Images of Jesus
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Acts 10:34-43; Mark 16:1-8
Every so often I hear something that I think might turn up on Overheardrews, where a heady mix of the things students say ends up on Instagram. (I don’t necessarily recommend that any parents here today have a peek.) Anyway, I felt this on Friday night, for example, when I’m pretty sure I heard a student say, Stop running, Jesus. And when I looked up, there indeed was someone running, a third year student of Latin and Spanish who usually goes by a different name. It was only a little later, during our Good Friday service, when I realised said student was singing the role of Jesus in the St John Passion by Victoria, that I worked out what was going on.
In some ways, this was only one more image of Jesus in a week which explored a number of images of Jesus in Chapel services. From Monday to Friday we focussed on a different depiction of Christ in this chapel in stained glass or mosaics. It was a life in five pictures:
Jesus being baptised by John in the river Jordan, inaugurating his ministry, identifying with our humanity (mosaic behind the communion-table);
Jesus calming the storm, offering comfort and challenge to the struggles we face (the stained glass right here);
Jesus praying in anguish on the night before he died, desperate not to drink the cup of suffering before him (a small image tucked into the glass behind me);
Jesus sharing a last supper with his friends, offering himself in food and drink (appropriately, decorating the front of the table where communion is shared);
Jesus put to death on a cross, humiliated, yet embracing a whole mixed-up, hostile world (the central image in the mosaics behind the table).
These are wonderful 20th Century reflections on the life of Jesus, but rooted in the stories of scripture. Peter’s sermon given in Caesarea, which we heard read earlier, touches on a similar journey. He describes how God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit – in his baptism. He depicts Jesus going about, doing good, for God was with him – as in calming the storm. And he recounts Jesus being put to death by being hanged on a tree – his description of the crucifixion. For Peter too, Jesus is seen in many, overlapping images.
But that was last week. What of today, Easter Day? What is today’s image of Jesus? Surely it’s obvious: the first line we sang together was: Jesus Christ is risen today! The story of his resurrection is familiar to many here in so many ways.
Jesus was crucified, dead and buried. The hopes of his friends had ended in shock, grief and fear. They’d moved into that other time, that most of us, maybe almost all of us have experienced, following the death of someone close to us. Ordinary stuff is laid aside. We are given time off work, an extension on that assignment. All our time and energy is focussed on loss and grief, on preparing for the funeral. Sam, Bill and I in the Chaplaincy know that well. Over this semester, we have sat with families, friends and colleagues of a student or staff member who has died, with them in that extraordinary time.
Two thousand years later, it’s not hard to imagine how those women felt that morning, named by Mark as Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. They were in that strange time of grief, when their only aim was honouring the one they had lost, and doing what needed to be done for his body. They had been at the cross, and they had come to his grave. They had lost other people, surely, in their lives, and they knew what duty expected; the rite of anointing, to assuage their grief in a small, small way.
Jesus, they’d been forced to accept, seemed just one more human, one more revolutionary prophet who’d had a sudden flowering, inspiring a ragtag knot of followers – but whose life had been snuffed out, and with it his message and his meaning. He was heading for oblivion, though Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome would have surely recalled him for rest of their lives.
And then, we know what is coming, but which was the most bewildering, gut-wrenching shock to them – a young man said to them, He has been raised; he is not here. And he showed them where Jesus’ body had been laid. It was an empty space. Hallelujah! Yes – but where, according to Mark, is the image of the risen Jesus? The young man in white says, “You will see him.” But in this, the original ending of Mark, they don’t see him. The image is of an empty place, and empty tomb. There is no body, dead or alive again. There is no appearance of the risen Christ. And Mark ends his work with these words, So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
It strikes me that this ending seems somehow apt for the year we have had. Fear seems so natural.
Fear for the people of Gaza, adults, students, teenagers, children experiencing hunger, pain, fear and trauma that is beyond the experience of most people anywhere else.
Fear for the hostages plucked from Israel in October.
Fear for any possibility of co-existence, of reconciliation, of living together in a part of the world we explore in the very stories we have heard – Jerusalem, the Holy Land.
Fear for the people of Ukraine and for prospects for greater freedom in Russia.
Fear for our planet, and for a liveable future for vulnerable communities affected by climate change.
Fear for our world in a year of elections, with increasing doubt that we have the will and ability to choose leaders who truly care for the environment, for peace, for those in need.
Fear for our own community, our own lives – experiencing so much anxiety, so little peace of mind, so much anger, so little give and take.
And, this year especially, fear that we will be overtaken by AI – and before you ask, I declare that this sermon was written without help or hindrance from ChatGPT. Though you might prefer it if it had.
“You will see him,” said the young man. But I wonder how many people here see not the risen Jesus but the absence of his life in our world, an emptiness where there should be hope. It’s hard to sense that risen presence; it may be hard to believe that God is with us.
But you know, I think it was always that way. We always think this is the worst of times. Yet later, when we look back, we remember its joys too. Alongside the dispiriting list of fears I just gave out, we may also remember the singing of Chapel Choir, a joyful evening ceilidh dancing, a brilliant film (I recommend Poor Things though Barbie has its moments), a terrific encounter on the tennis court, laughter with friends, who knows, poring over the latest scarcely credible posts on Overheardrews, an evening with the cat on our lap, falling in love, travelling to somewhere magical, commitment to people caught up in the cost of living crisis, making a difference as an activist.
They went through horrors in the past too: dictators and famines, plagues and poverty in body and spirit – and many kept the faith. They believed they would see Jesus, that God was there, that he was guiding them in their lives, blessing them with fruitfulness for others. And so, could I suggest this Easter that we too keep the faith? It’s always easier to give up, to throw up our hands and let this flawed world make its dismal way to hell. But something has brought us here, to hear the story, a story without guarantees that everything’s going to be perfect. But there are grounds for hope.
Reproduced on the cover of today’s order of service, though the picture is a bit fuzzy, is the Second World War Memorial Window, unveiled in 1950. Designed by William Wilson, who taught in the Edinburgh School of Art, the window’s central figure is the risen Christ. You might think it peculiar that in this Scottish University Chapel Jesus holds the English flag. But in fact medieval and Renaissance images of the risen Jesus often portray him holding a flag – usually a red cross on a white background, occasionally a white cross on a red ground. And if you look closely you can see the marks of his wounds on his feet and hands. This was no easy victory. Stop running, Jesus – but he didn’t run away – he accepted the sin and suffering of the world in the wounds still present in his body. This is an image of Jesus who faced the hostility of fear, anger and political-religious brutality, and gave himself up to death in integrity and love. He did not give up. God did not give up. As we sang earlier:
to hostile harm God gave embrace.
And in raising Jesus:
death undermined, hope now born.
Yes, there is much to fear, but there are deep, wonderful grounds for hope.
In conclusion, I hope you have a lovely rest of this Easter Day, overindulging perhaps if you had given something up for Lent. You are welcome to return here for Evensong, overhearing some beautiful music from Chapel Choir to round off the day.
And maybe someone will find the time to post online later today what they overheard in St Andrews this morning, a couple of lines conveying the most profound image of Jesus we could possibly hope for –
Lo! Jesus meets us, risen from the tomb,
lovingly he greets us, scatters fear and gloom.
Go on – why not? And have a very Happy Easter!
END