Easter Day
9:30am Eucharist
1 Corinthians 15.19–26
Luke 24.1-12
Sunday 20 April 2025
©Suzanne Grimmett
“Christianity is a live wire, a lightning strike through the world.” (Lamorna Ash)
The events of the last few days have taken us through all the emotions. As we gaze at the cross, we might see there the God who suffers with us, not immune from the pain of the world. But if we are content to leave God there- suffering with the rest of humanity and indeed with all creation, where is the hope? In the sermon on Good Friday Richard Browning made that clear- there can be no hope if Jesus remains on the cross or buried dead in the tomb. If the final answer to the evil and suffering in the world is that God is there, suffering with the abused and oppressed, then the abused and oppressed are going to continue to suffer. With such theology we might be also lulled into an acceptance of suffering- or at least of the suffering of some.
One who has provided some artistic provocation challenging this idea is Warwick Thornton, a Kaytetye man born and raised on Arrente country in Alice Springs. He is also the cinematographer known for scripting and directing the award-winning films, Samson & Delilah (2009) and Sweet Country (2017). In an art installation entitled, Stranded, the artist is depicted suspended on a fluorescent cross, and at one moment is seen to be yawning. Thornton comments in response to this moment;
“Well, look, the poor bloke’s been stuck up there for, what, 2000 odd years. And those Christians won’t let him down, poor bugger; they’re the mob keeping him up there. Can’t you just bring him down and he can sit on the chair with us, rather than him being up there? Time to pull him down and he can sit in the pews with us.” [1]
This casual yawn challenges the idea that God present in the suffering is that final word. The idea of God coming down to be sitting amongst the pews with us might sound radical for a moment until you realise that for resurrection people, it is absolutely orthodox. Easter Day means that Christ is no longer nailed to the cross or lost to the dead but is alive in God and within and amongst us, sitting here in these pews, if you like.
Christ on the cross speaks a powerful and comforting word of God’s solidarity with all the suffering we encounter personally or have seen on this year’s news. But to have that as our only understanding not only ignores the lightning strike of Easter Day, but suggests that evil will always triumph. There is an inevitability about the apparent victories of evil. The inevitably of those with power and fear, with money and status, with hard hearts and overweening self-interest generally getting exactly what they want- at least for a time. There was an inevitability about Jesus ending up on the cross in the path he took of love and service, courage and nonviolence. He challenged those in power and those with power used it to punish and silence him. It happened to Jesus, and it has happened again and again through history to the present day.
But today is Easter Day- a day that disrupts all the inevitable victories of power over vulnerability, of violence over non-violence. Today says that even though all seems lost, there is something deeper going on. While destruction of peace and of peoples and of creation seems unable to be stopped, the veil has been lifted. These horrors which seem like the end are revealing the utter failure of evil.
I am not sure we talk about evil enough. While we do need to ensure we do not become unhealthily fearful or fixated, I think that much of the Christian church has shied away from thinking about it, despite it being everywhere in our liturgy and hymns. There is an equal danger in not being aware of evil at all, as we can, in our inattention, allow evil systems to gain power and influence, oppressing and defacing humanity. Through a careless disregard for such energies we can wander into pathways that take us away from the life and freedom for which we are born and for which Christ died to win. The Church has always used the language of victory to explain what we are celebrating on Easter morning.
We can find this victory within ourselves in being set free from patterns of sin and brokenness, the mistakes we make which mess up our own lives and the lives of others. All that would bring us shame and hopelessness has fallen to the ground with Jesus, entombed in the fertile earth and summoned by the dawn of this Easter Day to a life released in love and forgiveness. And of course, the last enemy to be defeated is death, as St Paul proclaims so triumphantly in the First Letter to the Corinthians.
This is the lightning strike- the live wire through the world- and the world has never been the same again. And we are invited into this encounter to become resurrection people, changed forever like the terrified women at the tomb who ran off to share their joy and amazement that light and love had triumphed over the darkness and despair which had seemed so total and so permanent.
There have been many dark ages of human history, and looking at the world in our times would surely challenge any belief in human progress and technology bringing peace and harmony. This week on ANZAC Day we will again remember another dark time- when the carnage of world wars made a lie of any who believed human civilisation to be on a path of continuous progress and greater enlightenment. In reflecting on such terrible events in our past, we cannot help but be faced with questions about why such suffering continues and where God is to be found. They are the sorts of questions you may have brought to the cross on Good Friday, perhaps finding real comfort in the Jesus who suffers with all who suffer. But on this Easter Day, we can recognise with hope that while evil may appear to be winning, there is a deeper truth at work that can give us fresh hope that love, ultimately, is the power that will overcome all.
Let me close with one personal story about this glimpse of the deeper truth and living reality of Christ as told by my grandfather, Cyril (Scott) Grimmett. At dawn in the French village of Harbonnieres on the 10 August 1918 during the Battle of the Somme my grandfather was waiting in the infantry line before the word came to attack. He describes a strange premonition that he would, in his words ‘collect something’ that morning. He writes;
“As the word came to attack, I got up and suddenly on my right, I had the clearest and most wonderful vision of Christ. I won’t describe it more or tell of my profound feelings at that time but let me say this much. I don’t drink. I was sane, healthy, thinking clearly and this was no hallucination. To this day I can still see that vision as clearly as I ever did, and to this day it affects me just as deeply and that is almost 60 years ago. …anyway, as I went into the battle for Harbonnieres, I was uplifted in spirit, and completely unafraid. I didn’t care if a bullet should cut me down- I was and still am, assured of Christ….”
My grandfather was wounded later that day. The vision, if believed, still does not offer meaning to that terrible suffering and loss of life and neither does it give any promise that the humanly created evils of war and destruction of peoples and of the planet in our time will end. But the vision might be added, I think, to the great cloud of witnesses who have eyes to see the alternative power present in the world, giving us courage for the work that is ours to do. A power that suffered violence and yet offered no violence…that was apparently defeated with ease and yet on Easter morning was shown to have never been overcome.
There is a deeper and greater power at work in the world. This is the energy running through the universe; a power unknown and incomprehensible to evil and all the agents of the evil one. This is the power of God in Christ, revealed in love and self-offering, that pours out forgiveness and births new beginnings, promising a resurrection life, both now and in the age to come.
This day, we hope.
On this day, we find new courage to live and to love, to forgive and be forgiven.
This day, knowing that it changes everything, we proclaim with joy;
Christ is Risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
[1] Warwick Thornton as quoted in Garry Worete Deverell, ‘‘The Poor Bugger Has Suffered Enough’: Vernon Ah Kee, Warwick Thornton, and the Unmaking of a White Jesus’, in Unsettling Theologies: Memory, Identity and Place, (Palgrave Macmillan: 2024), 31.