The Canterbury Preacher's Companion 2021

150 complete sermons for Sundays, Festivals and Special Occasions

Spiller, Spiller

• Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781786222558
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christlicher Dienst

An annual favourite, the Canterbury Preacher's Companion provides a total of 150 complete sermons for the 2020-2021 church year, with hymn suggestions. For each Sunday of the year there are two sermons based on the Principal and Second Service Lectionaries.In addition, it offers at-a-glance summaries of the Bible readings, seasonal introductions, a full colour liturgical calendar and hymns suggestions throughout the year. The sermons are complete and ready to use, or can be used as a base for local adaptation. This is an essential companion for hard-pressed clergy and preachers everywhere.

Easter

Easter Vigil 3–4 April

The World Turned Upside-down

(A minimum of three Old Testament readings should be chosen. The reading from Exodus 14 should always be used.)

Gen. 1.1—2.4a and Ps. 136.1–9, 23–end; Gen. 7.1–5, 11–18; 8.6–18; 9.8–13 and Ps. 46; Gen. 22.1–18 and Ps. 16; Ex. 14.10–end; 15.20–21 and Canticle: Ex. 15.1b–13, 17–18; Isa. 55.1–11 and Canticle: Isa. 12.2–end; Baruch 3.9–15, 32—4.4 and Ps. 19, or Prov. 8.1–8, 19–21; 9.4b–6 and Ps. 19; Ezek. 36.24–28 and Ps. 42, 43; Ezek. 37.1–14 and Ps. 143; Zeph. 3.14–end and Ps. 98; Rom. 6.3–11 and Ps. 114; Mark 16.1–8

‘And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’ With these extraordinary words, the Gospel of Mark ends, for the verses that follow have been added on later by someone else. Some scholars have argued that there must have been another ending that is now lost; but there is no evidence that such a thing ever existed. You may well be thinking: if that really is where the earliest of the four Gospels ends, it’s not exactly good news, is it, as we prepare to celebrate Easter? And besides, if the women who witnessed the empty tomb never said anything to anyone, how did the news of the resurrection get out?

Resurrection and failure

The first thing to note is that, if the women really didn’t say anything to anyone, they were in good company: perhaps more than any other Gospel writer, Mark constantly shows us how Jesus’ disciples let him down, or misunderstood him, or just got things wrong. You may notice how, in today’s reading, the young man at the empty tomb (probably an angel) tells the women to ‘go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you’. Why is Peter mentioned separately? Because he, more than any other disciple, failed his Lord and denied him after his arrest. But Jesus doesn’t give up on him, any more than he gave up on the women who said nothing to anyone. It’s the same with each of us. We fail Jesus again and again, and yet we’re still loved, we’re still called, we still have a future. And that is the miracle of the resurrection.

Resurrection and renewal

It’s so easy to misunderstand Easter. You may know the story of the elderly couple who were visiting Israel on holiday when the wife fell ill and died. So the husband went to a local undertaker to arrange her funeral. ‘How much will it cost?’ he asked. ‘Well,’ said the undertaker, ‘that depends. We could do you a lovely funeral here in Israel and it really won’t cost you much. But if you want to have your wife’s body flown home for the funeral, it will be very expensive – maybe ten times as much: it’s up to you.’ And the man thinks about it for a minute, and then says, ‘I think I’d better pay to have her body flown home, even if it costs so much more. You see, I seem to remember reading about some guy who died here in Israel, and was buried, and three days later he came back to life again. And I ain’t taking no chances!’

But the man had got it wrong. Easter is not about revival – as though Jesus was raised from the dead and just carried on from where he’d left off. Nor is it about survival – as though he never really died. It’s about renewal – a whole new quality of life that emerges through death, and that death can never destroy. Everything is turned upside-down; so the young man in the empty tomb tells the women, ‘He has been raised: he is not here.’ No wonder they were afraid. And that brings us to the heart of the matter.

Resurrection and changed lives

The young man tells the women to ‘go and tell’ that Jesus has been raised from the dead. They do go, but they don’t tell. So how did the news get out? Because the real evidence for the resurrection is not words that are spoken, but lives that are changed. Something about those terrified, wondering women must have convinced the other disciples that the tomb really was empty, and the Lord really was raised. So with you and me, here today at this Easter Vigil. You may have sensed Christ’s living presence in the drama of this, the oldest of all Christian acts of worship on the greatest of all Christian feast days. You will almost certainly be about to renew the vows made at your baptism. You may have come to this service because something has made you believe that death and evil and sadness will never have the last word. Yet you can’t put all that into words. And you don’t need to; for the evidence of the resurrection is changed lives, failures who know they are still loved, people frightened about the future but who still dare to hope and look forward. For it really is true: Jesus Christ is risen, and all the world is risen with him. Alleluya!

Gordon Mursell

Suggested hymns

This is the night of new beginnings; Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain; Exult, creation round God’s throne!; I will sing the Lord’s high triumph.

Easter Day 4 April

Principal Service Complete the Story

Acts 10.34–43, or Isa. 25.6–9; Ps. 118.1–2, 14–24 [or 118.14–24]; 1 Cor. 15.1–11, or Acts 10.34–43; John 20.1–18, or Mark 16.1–8

We all like a happy ending to our novels, films and plays. ‘Does it have a happy ending?’ a son of mine always asks before agreeing to watch a film or take up a book recommendation. We don’t mind how we get there, we may relish the surprising journey, but we look for a resolution, a satisfying conclusion. An elder brother played a trick on his younger brother that was new to me in the list of sibling menaces: he would rip out the last couple of pages of his younger brother’s novels just as he was getting to the end of the story. There’s a yearning in all of us for completeness, fulfilment, resolution to all the loose ends of our lives, and we hope at least to find it in a story.

A lost ending

The death of Jesus needs a happy ending if state injustice is to be reversed, love and goodness are to be shown to triumph and the hopes for salvation invested in him are to be believed. But the so-called resurrection story in our earliest Gospel, St Mark, finishes abruptly, without a happy ending. In the days when videos had to be purchased rather than downloaded, the suggestion was mooted that some videos might be made that would offer alternative conclusions, so that people could choose their preferred resolution. That, in effect, is what we have in the two alternative endings composed to try to complete the lost last act of Mark’s Gospel. Both close on a triumphal note, and one has a heightened sense of the bizarre. Of course, we could have read the other Gospels, especially St John, the most widely used account of Easter Sunday, due to its heartfelt, happy and satisfying conclusion.

Incomplete lives

Mark’s ending is abrupt. But so, for the most part, are our lives. Not many people find the fulfilment they seek within their span of life. There will always be aspirations that remain unmet, projects left unfinished, relationships only half discovered. What we seek to do and be can’t always be completed in our few years of life, and if this life is all there is, we may have to reckon with a cruel and miserable incompleteness never to be resolved. Then, too, we think of the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts across the world, and the wars that stretch over decades; the genocide and ethnic cleansing that snuff out the lives of children before they’ve even had the chance to live. As someone said, here in this life all symphonies remain unfinished. While the tragic features of life still remain, Mark’s ending can address the human reservoir of injustice, tragedy and loss that seems to go unchallenged. The three women at the graveside speak to and for us and our condition.

Finding Jesus in our Galilee

In Mark’s Gospel the women at the tomb of Jesus are alarmed at encountering a young man with his message. Who wouldn’t be terrified to find the grave you were visiting in a private garden open and empty and a rather direct and unaccountable young man delivering a blunt message, ‘Gone away, meet you in Galilee’?

But why Galilee? Why not Jerusalem, where Jesus could vindicate his claims publicly and discredit and exercise some leverage over the powerful overlords? Galilee is the secular world; Jews called it ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’. It was a racially mixed area, edgy, with a history of radical politics. There had already been an uprising there in Jesus’ own lifetime. Galilee to the north of Jerusalem was where Jesus chose to live and work and was the place to which he was returning. That was far from the metropolitan elite and their preoccupation with power-living in Jerusalem. Galilee is where faith is put to work, and where it is tried and tested.

Continuing the story

The abrupt and probably lost ending of Mark is fortuitous. For it tells us that space in the story is left for us. It resembles one of those tiresome game shows where contestants have to complete the story that was begun by someone else. Now the story is passed on to us and we are the ones to take it forward in the Galilees of our towns and communities. Jesus still goes before us, through his Spirit, and we are summoned to join him there. Facts, argument and evidence can satisfy us that belief in the resurrection is credible. But the resurrection can’t be contained within the narrow bounds of reason and history. We will really only know the truth of the resurrection by taking up the ca...