Sermon preached at Evensong on Easter Day 2026

It is Easter Day, Christ is Risen, the new creation bursts into life, and the disciples barred the doors. It is Easter Day and Jennifer Massmann-Adams comes to the Abbey to be our Canon Steward. She will be responsible for our ministry of welcome. We think that matters, but the first Christian community locked themselves in. This afternoon Jennifer has promised to embrace the true religion of Christ with her whole heart. She did that in Latin, because God speaks Latin. On the basis of that promise, we give Jennifer the keys. Doors are for opening.

It is Easter, let’s be clear about what that means. Our gospel reading was eager for clarity. When we want to be precise, when the facts are really important, we tell the time. Most of us have heard a recording of the brittle voice of Neville Chamberlain in September 1939, about a note handed to the German government saying,

… unless we heard from them by 11 0'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. 

Time is precision. Do you know The Phantom Tolbooth?

Once there was no time at all, and people found it very inconvenient. They never knew whether they were eating lunch or dinner, and they were always missing trains…time was invented… to help them get to places when they should.

So, let’s notice, this afternoon that our reading began with the evangelist, St John, telling the time and getting to the place he should.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house … were locked

The morning of Easter Day has been a carnival of confusion. Christ rose from the dead but no one saw it. Peter and John, two disciples not backwards in coming forward, were lost for words and went home to think about it. Mary Magdalene had the good sense to stay where she was but mistook Christ for the gardener. Corrected and informed, she struggled, quite literally, to grasp the truth. Easter morning is baffling and the instruments of measurement all fail. 

The evening though, is another thing altogether. 

‘When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week’.

John’s gospel is often interested in the time. He talks about ‘my day’, ‘that day’, or the ‘last day’. He insists we ask, ‘What day is it?’ He looks forward to one day in particular: On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

This gospel is eager for that day, and now here we are. That day is the day the Kingdom comes. John is telling us: ‘There is Monday, and there is Tuesday; there is March and April, and then there is that Day. We have come to that day. A moment in time certainly, you can mark the day in a calendar and yet also a day of difference. On that day the future has begun.

John labours the point. He tells us that it was ‘evening on that day’ and adds that it was also, ‘the first day of the week’. That’s a theological version of a drum roll and clashing cymbals. In Genesis, the first day signals the beginning of creation. As the first week in the bible drew near to its close, God would look at what he had done and know that the act of creation is complete. John knows the story and tells us that Jesus completes his work and dies on a cross saying ‘it is accomplished’, on a Friday. There follows a Sabbath, a day of rest. Then a new week begins, and John demands our attention as he tells us that we are indeed at the first day of the week’. Things change; a new creation begins. Easter. That day. Now. Here.

But… the disciples, dizzy and disorientated with the churn of events and terrified for their own safety, have locked the doors. They are afraid. It is fear that draws the bolts and turns the key. 

and the doors of the house … were locked for fear of the Jews, John 20:19 

Fear of the Jews, fear of the city, fear of the neighbour, fear of difference and division and, above all, fear of the future. So, the doors were bolted.

If you know pictures of the resurrection you may know images of Christ clambering from the tomb, physically escaping death. That is often the story we tell. There are plenty of examples in the National Gallery. In the Eastern church though they do it differently. The presiding image there is the Anastasis. It means ‘raising up’ or ‘standing again’. In these pictures Christ stands over the shattered doors of hell and beneath him are scattered all the shattered locks and discarded keys of our old confinement. Easter as liberation, Easter as breaking out. Easter as future in the new creation.

And here, this afternoon, appointed to embrace the future and tell that story, is Jennifer. Installed in the Abbey to preach truth and proclaim the new creation. She is here to be witness and ambassador to our Easter faith and she is here to hold the door open. We could hardly have found a better candidate. Jennifer’s ministry has crisscrossed boundaries and borders. Reading her CV, I felt the need to lie down briefly. She makes me realize I have never got out much. In Cambridge I studied for a PHD and I worked on… Cambridge. The man next door was a geographer and worked on coral atolls. He always looked more healthy than I did. 

Jennifer comes to us from God’s own University in Cambridge, where she has been chaplain at Peterhouse, but she arrives in this church of nations and Commonwealth as a citizen of the world. She has been Priest Associate in Frankfurt, an interim priest on an army base in Heidelberg and an Associate Chaplain at Princeton. She has a BA from Chapel Hill in North Carolina and a Master’s from Duke. She has studied at Bossey in Switzerland and at Bonn. This woman is not one for hiding behind locked doors. She is a scholar, a historian and theologian, she is a fine preacher, and she is a pastor with a gift for friendship and wise counsel.

It is a curious thing when you interview clergy that they occasionally confuse the nature of the entertainment. You really rather hope that they believe in God, but they can, I fear, stress the fact that what they believe in is themselves. As my sainted former confessor pointed out, too many clergy are pirate kings and queens. Not Jennifer. She is modest and self-effacing. Asking about her, I was told that she is kind, and the kindness does not waver under pressure. That is a gift I admire. There is more. She is not, you may have noticed, the tallest of priests. I was at Gloucester when Michael Perham (5’5”) arrived as bishop to replace David Bentley (6’1”). Processing out I heard a Gloucester matron ask, ‘Is that all we get for our money?’ We all soon found that Micheal had a presence that commanded attention. I am not sure Jennifer always quite believes it, but she too has that presence, an authority, a resilience, and depth of understanding, that command a room. That is what I met in interview, and I am delighted to have her company now.

She joins this College on Easter Day. She comes to open doors and to speak the good news of the gospel. At Easter Christ breaks into the midst of speechlessness and grief and speaks, "Peace be with you." He breaks out of the tomb, and no locks will ever hold it shut again. Fear is sent packing; the doors are opened and will not shut. Peace is proclaimed. Not a question, ‘Are you feeling peaceful?’ Not an observation, ‘There is peace around’. This is a command ‘Peace be with you’. What a day to join the Abbey what a vocation to inhabit, to hold open the door and to speak the peace that abides, here, with Jennifer may we proclaim life in the face of death, forgiveness in the face of betrayal, and speak peace.