March 23, 2008
(The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day)

A Moment of Grace

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

Acts 10:34-43  •  Colossians 3:1-4  •  Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24  •  John 20:1-18
(From The Lectionary Page)

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

A glorious Easter Day to you all.  We have walked the Way of the Cross, and encountered again the power of God’s unconditional love.  Given the threat of snow flurries, it seems worthwhile to note that nine months from tomorrow is Christmas Eve.

Sometime Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey observed one Easter:

In Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Jean Valjean, the convict on parole, goes to the bishop's house in exhaustion and desperation seeking help and shelter. Valjean is a hardened criminal and Hugo adds: 'Hatred was his only weapon and he resolved to sharpen it in prison and carry it with him when he left'.

The kindly bishop gladly gives the help the prisoner needs and Valjean eats with him. As he does so he notes the glittering silver cutlery. That night he goes to sleep in a real bed between clean sheets for the first time for many years. Early the next morning he rises very early but his avarice for the silver cutlery makes him stuff it in his knapsack and away he runs.

Later Valjean is captured and brought back by the gendarmes. The bishop is asked to identify both the silver and the criminal. He feigns surprise at the capture and says: 'Yes, certainly Valjean was here as my guest last night and indeed I gave him the silver. 'But', he says, turning to the convict, 'Had you forgotten that I gave you the candlesticks as well? They're silver like the rest and worth a good two hundred francs. Did you forget to take them?'

And then when the gendarmes had gone, quite nonplussed, the bishop says gently to the convict: 'Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to what is evil but to what is good. I have bought your soul to save it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.'

In that encounter Hugo's Les Miserables offers us the finest description of 'grace' outside the New Testament. That moment of 'grace' set Valjean on his way to redemption and wholeness.

Grace is central to the message of Easter Day because it is all about new beginnings, fresh starts and hopes for a new world. We may even see a parallel in the experience of Mary Magdalene who was made a new person by Jesus Christ. Her triumphant cry: 'I have seen the Lord!' was picked up by the experience of the other disciples who entered into the story of the resurrection. It has echoed down the centuries to our day and age.

How do you and I enter into the Easter story? How may Easter be for us more than an historical event? More than an echo from the past? How may it affect the way we live our lives and approach our death?

The hatred that filled the heart of the unconverted convict Valjean is all too sadly evident in our world. G.K.Chesterton said shortly after the first world war: 'The doctrine of original sin is the only directly observable Christian doctrine'. In other words, sin is so much more prevalent that love and forgiveness. Following the second world war, Winston Churchill said: 'Man's control has extended over practically every sphere - except himself'.

And a character from the movie Hannah and Her Sisters says: 'For all my education, accomplishments and so-called wisdom, I cannot fathom my own heart'. The Easter story offers a good place to begin such an understanding. It is all about God's grace, active in forgiveness and renewing in mercy.

But grace is never cheap or simple. It takes us into the love of God so central to the Easter story and into the 'death-resurrection journey' of the Christian life. 'Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies' said Jesus ' it remains a grain of wheat, but if it dies it produces much fruit'. And the day Valjean met the word of forgiveness from the bishop and took it deeply within himself, he died. He died to the old nature; he died to the person he once was. He died to hatred and bitterness. He became -- even though it took a lifetime for him to realize it -- a new person.

This is how Easter moves from being a historical event to a real experience in the lives of us all -- when we are prepared to die and live by grace, with grace and through grace. That grace which tells us beyond words that we are like Valjean. Each of us is in need of forgiveness and renewal.

The challenge is, of course, that tomorrow the world will look just about the same as it did this Easter morning. Our world will still be wracked by bloodshed and conflict. Today we sing our Easter anthems but tomorrow violence, poverty, homelessness, greed, hatred, oppression and injustice will continue to plague our world. But although we may not be able to prove that the songs sung in thousands of churches, and the candles we have lit, have penetrated the dark corners where the message of resurrection is so sorely needed, there is every reason for the songs to continue and the candles to shine. The light will not be extinguished; it will not be snuffed out. Far from it. We do not give in to darkness, because God's grace so wonderfully given to us in the victory of Jesus Christ leads us forward into new lives. And each one of us has a part to play in God's fight against evil.

'Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness'. And Easter, the heart of the Church's faith and worship -- indeed, the entire reason for the existence of the Church -- sweeps each follower of Jesus Christ into its thrilling and inspiring message.

And what about us? It is no doubt the case that our experiences of God's grace have not been remotely like Valjean's but that doesn't mean they are less important. Christians are those people who through the ages, have said 'yes' to God's moments of grace and, in many different ways, have exclaimed with Mary Magdalene: 'I have seen the Lord!'

(from the 1999 Easter Day sermon of Archbishop Carey)