Homily from the Parish Priest for Easter Sunday
Dear brothers and sisters,
First of all may I wish you, on behalf of the Jesuit community and whole Farm Street Team, a very blessed Easter. Thank you so much for coming today whether in person or online.
Yesterday evening we lit this Easter candle for the first time. Like the cross on Good Friday there is a special poignancy to this. The Easter candle – regardless of everything to do with the pandemic – is standing here on the sanctuary, a beacon of hope amid the relative pared down starkness of this year’s Easter services. We may not be able to sing, give the sign of peace, light each other’s candles, but, as the Church proclaims when this Easter candle is lit and blessed, this light burns brightly dispelling the darkness of this night. For me at least the sequence of these few days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday shines through so clearly this year, as the cross which we gazed on from a distance on Good Friday is now replaced by the Easter candle which will not go out but which will burn brightly throughout this long Easter Season and I pray herald our moving to a new stage of our journey as we begin to emerge from the pandemic with new hope.
The power of the light of Jesus’ rising which dispels every darkness in our lives and in our world. Because the mark of our faith as Christians is that Jesus’ death on the cross was not the end but rather a new the beginning for our world because in dying for us he has done away with the power of death for ever, he has destroyed the power of sin and evil forever, he has given us our freedom as the human race to rebuild a future of hope. His resurrection is far from a matter of personal spirituality – otherwise we might be quite happy to read the scriptures at home this weekend in our families or in our bubbles. We would not need Christian community. We would not need the Church. No, the resurrection is a cosmic event. The drama of the Easter story shows us that. We are not so much individual believers – we are an Easter people. A people whom God has loved from the beginning and who now dies for us and rises again so he can rise again in you and me as his ambassadors in a world which needs his message of hope and new life so very badly.
Easter Sunday is a day to rejoice in this truth, yes, even though for most of us it’s far from that simple. As human beings celebrating the resurrection and all it entails for us of course is not simple – indeed it wasn’t for the first followers of him. The women go first to the tomb – and then Peter – initial disbelief and doubt that this great miracle could have happened.
Well, maybe we can connect with them here for all sorts of valid and concrete reasons: we’re not sure we really need a faith to hold on to, or we’ve been hurt by institutional Christianity and others who bear the name of Christian and so don’t want to get too involved with the Church, we see so much death, sin, evil still in the world, where the powers of darkness have found footholds in our world. We see so much inequality in our society made so much clearer through the pandemic. The dark side of London life, perhaps through our city’s vastness and diversity in some ways a microcosm of society. Rough sleepers who do end up starving and shivering to death – we’ve encountered them this year despite all everyone is trying to do to bring everyone in; the explosion of foodbanks both in poorer parts of central London and in leafy suburbs, the seething underbelly of violence on estates, in schools, on our streets; in this part of London the evil of human trafficking as our response to the crisis of forced migration is exploited all the more - we see around these streets the stark contrast between extreme wealth and destitution and homelessness. And in the Church herself it is true that the powers of darkness too have infiltrated what is good and holy through our complicity with the evil of abuse, abuse of human beings, abuse of power.
Today is a new start again for the Christian community at a time of crisis, at a crossroads for our world. Today the new light of Christ gives us new hope in the midst of whatever darkness we experience. We want to say this evening, if you are here and unsure why, or you are here for the first time in a while, we want to say “welcome”. You may have been brought up to believe you had to believe and behave before you belonged. We want to say this evening, as we welcome the light of Christ into our community again, everyone belongs first, before right belief, before we behave in a perfect manner – after all who among us can say we are perfect? If you’re struggling with a complicated relationship break-up, with issues to do with sexual orientation, if you’re not sure you believe or not, we want to meet you and get to know you, and say “welcome”. And we have a programme here called Landings which focuses on compassionate listening as we tell our stories in a safe environment, not with clergy but with members of our community who have been away and have returned. Do take some cards with you – we have request for information and prayer cards at the exits - with details of how to connect either for yourself or perhaps for someone you know who might be thinking of returning to the practice of faith.
But above all, as we stand in the presence of this newly blessed Easter candle, may we go out into our world with much hope this evening. We have been through a collective time of trauma, marked by so many conflicting emotions - fear, grief, frustration, anger. Jesus now wants to enter into this space with the power of his love and call us forward to proclaim through our lives a new humanity built on his Kingdom’s values: justice, truth, peace, love. May we be filled this Easter with new hope so we may build a more human future for our world in crisis being called again today to new life.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ