This is a sermon preached at St Nicholas', Eydon, on Sunday 24 April 2022

The occasion was the Second Sunday of Easter

You can listen to a recording of the sermon here.

THE FIRST FOUR ACTS

What time is it?

Do you get a bit thrown when the clocks ‘spring forward’ each year?...

Or during holiday time?  Different rhythms?...

Pre-Dawn Vigil….a great Church tradition…for Easter Night…

Tom Wright, biog…

Illustration at Easter Vigil service, many years ago, referring to time much earlier in his life…

Nearly thirty years ago, my family and I lived in Cambridge. One day I went, with my then four-year-old daughter, to visit a man who had been with my brother in India not long before. This involved going into one of the Colleges, across a strange little footbridge, round an ancient courtyard, through some twisty passageways, and up two or three flights of old wooden stairs. It was winter, and though it was only about tea-time it was quite dark, with twinkling lights here and there to guide us. I had explained to my daughter that we were going to see this man who had known Uncle Stephen in India. So off we went, across the bridge, round the courtyard, through the passageways, under the twinkling lights, and up the staircase. As we got to the top of the stairs, my daughter, whose eyes had been getting wider and wider, looked up at me, breathless and excited, and asked, ‘Are we in India now?’

And the answer was, of course, No, we’re not in India, but someone who has come from India is here, and he will tell us all about it. And it’s only just dawned on me, all these years later, that it’s not a bad illustration for what Easter is all about, and for what we’re doing up at this – well, I was going to say ungodly, but part of the point is that it’s a thoroughly godly hour. The question of Easter, and of baptism and confirmation, is: are we in God’s promised future now? And the answer is, No, but someone has come back to us from God’s future, and if we stick with him we’ll belong to that future as well and will learn how to be part of it. At Easter, Jesus came to us from God’s future, from the new world which God has begun to make. In baptism we become part of that same future, and in confirmation we stand up and say Yes, I’m part of God’s future world, and I pray for God’s Spirit to help me make it a reality in my life and in the world around me.

I am indebted to Bishop Tom for many things, and so I thanks him for this opener for my sermon today.  

And I intend to borrow another of his tremendous and exciting insights, to help us explore the ‘where are we and what should we be doing now?’ questions which, I have come to understand, lie at the heart of the Easter message.

If Bishop Tom has, here, helped us to picture Jesus as the one who has brought us the first report of God’s New Time into our Old Time, then I wish to use the picture of a play being enacted, and to place both Jesus and ourselves in the timeline of the action.

Let us start by considering the classical structure of a play, as conceived and explored by Aristotle, and developed by the Greek Tragedians and near-perfected by William Shakespeare, imitated ever since…

  FIVE ACTS

  SCENE SET IN ACT 1

  PROBLEM ELABORATED IN ACT 2

  KEY REALISATIONS AND IDENTIFICATIONS IN ACT 3

  THE RESOLVING ACTION IN ACT 4

  THE UNRAVELLING, WORKING-THROUGH, ‘DENOUEMENT’ IN ACT 5

I wish for us to start to see the story of God’s story with His people as a five-act play.  And to see Jesus and ourselves in the action.  I want for us to know where we are in the story, and how to act now!

And so, to my exploration…

  ACT 1 – GOD’S CREATIVE ACT – GOOD…VERY GOOD…

  ACT 2 – THE HUMAN STORY OF SIN AND HURT… A SELF-DELUDING MISDIRECTION, INSPITE OF MANY COVENANTS…

  ACT 3 – THE CRISIS OF THE EXILE – MAKING SENSE OF THE STORY SO FAR – STARTING TO DREAM OF A RESTORATION

  ACT 4 – THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF JESUS – PULLING TOGETHER ALL THE PICTURES AND STORYLINES FROM ACTS 1 THROUGH 3 & CULMINATING IN THE RESURRECTION WHICH BEGINS THE RESTORATION DREAMED OF BUT WHICH LEAVES US IN…

  ACT 5 – THE LIFE OF GOD’S PROJECT FOR BUILDING A NEW CREATION IN THE SHAPE OF HIS SON, JESUS.  AND THE BUILDERS OF THIS NEW WORLD?  GOD, ULTIMATELY, BUT ONLY THROUGH THE WORK AND ACTIONS OF THOSE NOW ON STAGE…US!

So, how do we act our parts in this last Act of God’s great drama of restoring and bringing a New Creation into being?

In the name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  +AMEN