Easter Day, 21 April 2019
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden, Eldroth
The writer Robert Macfarlane says that we are living in an age of ‘untimely surfacings' - of ‘unburials’, as he calls them. In this globally overheated era of ours the long-hidden dead are literally rising again from the earth.
Across the Arctic, ancient methane deposits are leaking through “windows” in the Earth opened by thawing permafrost. In the so-called “cursed fields” of northern Russia, permafrost melt is exposing 19th-century animal burial grounds containing naturally occurring anthrax spores; a 2016 outbreak infected 23 people and killed a child. Retreating glaciers are yielding the bodies of those engulfed by their ice many years before – the dead of the ongoing conflict in Kashmir, or the “White war” of 1915–18 in the Italian mountains. Near the peak of San Matteo, three Habsburg soldiers melted out of a serac at an altitude of 12,000ft, hanging upside down. At Camp One on Everest in 2017, after a period of unseasonal warmth, a mountaineer’s hand appeared, reaching out of the ice into which he had been frozen. Gold miners in the Yukon recently unearthed a 50,000-year-old wolf pup from the permafrost, eerily preserved right down to the curl of its upper lip. [1]
At the same time and for the same reason as these silent, strange resurrections a new spirit is emerging in our world - a spirit of yearning to reverse the destruction that humankind has wreaked on the earth, and to start over, begin again. This spirit is expressing itself through the mouths of children - like Greta Thunberg, the 15-year-old who told a UN climate conference that in the absence of global leadership on climate change, “the young people would have to take the responsibility [our leaders] should have taken long ago.” [2]
In this spirit the old and young gather together to advocate change: last weekend a former Archbishop of Canterbury sat on a pavement outside St Pauls Cathedral in a prayer vigil with dozens of others and At Marble Arch, Sheila Collins, from Cardiff, an 80-year-old member of Christian Climate Action, locked herself to the underside of the lorry. She said, “It’s very uncomfortable being locked under this lorry, but it’s nothing compared with the suffering that climate change is causing, and it’s a small price to pay if we can get the Government to act,” and she continued, “I do this for my grandchildren, as I worry what kind of a world they are going to be left with. If it means I get arrested, then so be it. When Jesus saw injustice, and the poor being exploited in the Temple, he wasn’t passive: he took action and drove out the money lenders.” [3]
This spirit at work in the world, I call it a resurrection spirit because it’s new life springing out of old, it’s humans breaking out of a place of decay to reach towards a new way of flourishing.
Of course, this resurrection spirit has been on earth for millennia. Its source, it’s spark, was in that moment in a Jerusalem garden when just one word was spoken: “Mary”. That was the moment that resurrection became real; that was the instant when the spirit of new life, renewal, was released into the world. Mary witnessed this death-defying life she’d found in Jesus. And she became the first resurrection person as she went out in that spirit and spread the good news to others. And since then countless others have embraced this spirit to become Resurrection People themselves.
In this month’s churches’ newsletter I wrote in praise of all Resurrection People, in celebration of those who never say die. [4] When I said ‘Resurrection People’ I meant those who have a zest for life: like George, an ex-parishioner of mine who once abseiled 100ft off a local viaduct to raise money for a hospice. He was then aged 91 and had had a triple heart bypass. To avoid any irksome health and safety niggles, on the abseil application form he’d put his age down as ‘Twenty-plus’. Resurrection People are indefatigable.
They are people who don’t give up easily: like my friend Adrian, a vicar in rural North Wales, who on the morning of a winter wedding opened his front door to find that the snow outside was waist deep. To ensure the wedding went ahead he coordinated a magnificent community effort. Over 30 people of all ages turned out to clear the road and remove two feet of snow from the church path; a local councillor borrowed a snowplough; the organist heroically arrived by thumbing two lifts, one of which was on a fire engine. The bride later said, 'There were people with shovels that I didn't even know!’ Yes, Resurrection People are unstoppable.
I’m thinking of those who have a terminal illness but who give their time and energy to supporting and counselling others who are ill themselves; or those who turn their losses into opportunities - like being made redundant later in life who pick themselves up and start a new kind of work altogether. I’m thinking of those who give their lives as medical professionals or as peace-keepers, negotiators, healers and reconcilers in conflicted parts of our country and the world. Educators who refuse to see anyone as a no-hoper, and open up opportunities their students never imagined they’d have. Resurrection People turn dead-endings into fresh starts.
Whether you regard the resurrection of Jesus as an event in history or a myth, it’s undeniable that it has released into the world a power surge of life, a power force for life which makes for the sort of never-say-die attitudes which are the impetus to make new beginnings possible. I think this power flows through us all, it’s the innate Jesus gene we’ve all inherited. Not all Resurrection People are believers - though all followers of Christ will be Resurrection People.
You are a Resurrection Person every time you display this spirit of new life in however a modest way, whenever you bring a smile or a blessing to another. You could be a Greta Thunberg or a Sheila Collins - but better still you’ll just be you, doing what you think is right in each moment, in response to the One who has done such a great thing for you.
The times we’re living through call for us to never say die. Where powerful forces combine to undercut the institutions which for generations have brought health, welfare, education and cohesion to our villages and towns, where the end of things is in the air: this is the time to activate the greater power latent in us to stand for life; to use all the gifts and character we have been given to create opportunities to make new beginnings possible. This is our Easter time.
Notes
[1] Robert Macfarlane, What lies beneath: Robert Macfarlane travels ‘Underland’. Guardian, 20 April 2019, a preview of his May 2019 book Underland.
[2] Damian Carrington, ‘Our leaders are like children,' school strike founder tells climate summit. Guardian, 4 December 2018.
[3] Jo Ware, Christian rebels join climate-action protests in London. Church Times, 15 April 2019.
[4] John Davies, This is the time for Resurrection People. 31 March 2019
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