Sermon: Unbinding Death

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

This is my first sermon since Holy Week, and so I would like to reflect with you on an aspect of Easter faith which has been in my mind over recent weeks.

A few weeks ago, I represented this Cathedral at the funeral of the Bishop Kevin Dunn, Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle at St Mary's Cathedral in Newcastle. Bishop Kevin died at the age of 57, having been bishop for only a few years; it was a poignant and moving occasion. But I was particularly struck by the conclusion to the sermon preached by Archbishop Vincent Nicholls of Birmingham, the diocese from which Bishop Kevin had come to Newcastle. The Gospel at the funeral Mass was the account of the raising of Lazarus from St John's Gospel. Archbishop Nicholls talked of having visited Kevin Dunn and seeing all the tubes, lines and appliances that were sustaining him up to the end of his life. So the conclusion to the Gospel reading had special poignancy, ‘Unbind him, and let him go free'.

‘Unbind him and let him go free.' For to all of us who share an Easter faith, death is not the disaster that it seems to be to so many people in our generation. It is not hopeless. And hopeless death is growing in our society.  In certain places, humanist funerals are becoming very popular. I eaves-dropped on one some time ago at the Crematorium. And I have to admit that the ‘celebrant', as I think he was called, did a pretty good job; he was articulate, compassionate and he had done his homework about the deceased. But I have to say, the event (it could not be called a service as such) was hopeless; hopeless in the sense, of having no hope. Here was yet another ‘human machine', parts of which had become worn out beyond repair.  And while there was sympathy and kind words, and fine sentiments that the person in question would ‘live on' in our memories, in reality, death was the absolute victor: stark, final, terrible; except that that was the one thing that was deliberately avoided.  The emphasis was on ‘living on' but without any religious frame-work to give that any real meaning. As such, it was well-meant, but colluded with our society's refusal to acknowledge just how terrible the crisis of death is - give me St Paul's language any day - ‘the last enemy to be destroyed will be death.' 

‘Unbind him, and let him go free'. There is a beautiful prayer by Janet Morley in the Common Worship: Funeral Service: it goes:

            O God, who brought us to birth,

            and in whose arms we die,

            in our grief and shock

            contain and comfort us;

            embrace us with your love,

            give us hope in our confusion

            and grace to let go into new life;

            through Jesus Christ. Amen.

‘Grace to let go into new life.'  ‘Unbind him, and let him go free'.

And what I want us to consider this morning, is the way in which the Gospel narratives themselves, seems to understand the Lord's resurrection was indeed the ending of constraints, the freeing of limits, the opening up of new vistas and possibilities.

This is a common factor in the resurrection accounts of St Luke and the 4^th Gospel, which suggests that both evangelists were drawing from a common theme in the traditions that were circulating about the resurrection appearances.  It is certainly stronger in John, but clearly present in Luke.  So let me begin with Luke. Luke's first resurrection appearance is the story at Emmaus. There is something utterly mysterious about this passage. The two travellers are clearly disciples, and yet, despite walking with and talking to Jesus for some time, they do not recognise him. Only at the table, at the Eucharistic actions, are their eyes opened and they recognise him. And then mysteriously, Jesus vanished, aphantos in Greek - he became invisible. Their reaction - they were startled and terrified- shows that both the revelation, the disclosure, and its withdrawal, were utterly ‘other', deeply mysterious. And yet, to show continuity, Jesus is shown as a man of flesh and blood, who has real wounds, and can eat broiled fish.

Similarly in John, the Magdalene does not recognise the risen Christ, while later the disciples fail to recognise the mysterious stranger on the shore.  That second narrative goes as far to say that none of them dared ask Jesus who he was - they knew it was the Lord. John more than once stress that the doors were locked for fear, and yet Jesus came and stood among them.

Indeed, there is something extraordinary in John's narrative, that when Peter and the beloved disciple first ran to the tomb, it was the sight of the grave-clothes lying that made that disciple believe. What was it about grave-clothes that was so convincing?  ‘Unbind him, and let him go free'; perhaps the fact that it was evident that the grave-clothes could not limit him, just as the stone which entombed him was no limit either.

It is as if these deeply mysterious passages are illustrations of the fact that for Jesus, and therefore for us, his dying and rising mean a profound un-binding, a startling release, a letting go into new life; so he is the same Christ, and yet, he is changed. So tightly-bound grave-clothes, huge stones, locked doors are no barrier to the God of resurrection.  And in John, this un-binding has ever deeper significance, by his great stress on he Holy Spirit. Throughout the Gospel, the Spirit could not be given because Jesus was not yet glorified. At the summit of his glorification, lifted high on the cross, having cried out  It is accomplished, the narrative continues, ‘he bowed his head and handed over the Spirit - not his Spirit but the Spirit - and so the first action of the risen Christ on Easter Day is to breathe on his disciples: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit'.  Just as at the beginning God breathed into Adam and gave him the breath of life, so the Spirit of new creation, of resurrection is breathed into mortal bodies, that they might put on immortality through the Spirit who can never die.

This helps me to live hopefully. For there are constraints all around us.  Yes, the ultimate constraint of a godly man bound by tubes and monitors and drips in the bold attempt to head off a deeply-rooted infection.  Or the constraints of ageing, for some physical, or for others, mental and psychological, or the constraints that arise from sheer weariness, from burdens or memories that have been carried for far too long.

Or within the ‘still, sad music of humanity', the lives impaired and constrained by accident, or violence, or war, or any fruit of gross human sin, and the limitations imposed on them and also on those who care for them and love them.

Or the countless millions of people who through circumstance of life, have never reached their full potential, who never had opportunities to use their creative gifts, their skills, their intellect, or who have placed their own ambitions and hopes second for the sake of others, whose lives exemplify that phrase ‘living sacrifice' that we use at the Communion.

Or indeed, the constraints, we all feel: all that we would love to do, want to do, hope to do, if only there was time, resources, vision; and so all that frustrates us because we think that there will never be a way out, that for every step forward we have then to take two steps back. And then the constraints of human sin, in ourselves and in others - so that even the best falls short and there simply is no perfection.

‘Unbind him, and let him go free'.  Give us grace to let go into new life'

This past few days, another good friend of mine, a priest of this diocese, died suddenly at the age of 59, not very old by today's standards, and still, from our human perspective with so much to give, to share, to enjoy. ‘Lord, let me know my end, and the number of days....behold thou hast made my days as it were a span long, and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee' (Psalm 39). ‘In the midst of life we are in death'. And yet, if Jesus' death has led to so much life, then I have to bow before the wisdom of God and say, as was said of Bishop Dunn ‘unbind him and let him go free'.

I love the fact that in Easter Week, we read the Song of Songs, that beautiful and sensuous love-song from the Old Testament set in the Spring, which, of course, celebrates human love, but which the Church has seen as a type of the Resurrection on that Spring day in Joseph's garden. I quote:

The voice of my beloved!

Look, he comes,

leaping over the mountains,

bounding over the hills.

 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.

Look, there he stands,

behind our wall,

gazing in at the windows,

looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me,

‘Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away;

for now the winter is passed,

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time for singing has come,

and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,

and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise my love, my fair one and come away.

A gazelle, leaping; new life and fruitfulness abounding; the gorgeous scent of new creation. 

‘Unbind him, and let him go free'.