvest Festival that year. He was arrested and taken into Gestapo custody. He could’ve been granted release at any time had he agreed to recognise the expulsion order, but he felt unable to agree because to do so would’ve betrayed God’s charge to pastor his congregation.

In 1938 the prisoners in Buchenwald, where he was held, were ordered to salute the swastika every morning. Schneider refused on the grounds that it was idolatrous. He was put in the condemned cell from which he tried to preach to the prisoners as they took exercise in the prison yard. For thirteen months he was tortured until on 14 July 1939 he was murdered by a lethal injection.

He was a martyr. He had a firm faith and suffered death because of it. The basis of this faith was a call he felt he had from God and it evidently grew in strength in the months of his torture. He also felt that God must be obeyed more than any earthly powers. God must be obeyed not only in the realms of prayer but in the political sphere as well. He was not a passive martyr. He took his path freely and patiently. His martyrdom was an active passion. He chose it and chose not to stop it. In all this he mirrors the passion and the death of Jesus. I think even more is happening. The passion of Christ continues in him.

I think that has tremendous implications for all of us as we begin this Holy Week. It means that the passion is not a once and for all thing. It continues and if it’s true it brings it all dramatically closer to us. But you’ll have to wait for more until tomorrow.

All this may too seem to distance us from Jesus. Talk of martyrs when we’re not likely to be called in this way may not help. The crucial thing, I believe is that in each of these deaths, Christ is enduring the garden of Gethsemane and being re-crucified. For me, the passion comes that much nearer. Tomorrow I want to try and bring it even closer and look at events in our lives which take us right into the garden and to the foot of the cross. AMEN