Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on Easter Day 2026

A group of cub scouts were being shown round Bristol Cathedral, polite but slightly bored. My enthusiasm for history and architecture was not really infectious. So, I took them up on the roof. They liked the roof. Then we climbed the tower which has a steep spiral staircase. I led the way and grasped the rope that serves as a handrail. ‘Where does that go? A small cub enquired. ‘That rope, where does it go, what is at the other end?’ I explained the rope went up to the top of the tower. There was a pause while he took this in. To be fair, it is a big tower. Then he cautiously stretched out a hand and touched the rope, as if it might possibly be electric. And for five minutes everything everywhere, was collapsed into that rope, as he followed it all the way to the top of the tower. He was transfixed. He did not find God that day, but he did find a rope. 

I had already overplayed my hand with arches and apses; this was not the moment to get technical with cubs again. I never did explain that here was a theological insight. To this day (I guess) he does not know about the thirteenth century scholar Duns Scotus who urged us to pay attention to the character, the essence of ordinary things – a tree, a table, a rope. Understand the uniqueness, the ‘thisness’, of a thing and you might glimpse the God who creates everything. Pay attention, says the theologian, look for the encounter. Reality matters.

Reality matters. We need this rope and we need Duns Scotus this morning, because we have a problem. At least I have a problem, and it is a problem with easter hymns. If I am strictly honest, I have two problems with Easter hymns. My first problem is that I sing like a walrus. So, while you lift your voices in praise and song, I have to whisper lest, around me, grown men weep. That means, of course, that I pay less attention to the curious tune that I alone can hear, but give all my attention to the words. Which is where the second problem arises. Easter hymns all begin so well. I love the opening lines: Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son, or Jesus Christ is Risen today. Spot on, full marks. Easter hymns begin by noticing the moment. They pay attention. Christ lives and that changes everything. That is the great Easter truth. The kingdom comes and it is here.

My difficulty starts around verse three. At that point the hymns stop concentrating on what is happening here and leap into the far future. It is like the tiresome relative who has read the detective story you have just started reading and has to tell you that it is brilliant and the bishop, or the butler, did it. Frodo does destroy the ring, Christopher Robin grows up and goes to school, or (spoiler alert) Jesus will ascend to heaven. These hymns cannot stay where they are meant to be, in the Easter Garden. Instead, they pack their bags and with barely a backward glance they board the bus to heaven. Thine be the glory, begs wonderfully, make us more than conquerors through thy deathless love, but never stops to wonder what that might mean this afternoon, or tomorrow. Just moments later we have all gone to heaven - bring us safe through Jordan to thy home above. These hymns build castles in the air. They do not look to the reality, the ‘hereness’ and ‘thisness’ of resurrection.

We have seen the glory of the risen Christ, what will we do with that today and tomorrow? The point of Easter should be to ask what it means to be an Easter people in Tesco, or on the bus to work. And still the hymns rush us through the pearly gates. This great feast today is an invitation to get real and to see life where we looked for death, hope where we found only tragedy, love and relationship where we imagined only loss. That is the promise of Easter, a Kingdom breaking in here and now. And we need the words for that.

We have just heard John describe that first Easter morning. He wrote about bewilderment, confusion, and described disciples struggling hard to understand. Mary Magdalene early in the morning. In the dark. Baffled. Then, rushing feet, Peter and John staring into an empty tomb, being puzzled and rushing off again. Then Mary again, not knowing the risen Christ, struggling with names, and clinging to him, grasping the truth she knew once before, not knowing that this world made new. 

‘Can you see?’ That is the question St John keeps asking. Will Thomas really see? Will Peter love Christ? The resurrection does not ask us to gaze up into the clouds in misty rapture. The Book of Acts actually begins with two white-robed figures forbidding that, 

Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? Acts 1:11 

We are in danger of making the gospel a tragedy turned into comedy. Act I – sad ending, disaster on Golgotha, and Act II where we suddenly and improbably all go to heaven. The gospel is not a two act drama, it is one and the same story. It is the same Christ who suffers, dies and rises. He demands the same attention today as he asked of us at the foot of the cross. There and here, on Good Friday and on Easter Day, we are challenged to see God revealed in our agony and God revealed in our absolute conviction that he will - and we will - rise. That body, this place, these relationships. We must pay attention and find the words for our amazement.

Our place is with Mary, Thomas, and Peter stepping back into the world they knew, with this new truth burning within. It is all wondering and word-mongering as they try to come to terms with the brave, bright reality. It is grasping the rope that reaches almost unbelievably all the way. ‘Look the living God is here’. Bank Holiday Monday really should not find us massaging the crick in our necks from sky gazing. Philip Toynbee once asked a priest, man who had been an engineer, why he got ordained. He replied it was the first pool he had stepped into where he could not feel the bottom. That is a good answer, it is an Easter answer, for people feeling their way into this truth reaching for sunglasses because the light is suddenly so bright. 

Pay attention, learn the language of wonder.

We began this morning with a cub scout and a rope. We stumbled into a great theological truth with Duns Scotus. And it is Easter - the season of buy get one free. So, we finish with yet another theologian Meister Eckhart (who died in 1328). Duns Scotus remember wanted us, to attend to what is real. Eckhart knew that doing that we would step into a world of wonder. It is what Peter, Thomas and Mary had to learn, as they looked and learned to believe. God’s glory beggars the imagination and breaks the mould. The truth about God is a mystery beyond finding out. Easter is an adventure with vocabulary. You and I cannot bear the glory and sheer, staggering possibility that is our Easter God. We struggle with words. Meister Eckhart explained that it will be like that from now on in. We will make discoveries and then make more. You and I will need to spend our lives learning and letting go as we strike out for deeper water. We will take leave of the toys we played with. We must even let go of the rope if ever we are to come to what is greater and more glorious. That cub scout was right; the rope was marvellous - but there is more. There is more even than Westminster Abbey and this choir and Easter Day.

At Easter we must pay attention and find words for wonder. We must never settle for less, never be content with the little we know. In this world of war, amidst the furious words and the fog of lies a new truth steps into the light. Like Mary in the garden, we must release the Risen Christ in order to see him and the life ahead more clearly. Because here and now we enter a world of wonder. It is a world of cub scouts, ropes, Duns Scotus, Meister Eckhart and an empty tomb. It begins here and the glory will never be done. Alleluia, Christ is Risen!