Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter

Sunday 18th April 2004

Preached by Rev Brian Parker

Living the Resurrection


When a doctor or medical scientist discovers a cure for an incurable disease like cancer the imperative will be to take that cure to the world.

The medical profession must know about it and be trained to use it.

The cure will be there but one man cannot deliver it to all the world. A corps of doctors and teams of helpers must work and act as agents.

According to Professor William Barclay that is what the Church is to Jesus Christ.

So when the Risen Lord commissioned the disciples to continue his work of revelation and reconciliation he was saying that he needed the Church.

This was what Paul meant when he described the Church as ‘The Body of Christ’.

When Jesus said ‘I am sending you’ – he was counting on the Church to teach what he had taught, to speak his words and to do his work in a divided and dark world.

This divine commission was delivered to a group of frightened individuals who were probably trying to get out of it all. They had seen Jesus crucified and they were convinced they would be next.

But as someone put it: ‘the church was not left to live forever in the upper room: it was sent into all the world’.

The fact that it went with such conviction and authority is a testament in itself to the resurrection of Jesus.

And the joy of the disciples at the sight of the Risen Lord wasn’t about feeling good and relieved and ecstatic. Their joy was more about knowing that all that he had told them was true.

This was an overpowering realisation that compelled them to respond to his call and to bring the Good News of God working out his loving purposes of peace and goodwill among men.

At that early stage in the formation of the Church Jesus made them real Christians.

The Light had called forth new points of light.

Historians tell us that the resurrection of our Lord is better attested than any other fact in history.

He was seen alive eight times after he rose again and on one occasion by some 500 people.

Matthew Arnold said: “ I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort than the great sign which God has given us, that Christ died and rose again from the dead’.

And so this historic fact, this central truth of Christianity – “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain” – compels each one of us to live out our faith with optimism and confidence.


Of course we can’t solve every problem either as ‘The Body of Christ’ or as individual points of light.

Nevertheless the reality of the resurrection means that we share in the continuing work of Christ where we are, here and now. “I send you”.

It took time for Thomas to accept that. He was a natural pessimist but very courageous. When he went to Jerusalem he expected to die with Jesus.

After the crucifixion he withdrew from the fellowship of the disciples. He was alone with his sorrow and despair.

That was his mistake – to choose loneliness rather than to share his burden with his trusted friends and with Christ.

But he had wonderful virtues. In his journey back to faith he refused to say he understood what he did not understand. He refused to say he believed what he did not believe.

Tennyson applauded such virtue:

“There lies more faith in honest doubt
Believe me, than in half the creeds.”

Glib faith was not for Thomas. He would never still his doubts by pretending that they did not exist. He had to be sure and he had to count the cost.

When Christ helped him see the truth his response was total. “My Lord and My God”.

Christ continues to help us on our faith journey.

The journalist Malcolm Muggeridge recognised his need for such help.

He said: “Faith, like loyalty is seldom a cut and dried thing. It ebbs and flows, fluctuates with particular circumstances and with advancing age.

“ Like a mountain it is seldom won by frontal assault, however spirited and determined; instead one clambers about the circumference,

“Searching out a support here and a toehold there, occasionally pulling oneself up to a slightly more elevated plateau where the clouds are less dense and the summit less hidden,

“But no less often slipping back, clawing at loose shale in search of a grip, sometimes finding a stay and sometimes plunging into a chasm of doubt from which there seems no way back up.”

Now nearly 2000 years on believers continue on that journey of faith sustained by Christ’s real presence in their lives.

And for us the realities of lives of faith are as much evidence of Christ’s presence as was his standing before Thomas.

So where is the Risen Christ in today’s world?

Where else but in words of reconciliation, in gestures of forgiveness, in works of love, in acts of compassion and in the helping hand.

In your words, your deeds, your love, your help – as members of the Body of Christ – as points of light.

In such ‘fullness of living’ evil cannot have the last word and despair cannot finally triumph, bitterness and hatred cannot corrode and destroy.

For the truth is that by the grace of God each one of us may live the Resurrection just where we are now.

The hymn writer Christopher Ellis writes:

“So let us go, intent to seek and find,
Living this hope that God is always near.
Sharing and trusting, let us live his love,
That all the world may say –‘The Lord is here’.