Kippax Uniting Church
8.30 Service, Sunday 8 September 2002
Sermon – “Easter in Spring”
Robert Tulip
Romans 13: 8-14
Let’s pray. Loving God, may your transforming grace enter
our hearts, that we may come to know you and do your
will. Amen
In planning for this
period over the next few months leading up to Advent, one of the themes our
worship group agreed on was Easter in Spring. Today,
with spring well underway, here we are – Easter in Spring. I love the Canberra seasons – the dry hot
summer, the beautiful colours of autumn, even the cold frosts in winter which
we are now gradually seeing less of, and of course the new life bursting forth
in spring.
Easter is
traditionally identified with spring, with the resurrection theme of new life
reflected in the popular symbols of eggs, bunnies, flowers, etc. Just for this reason of celebrating new life,
it’s easy to see why Easter was such an important celebration in the old
European farming villages which depended entirely on their local land for
food. After the end of a long cold
winter, when much of the food stored at the previous harvest had been eaten,
people had given things up for Lent, partly because this was often a time of
want. It was so important to see the new
life quickening in the soil, with promise of growth and renewal.
The Easter story of
the Passion of Christ, with the new life of the resurrection emerging from the
tragic death of the cross, fitted directly into the natural rhythms of the
seasons in old
Our modern technology
has allowed us to some extent to pretend we have escaped from the constraints
of natural cycles, but of course we are ultimately still just as dependent on
nature as ever, as the current drought and our broader ecological concerns are
showing. In earlier times this
dependency was much more immediate. I believe that we can better understand our
own faith if we consider how in earlier times the message of faith reflected the
natural cycles of the year.
In reflecting now on
this morning’s Bible reading from
Easter is on the first
Sunday after the first full moon after the March equinox. I’m not quite sure why the moon is used to
set the date, but it does provide the happy coincidence that there is always a
full moon for the holiday. The equinox,
March 22, is the date when the day and night are equal. For us today, we are marking our Easter in Spring a few weeks early, as the nights will still be longer
than the day until September 22.
Briefly digressing, I
was interested recently to read of a link between Christmas and Easter, and why
Christmas is on 25 December. The
December solstice – for us the longest day of the year and for the northern
hemisphere the shortest day – is on December 22. The reason December 22 is called solstice is
apparently that the sun rises at the same point on the horizon for three days
from Dec 22 to 25, so the sun ‘stands still’.
This ‘standing still’ of the sun on the shortest days of the year
symbolizes the death of the old year. Christmas is the day when the days start
to get longer again, and the sun begins its journey towards the long days of
summer. The birth of Jesus is celebrated
at the birthday of the sun, symbolizing new life. The three days ‘standing still’ of the sun at
the solstice can also remind us of Jesus’ three days in the tomb after his
death on the cross. Similarly, the new
beginning of the natural year at Christmas is like the new life of Easter
marked by the resurrection. In
It can be complicated
in
In
To illustrate how the
seasons are an important theme in the Bible, I’d like to share with you an idea
from the story of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22. John tells us his vision of the holy city
coming down from heaven like a new bride bedecked with jewels. At the centre of the holy city is the crystal
fountain of the water of life, and the tree of life with twelve fruits, one for
each month. None of us know where or
when the new Jerusalem will come, which is why Paul
tells us to be alert and wakeful in the reading we heard today from his Letter
to the Romans. Anyway, I sometimes
imagine the holy city as a castle in the air, like in one of the Star Wars
movies. We don’t know where the holy
city will arrive, so it could be located over sea or air, in north or
south. Lets
imagine just for arguments sake that the new Jerusalem will be in the southern
hemisphere, for example at the exact opposite point on our planet from the old
I would like now to
turn to how our reading today from Romans 13 refers back to the risen Christ
and forward to his return.
Firstly, may I say how
very special Paul’s Letter to the Romans has been for me in the formation of my
own faith. In
my younger days when I was studying at University I confess I went through
periods when I was quite arrogant and skeptical about religion. I have always been deeply interested in
science, logic and reason, and for some time I felt these were incompatible
with Christianity. I still can’t accept
beliefs that have been proven impossible by science, and I still think it is
essential that our beliefs should be logical.
However, reading Romans was the thing that helped me to see that
Christianity can be entirely compatible with logic, and that the arrogance of
the secular scientific worldview leaves out central parts of our human
story. For example, I used to think that
the resurrection was incompatible with science, but now, having thought about
the way Paul presents it in Romans, I am open to the
possibility that there was something unique about Jesus Christ that actually
enabled him to triumph over the grave.
In Romans, Paul’s
powerful and clear intellect provides a compelling explanation of why the cross
of Christ and the love of God must be central to our understanding of meaning
and ethics. I first read Paul’s letter
to the Romans when I was writing a philosophy essay at University on ecology
and Christianity. My initial goal was to
say that the church has had a negative impact on our understanding of the
environment, but I ended up with quite a different perspective. In my research I happened to come across the
saying in Romans 8:21 that the creation shall be delivered from the bondage of
corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. In thinking through the implications of this
claim by Paul, I came to a sense of the great truth of faith that our
relationship with God is the central grounding issue for our salvation. Any ecological perspectives, including the
themes I have mentioned today about the rhythm of the natural year, need to be
placed within this context of grace. As Paul says, we must worship the Creator
rather than the creation, and to that I would add that our respect and love for
the Creator is made real and deep by seeing how God is revealed in the
creation.
Everything Paul writes
is suffused by the sense that he is an instrument of the power of God made
known through Christ. This is especially
so in our reading today from Romans 13, centred on the statement that love is
the fulfilling of the law, and the call to walk in the light. The risen Christ is the inspiration for these
ideas. Paul is sustained by the
transformation that was worked in him by his encounter with the risen Christ on
the
Paul goes on in Romans
8 to tell us that those who are in Christ Jesus walk not after the flesh but
after the spirit, which is the only source of life, peace and liberty. It is important that we are not simplistic in
our understanding of what Paul means here.
I know that historically parts of the church have had a tendency to
identify ‘flesh’ rather broadly with ‘nature’, and to see salvation as
requiring an escape from the world.
Against this view, as mentioned earlier Paul himself
says, like the Psalmist, that God is revealed in nature. Similarly, the great statement of John 3:17 tells us that God sent Christ not to condemn the world but
to save it.
When Paul tells us in
Romans 13 to make no provision for the flesh, I think it is important to
understand that this means our lives and actions should be based on a broader view
of what is pleasing to God, rather than on meeting our individual selfish
desires in isolation. As I said earlier,
the cross shows that God will triumph over all limited partial views. In Jesus’ day, the
So once again, Romans
13. Following the Risen Lord, Paul tells
us to love our neighbour as ourself, to cast off the works of darkness and walk
decently as though it were already day.
The theologian Karl Barth wrote a commentary on the Epistle to the
Romans in which he describes the text we heard this morning as ‘the great
positive possibility’. I will conclude
now with some of Barth’s comments. The
central theme of our text is love. Barth
says “we define love as the great positive possibility because in it there is
brought to light the revolutionary aspect of all ethical behaviour, and because
it is truloy concerned with the denial and breaking up of the existing
order. Love is the outpouring of the
spirit, the reality by which we know God.
Love your neighbour. Other people
remind us of our own createdness, our own lost state, our own sin, and our own
death. Do we, in other people, hear the
voice of the One? In Christ, the turning
point from question to answer, from death to life, I am not only one with God,
but, because one with God, one also with the neighbour. Love is always the disclosing of the one in
the other. Expecting nothing, love has
reached the goal already. Because it sets
up no idol, love demolishes every idol, addressing itself without fear of
contradiction to the one true God. This
relentless, impelling earnestness of the command of love is why Paul tells us
love is the fulfilling of the law. To
love is to have been touched by the freedom of God. In this great positive possibility we relate
time to eternity, pointing to the victory which has occurred, does occur and
will occur in Christ.” Amen
Paul tells us that our
love of neighbour and our faith in God require us to wake from sleep. Let us now join in celebration of this call
by singing the hymn from JS Bach, Sleepers Wake.