The Threshold

Sermon for the Feast of the Resurrection

We stand at the door of the empty tomb, peering into its dark interior as the sunlight begins to flood the cemetery. Towards us is the black open door leading into the place of the dead and to who-knows-what. Behind us the sky is black with the beginnings of a pale blue hue at the horizon just before the Sun begins its ascent into the sky.

And we come to the realisation that this is the beginning of a new day. It's a beginning, not an end. Looking at the empty tomb, we are not seeing an end even though it is supposed to be a last resting-place. The credits don't roll. We aren't going to find out who the production assistant and script editor are. This is not a drama that has just played itself out. This is still happening.

[PAUSE]

We stand on the threshold of the tomb at the threshold of the day trying to understand the events of the last few days. They have been a threshold too, that between order and chaos. This is where it all begins as God Himself stands at the moment of Creation on the threshold between something and nothing, looking into the void and deciding in His impenetrable infinity what to create.

The threshold is where we are and it is here on this threshold that God saves us.

Every day, we teeter on the edge between good and evil, and we're not always aware of it. The world around us is a chaotic pattern of ripples from good deeds and ill entering into our everyday lives, often without us knowing. The order of our lives is being nudged by forces we can neither see nor control. We might as well be playing blind man's bluff on the edge of Beachy Head. The mind of Humanity is dark and cold to the love of God. And dark and cold is the morning as we gaze into the empty tomb. Many of us spend our lives here at this threshold and never seem to cross it.

But He is not here: He is risen and He meets us in the dawning of day and the breaking of bread. In order to meet Him, we have to cross the threshold into the unknown. This is the nature of our Faith.

Faith is not some unreasoned acceptance of an apparent truth. Our Faith is a growing trust in someone we are coming to know. It is as empirical as Science is itself. Our faith grows by what it sees and experiences. Our faith in God grows because we experience Him and seek Him out. Abraham knows God and trusts Him to raise Isaac when God calls him to sacrifice his son. It is only because he knows what God is like that Abraham would even dare to obey. In so doing, Abraham crosses a threshold into a new relationship with God with Isaac alive.

[PAUSE]
Leaving their hiding places from the crucifixion to gather in some secluded spot to decide what to do, the disciples find Christ. And they realise that their experiences of His teaching and miracles are true. The figure they see standing before them, still bearing His scars, still Him, is Christ Jesus Our Lord, and none other. No ghost. No hallucination through grief or intoxication. Through faith in Our Lord, they cross the threshold from a world groaning for Salvation into a world in which Salvation is present for those who want to receive it.

And the threshold of this Salvation is Christ the Door, the Strait Gate, the Way. He is the threshold between Life and Death. He is the door of the tomb for those who wish to pass from death into Eternal life.

[PAUSE]

This is as much our Resurrection as His. This is why He comes back to see us and show us the truth that our faith may be strengthened and our joy complete.

The sun rises and the blackness of the tomb lies behind us. Let us proceed in the peace of Christ into His life.