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Next Sunday’s readings: Easter Day
by John Pridmore
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Jeremiah 31.1-6; Acts 10.34-43; Matthew 28.1-10 ON 16 FEBRUARY 1977, Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda had a meeting with President Idi Amin, whose murderous regime he had opposed outspokenly. After the meeting, the Archbishop was driven away, along with two government ministers. Uganda Radio announced that the three of them had been arrested, and the following morning it was stated that they had died in a car accident. In fact, they had been shot on the orders of Amin. A funeral service planned for the following Sunday was forbidden by the government, and the Archbishop's body was not released. Nevertheless, thousands gathered at the cathedral on Namirembe Hill, and the service went ahead around an open grave. Standing over the empty grave, Luwum's successor, Archbishop Wani, repeated the message of the angel that we hear this Easter Day: "He is not here. He is risen!" "He is not here. He is risen!" And, according to Matthew, the angel adds: "He is going ahead of you to Galilee." It is as it was when they set out together, when "Jesus went before them and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid" (Mark 10.32). The risen Jesus is ahead of us, and we must set out after him. The quest for the risen Jesus, like the quest of the historical Jesus, never ceases. Those who cheerfully claim to have "found" Jesus sooner or later discover that they have found someone else. So we do not haunt his tomb, for example by dwelling endlessly on the question of "what actually happened". The resurrection is not proved by pick and shovel. Certainly something wonderful happened on the first Easter Day. But faith in the resurrection is not insistence on a particular account of what took place. To seek the risen Christ is "to go ahead to Galilee". In a word - in the most precious of Christian words - it is to live in hope. It is more than 40 years since Jürgen Moltmann's thrilling Theology of Hope was published (SCM Press, new edition 2002) . It is one of the towering theological statements of the 20th century. In this great work, Moltmann argues that faith in the resurrection implies a new vision of human destiny. We know from Moltmann's recently-published autobiography that, given what he went through in the Second World War, he of all people might have been expected to cherish little hope for humanity (A Broad Place: An autobiography, Fortress Press, 2007). Yet his is not an escapist faith, the dream of "a happy land, far, far away". Not at all: "Christian hope", Moltmann writes, "sees in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands." "Those who hope in Christ", he continues, "can no longer put up with reality as it is. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present." What is this "promised future"? We stay with Moltmann a moment more. He insists we must turn to the prophets of what - using our insensitive shorthand - we call "the Old Testament". "In the gospel," he states, "the Old Testament history of promise finds more than a fulfilment that does away with it; it finds its future. All the promises of God in him are yea and in him Amen (2 Corinthians 1.20)." For example, not a jot or tittle of Jeremiah 31.1-6, our appointed Old Testament reading, shall pass away until all is accomplished. The resurrection of Jesus renews the prophet's specific promises, and the Church is committed to their fulfilment. So, by the light of Easter Day, we seek the peace of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Whether or not Janani Luwum had read Jürgen Moltmann, he understood that belief in the risen Christ entails a commitment to a better world, the new social order that Jesus called "the Kingdom of God". Such a commitment means a costly confrontation with the powers that be. For Janani Luwum, it meant martyrdom. As they gathered round the empty grave of their Archbishop, crucified and risen, they sang one hymn over and over again.
This was the song "the martyrs of Uganda" sang, the young men, commemorated in the Anglican calendar, who, some 90 years before Amin's tyrannous presidency, had borne witness before another tyrant, and whose blood was the seed of the Ugandan Church. They sang of another world, better than this one at its best. That world, too, is promised, and Moltmann will forgive us for sometimes pining for it. But - one world at a time - it is in this one, this Easter, that we must seek the risen Christ. Corrective note Principal Service Text of readings Jeremiah 31.1-6 Acts 10.34-43 34Peter began to speak to those assembled in the house of Cornelius. ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ – he is Lord of all. 37That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; 40but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’ Matthew 28.1-10
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