Sermon - The Risen Christ in our Midst

Jesus Appears to the Disciples After the Resurrection by Imre Morocz, 2009

A sermon given during Holy Communion at St Giles-in-the-Fields at 11am on Sunday 27th April 2025, prior to the Annual Parish Meeting and based on the texts of 1 John 5.4-12 and John 20:19-23

“Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”

 

After this service we are invited to gather for our annual parish meeting. A chance to look back on what has happened over the year past and talk about the projects we have planned for the year ahead. 

There’s all sorts of reports and official items business that have to be approved, which many people have been working hard to prepare. We will – quite rightly - celebrate the rise in attendance we’ve seen here at St Giles-in-the-Fields - not just the surge at Easter and Christmas but the steady increase in our average Sunday congregations throughout the year - and growth in the number of baptisms, confirmations and marriages. 

 

On another level, the Annual Meeting provides the opportunity to reflect on what it means to be this church. 

 

The scriptures today offer profound insights to all of us interested in the answers to that question.

On the evening of the first Easter Day, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors. Fearful and confused, their leader had gone. We find them searching for meaning in the shadow of the cross and the emptiness of the garden tomb. Querying the choice they had made – to leave everything behind and follow Jesus. Doubting their belief in Christ as their saviour. Questioning their faith. 

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Jesus came and stood in their midst, showing them his hands and his side to prove that that he had risen from the dead. 

Today, for the first time in years – centuries perhaps – two of the largest Christian denominations are without a permanent leader on earth and there is much chatter about how they will be replaced and by whom – and we meet to review the year past and our plans for the future here in this parish. And today the scriptures say: just hang on a minute! None of this is about personalities or projects or performance indicators. At the centre of it all must be the presence of the risen Christ in our midst. 

 

The church – this church - must be a place where people can expect to encounter the presence of God, in prayer and worship and in his divine and glorious image reflected in the faces of each of us. 

 

 

 

In an article published on Monday, the journalist Tim Stanley suggested that our experience of the Covid lockdown has contributed to the uptick in church attendance being reported across the country.
 
It seems rather trite to suggest that this is a contemporary manifestation of the Holy Spirit breaking through locked doors – especially when the shadow of those years still lingers over many. 

But, as today’s Epistle reminds us, faith in Christ is the victory that conquers even the darkest moments of the world. And, in his brief appearance amongst the disciples, Jesus suggests how. “Peace be with you” he says. Twice. 

 

Peace be with you. 

 

In other words : all that is not peace, be gone. 

Anxiety, distress, fear, worry – be gone. 

All that is the cause of paralysis and inertia – the walls that we build around us – be gone. 

It is through confidence in the power and purposes of God; faith in the truth of his word that those walls are broken down. Locked doors are opened. Bridges are built.

 

It is from the freedom of Christ’s peace that we grow. That the church grows. 

 

But what of those who are yet to glimpse this victory?

 

Today’s epistle is bullish.

Those who do not believe the Good News of the risen Christ, it states, are effectively calling God a liar. 

Strong words indeed - and language that seems less than conducive to instil in others a desire to explore the Christian life. To grow in faith. 

But we must acknowledge that this position of unbelief remains the norm. For the church, the locked door of today. The truth of God’s word unknown to the majority.

 

Here, popular models of faith development, upon which the evangelistic structures of the church in modern times have been based and by which its clergy are still trained, are falling short. We can no longer assume that the flame of God’s love is fanned in the family from a young age - and can be nurtured through life. Many - perhaps most in the global north - are growing up today without a direct relationship with the Christian faith at all. 

In response, there are those who call for a return to an earlier Christian mindset. A missionary mindset. “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” Jesus says, before he breathes the Holy Spirit on the disciples and gives them the power to forgive sins.

Others say, there’s no need for us to do anything – just let the Spirit do its work. And they also have a point. We can do nothing without it. The church is fuelled – driven - by the Spirit, not Strategic Plans. 

 

But we are sent. To build bridges and break down walls, to coin a phrase.

 

To be an example to those who have not yet encountered the presence of the risen Christ. To invite them to come and see. 

 

By modelling an alternative to a life of spiritual alienation, guided by the Spirit, we may awaken a desire, a yearning amongst those who witness it to live in a different way. To realise that life without faith in the risen Christ - a life without hope - is no life at all - at least not the one God intended. It’s like living a lie, as our epistle puts it. 

 

 

The scriptures call on the church to be that example; that place of hope and new beginnings for all. A people sent into the world, driven by the Spirit. 

 

A community of forgiveness and reconciliation. A place where the questions and doubts and concerns that we all have are explored with grace; from the freedom that comes from embracing Christ’s peace. 

 

A peace that rests on confidence in the truth of God’s word - a confidence that does not barrack others into group think but overcomes the fear of failure; the narratives of decline, the obstacles - the walls - the barriers to growth that we put up around ourselves and which so often the church itself seems to build rather well from time to time. 

 

The scriptures today call us, this church, to be a place of invitation - of bridge building - of welcome - of joy - a people who stand together as brothers and sisters because we owe the truth of our lives to the presence of the risen Christ in our midst. Who is our victory even over the most unimaginable darkness. Whose light is reflected by each of us in the world.

 

This is the posture of the church militant here in earth.

 

That is what we are called to be. 

Image : Jesus Appears to the Disciples After the Resurrection by Imre Morocz, 2009