A New Way of Living
Easter Day. Fr Peter Hunter preaches on the unparalleled liberation made possible by the Resurrection.
When I visit my mother, I watch TV with her, and one of the shows we have watched together is about families who want to relocate from Britain to Australia. The programme follows their efforts to find a new house, new jobs, schools for the children, and so on.
I must admit that the bit I was most interested in knowing about is one the programme doesn’t cover: I want to know how those families find their new country. I think they go to Australia thinking it will solve some of their problems, but I have to say I am sceptical, because the person who is common to all their problems is going with them! You cannot move to Australia without taking yourself.
Easter is about a radical kind of liberation, a liberation to a newness of life which is meant to allow us to leave behind our problematic selves, to become who God has always made us to be. Ultimately, it is about the overcoming of every human limitation, even death itself. It’s a transformation which is hard to even begin to grasp, because every other kind of liberation we experience is within certain bounds. It is a liberation into a new set of circumstances, but those new circumstances have their own limitations.
I was born in the bad old days of Apartheid South Africa, and was privileged to play a tiny part in the liberation of my country. But of course, the new South Africa has its problems. Some people like to point out to me how troubled the country is, and certainly it has its limitations.
But it’s important to see that the problems of the new South Africa are of a radically different kind than those of Apartheid South Africa. Now, South Africa has the kind of problems that many developing countries do. There is poverty, and crime, and corruption, and AIDS, and many other problems besides, but they are problems which are to be dealt with by the people together. The problems are no longer directly shaped by the fundamental exclusion of the largest part of the population from political life.
I think that the liberation of South Africa, imperfect as it is, shows us something important about the liberation we celebrate at Easter. Any kind of genuine liberation shares in the victory we celebrate at Easter, though obviously only partially. And one of the things we see is that liberation doesn’t simply change the outcomes of the old processes. It creates a new set of possibilities for life, new ways of living. In the Christian case, we are not simply forgiven, as if that meant being set back on the road to God or something. We are liberated, creating a new way of living.
The sacraments, and the life of the Church in general, lead us beyond our old ways. They are not simply ways of setting things right with God. They are part of a new humanity to which we have all been joined by our baptism.
‘Christ, my hope, is risen.’ In other words, Christ has, by love, transcended every limitation of human life, even death. And for those of us who are joined to him by our baptisms, that hope of transcendence dawns on our own lives too. What does that mean? That every limitation of our own lives has already been overcome.
It doesn’t mean that all the details change for us immediately. I find it amusing, and here in Jamaica we would particularly approve of the fact that St John makes it clear to us he won the race to the tomb against St Peter, something wonderfully trivial and normal. But when he got there, everything changed. His whole life meant something new. He saw, and he believed.
And he records his own seeing, so that we who cannot see can nevertheless likewise believe. The daily details of our lives may be similar, but we have been liberated, given a new life which is rooted in the new life of the Resurrection. Our lives have changed forever. That is Christian hope.
Readings: Acts 10:34,37-43 | Colossians 3:1-4 | John 20:1-9
Image courtesy of James Emery (CC BY 2.0)
