Dear Friends
Christ is risen! Our joy!
Christ is risen! Our delight!
Christ is risen! The source of hope within us!
Christ is risen! The defeat of Death, Sin and Idolatry is assured!
Christ is risen! We are born again to new life!
Christ is risen! The Powers of this Age cower in fear!
Christ is risen! The Kingdom has been revealed!
We come, on this last day of Pascha, to the end of the fervency of our Paschal joy. The Resurrection remains for us integral to our lives—in all we do should have the risen Christ in our hearts—but it becomes for us an inner certitude rather than an outward display, we must make the content of Pascha not only be what we say with our lips but be effectual in our lives. As a Wedding Feast forms a key part of a marriage yet a married couple cannot live their lives as if they are still at the banquet, so too our initiation into the Lord’s Death and Resurrection cannot remain the sole content of our lives of Faithfulness.
Having experienced Heaven we must come back down to Earth, not that we return to what is earthly but that our experience of Heaven makes us want to transform this Earth into the Heavenly Realm, that we cultivate this Earth and transform this small plot into an expression of Heaven.
Tomorrow we celebrate the Great Feast of the Ascension. We are told, immediately before the Ascension,
And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, ‘which,’ he said, ‘you have heard from me;
Acts 1:4–5, 8
for John truly baptised with water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. …
[Y]ou shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’
And so we wait. Christ is not gone, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them,” (Matthew 18:20) but we experience him in a different way. We rejoice that the Lord takes our humanity to the righthand side of the Father and we wait for the Comforter in joyful expectation, we look for the coming of the Spirit.
And being here, today, we affirm on this last day, we make our song, we sing the Gospel, we proclaim our Faith,
Christ is risen from the dead
Trampling down Death by death
And upon those in the tombs
Bestowing life.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
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Sermon
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
Christ is risen!
Just prior to today’s Gospel reading, the beloved disciple records for us an event inside the Temple between Christ and leaders of the Jews. And the Lord said to them,
“Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I ᴀᴍ.” (John 8:58)
He refers to himself by the divine name revealed to Moses (see Exodus 3:14). And the Jewish leaders are scandalised by this and take up stones to throw at him: but the Lord, we are told, “hid himself,” not as a coward since he still remained there and even went through the midst of them (see John 8:59), rather because his time had not yet come that he should be lifted up.
And coming outside he finds me. I have been blind from my birth, blind to the realities of God, blind to the blessings I have received, blind to the love of God and the love of neighbour. And the disciples ask what appears to us a strange question about me, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” But this is not strange, for the disciples are learning from the Lord. Two weeks ago, they heard the Lord say, when he had healed the Paralytic, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” (John 5:14) Lest we believe that physical infirmity is always a direct result of a person’s sin, or that I was born already guilty of any sin, or that children are guilty of their parents’ sins, for our sake the Apostle John records for us the response of the Lord, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.” My infirmity, my sickness, my afflictions can be for me a way that the Lord is glorified if I allow.
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Read last Sunday’s Sermon, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.
Archive of Past Sermons.
Services this week
Friday 26th May
Discussion on the Book of Numbers, 8 pm
Online only
Sunday 28th May
Divine Liturgy, 10 am
At St Francis’ Hall, Eastleigh
Online session is via Google Meet: please get in contact for the details.
Please join us: all are welcome, come and see.
Attending Church
We meet at St Francis’ Hall, Nightingale Avenue, Eastleigh, SO50 9JA. Come and See.
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Yes, absolutely. Offer yourselves to the Lord: pray! Make available to him all your talents and ask him how he would like you to use them — listen for his reply.
Your prayers!
With love in the risen Christ
Fr Alexander
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