Acts 3: 12 - 19
When Peter saw this, he said to them: “Fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. 14 You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. 16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.
17 “Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. 18 But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. 19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,
Luke 24
36 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence.
44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
Jacqui and I recently visited Leicester.
Leicestershire is where we both grew up, and is where most of our family and friends still live, so the city holds memories for us both.
Going back to a place that once was home is a little like going back in time, only amidst all the things that are familiar some things have changed, so there you stand, reflecting on what has changed, and what has remained the same, in a place that was once your home, and as a consequence of these thoughts – reflecting on what has changed, and remained the same, about yourself.
The city of Leicester is a place of constant flux, it always has been. It is a city that since those industrious Victorians started ripping down and building up has been dismantled and re-mantled by every generation according to the latest ideals. The Victorians swept away most of pre-industrial Leicester in a tide of red brick, subsequently to be modernised by the well-meaning concrete and glass of the post war period, and then the commercially driven utilitarian developments of the last few decades. Into this fluxing architectural cityscape walk people from all over the world, colouring, and flavouring the city like a constantly turning kaleidoscope.
The place where you had your first date, or bought your first record, or went to school, may well no longer be there, sometimes whole streets disappear. I see that Leicester Cathedral has recently been remodelled to better accommodate King Richard III's bones…it seems even the past in Leicester disrupts and reforms the present.
That's all so different from my parishes in North Yorkshire, where the only acceptable form of change was slow decay. Even overly enthusiastic maintenance was looked up on suspiciously progressive.
It's not just the past associations of a place, seeing family and friends can also be a somewhat melancholy reminder of time passing. My nephews are all young men but in my mind they still should be children. That they can drive and get jobs and go off and live in London seems astonishing to me, and the two sisters who lived at home with me are in my mind permanently in their twenties, still breaking the hearts of hairy young men from the seventies. That they are closer to retirement age than teenage seems unbelievable, and of course all this causes me to perceive my own growing older.
Then there are those reminders of people whom we have loved and lost - my Father was a bread delivery man most of his life, and knew every street in Leicester. He was like a walking, talking Town map until he retired, but then the one way system was reorganised, seemingly in order to baffle him. The bakery where he worked all his life closed down not long after he retired, and eventually the building was knocked down, and a grey and orange B&Q put up in its stead. As the hymn says,
“Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.”
It would seem Time is king, and life is temporary, and all that we love and value is carried away by that great ever rolling stream.
To put theological words to these melancholy thoughts, our existence is temporal, as the Psalmist says,
“As for mortals, their days are like grass;
they flourish like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.”
What saves me from such melancholy thoughts is that Time is not king.
God is King, and life is not temporary, it is eternal, and I know these things to be true in part because of the resurrection.
The grave is where time, and the temporal nature of our existence, come together to let us know our place in the scheme of things, but Jesus stepped out of the grave so that we might perceive our true place in the divine order.
As the Apostle Paul writes, ‘Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed... then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?’’
After Jesus had fed the five thousand he told his disciples to gather up the crumbs of what was left, and so it will be at the end of time, all the holy things, all that flows from love, will be gathered up, even the smallest part, and transfigured in the presence of God.
Faith, hope, and love, do not end in the grave, they endure even to eternity.
In our individualistic culture we have made the crucifixion rather small, we say it is about how one may be saved, it is indeed about personal salvation, but it is bigger than that, it is about how we may be saved, we as a family, as a nation, as humanity, as the Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 1,
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
The resurrection is bigger even than the salvation of humanity, Paul tells us that the resurrection is about how God is restoring and redeeming all of creation from subjection to time and decay into everlasting life, that the resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of God’s plan to ‘reconcile to Himself all things.’
All things are included in God’s plan to bring about reconciliation and restoration, all things including the city of Leicester, both past and present, including the bakery where my father once worked, including my family both living and departed, and including me.
The impermanence of life is a disturbing sign of our part in all that is passing, the resurrection is a joyful sign of our part in all that is eternal, and a promise that God will restore all things. Just as death and resurrection transfigured the body of Jesus, so death and resurrection will transfigure all creation. Resurrection is not a return to the former state but a transformation of it. By the grace of God we pass through death to life eternal.
Now we see the fabric of existence as mortal, as frayed at the edges, worn out in patches, insubstantial…but if you hold it up to the light then through this worn fabric shines the glory of God made known in Jesus Christ, revealing eternity - the actual golden threaded fabric of heaven.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus enables us to see beyond all that is passing, enables us also to see that eternity breaks through in all kinds of places in our lives, to see that eternity breaks through in acts of loving kindness, that eternity breaks through in lives of faithful service, that eternity breaks through in the loving relationships of our family and friends, that eternity breaks through in all the good that we see and do, and that none of this is lost, that all is gathered in to the Father, our ever creative and re-creative God.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this is that God asks us to be an active part of His plan for all of creation to pass through death and resurrection into new life, you are asked not to be a passive witness of this great cosmic drama, but to be a part of it by following the Way of Jesus. The message of the resurrection is one of peace to your heart, and a call to action to pass on that peace to those around you, and to all creation.
In our gospel reading Jesus commissioned his disciples to proclaim “repentance and forgiveness of sins”, and told them that they would be “clothed with power from on high”, that is the Holy Spirit, and sent out to continue his work. They were commissioned, and empowered, and so are we as his disciples now. May the peace of Christ be with you, and may we live in the hope and joy of resurrection life.
Amen