Bishop Peter's Sermon preached at St Canice's Cathedral Kilkenny on Easter Sunday

It is with a real sense of joy and thanksgiving that I greet you in the name of our risen Lord and wish you and your families much joy in believing and the happiest of Easter Day’s and indeed, breaks.
If I were to put you on the spot and ask you to name your three favourite New Testament passages or verses, how would you answer ?
Don’t worry because such a question is, of course, rhetorical ! In short, I’m going to tell you a few of mine !
The first is from St Luke (2:7) – ‘And she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn’.
B.
It speaks of course of the birth of our Lord and its Christmas focus, with all that Christmas means for families and celebrations.
The second is from St Mark (15:25) – ‘And it was the third hour when they crucified him’.
This of course, speaks of the death of our Lord and the solemnity of Good Friday in the life of the christian and the Church.
The third is from St John (20:1) – ‘ Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalen came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb’.
C.
This is the best of the three for me because it points to the Easter gospel, the good news we celebrate and proclaim Sunday by Sunday, but especially this Day of days, this Easter Sunday.
Indeed, our Sunday by Sunday, day by day celebration and discipleship has its root and origin in today’s joy beyond measure.
I love the way the evangelist St John builds up the mood in preparing us for the discovery that ‘He is not here; he is risen !’
The mystery and the joy of the Easter proclamation are enfolded in this scene- setter of St John.
D.
We note the time: ‘early on the first day of the week’; we note the mood: ‘while it was still dark’;
We notice too that it is a woman who comes: ‘Mary Magdalene’, a woman of puzzling and yet profoundly faithful personality.
We note the scene: (she) ‘saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb’.
Her response is to turn on her heels and run to tell John and Peter that the body of Jesus has been stolen.
They return and discover the tomb’s emptiness, the linen cloths lying in separate parts of the tomb, and the body, the dead body of Jesus absent. The rest you could say is history and we gather this morning because of it.
E.
What we are celebrating today, and indeed at every eucharist, whether we gather on a Sunday or a weekday, is nothing more or less than the celebration of the good news of Easter:
Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. Alleluia !
As in the beginning, ’God created the heavens and the earth’, so through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the new creation breaks into our world of time and limitations.
In the raising from death of Jesus, God’s loving purposes revealed in his life and death, are affirmed; the whole of creation is called to newness of life.
New life and light in Christ, the second Adam, and not the darkness and death of the first Adam, is promised by this mighty act of God’s abiding love in and through creation.
F.
Old ways, old habits, old expectations are to vanish. Behold, God in Christ has done a new thing and by the Holy Spirit, continues his refreshing, transforming purposes amongst and within us today.
In spite of war in Iraq; in spite of prevarication on this island; in spite of mindless violence on our streets; there is a new world.
But not just out there, but in here and within all things; waiting to be discovered. The world truly is ‘charged with the grandeur of God’.
Discovered usually either through a glorious encounter of dazzling proportions, or through a real sense of darkness within, needing exposure to the light. Stone rolling away stuff.
G.
The resurrection of Jesus is God’s supreme re-creative action. It reshapes everything, precisely because, as the archbishop of Canterbury so helpfully reminds us, it doesn’t fit.
It doesn’t fit our way of thinking and expecting, acting and responding. It doesn’t fit our ‘small world’ with its set patterns and monotonous routines.
The resurrection of Jesus calls us to grow into a bigger world, God’s world of love and service, life through death.
The Living Lord calls us to newness of life; to grand adventures by grace. Let’s live our faith in such a spirit of joyfulness and risk. The Spirit is within us; why ? because the Lord is risen. Alleluia !