“CHOCOLAT” - AN EASTER SUNDAY SERMON

A Sermon
preached at the
Mint Methodist
Church, Exeter,
by the Minister,
Rev Andrew Sails
at 10.30 a.m. on
Sunday 8^th April 2007

Reading: John 20:1-18

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“I am the Resurrection and the Life” (John 11:25)

Joe Tindell, one of the Marines captured by the Iranians,
described this week a traumatic moment during their captivity.
He said – “We had a blindfold and cuffs, hands behind our backs-
heads against the wall.   There were weapons cocking.
Someone said “Lads I think we’re going to get executed”
After that someone was sick,
and as far as I was concerned he had just had his throat cut.”

It has often been said that the only certain thing in life is death,
and of course none of us quite knows when and where it will come –

There is a shadow of mortality, more or less dramatically,
hanging over us all.

So if you are wrestling with the death or feared death
of a loved one or indeed of yourself –
here is the Easter message. Christ is risen.

And however hard, however bad this life may sometimes get,
Christ’s ultimate victory over sin and death is secure,
and in the next world we shall know the ultimate defeat of sin and death
as we share in the Feast of the Kingdom.

But that promise of eternal life is not just located in the future.

Jesus did not preach
“I will be the Resurrection and the life after you leave this earth”
He did preach “I am the Resurrection and the life”.
Eternal Life begins here and now!

As Edmund Banyard puts it,
after the Resurrection the early Church didn’t
get in a huddle around the harmonium
singing choruses about the next world –
they went out to proclaim that Christ is Risen –
and somewhat to their surprise found that they made quite an impact
on the life of the society in which they lived”

(CTBI, All Year Round 2002, p.57).

Our Resurrection Faith is not just telling us to put up with present miseries
waiting for promised jam tomorrow, pie in the sky when we die:

Rather it is saying to us –
The victory of love over hate, good over evil, life over death,
goes like a thread through the whole of existence,
because in Christ the world is reconciled to God.

That means that eternal life begins right here –

¨ OK we may not know the full glory of the heavenly feast
until we reach the courts of heaven,
but here and now we can feel on our lips
a foretaste of that heavenly banquet –

¨ OK we may not yet sit beneath the tree
that grows by the River of Life in the City of God -
but already here the green shoots of resurrection
are sprouting in our life if we will but see them.

I gather that some hoteliers in Grasmere
have had problems with the warm weather –
Spring has come too soon and Wordsworth’s daffodils are all over
before the tourist season had even started.
So they have planted plastic daffodils in their place
to keep the tourists happy.

Are our lives shot through with the vibrant new life of Christ,
or do we settle for a plastic façade?

Do we live our life in all its fullness
or do we cease to live in the real sense, and simply exist in this world?

It is all too easy to lose the joy and the love and the dreams
which are at the heart of what it means to live –
and instead allow our lives to shrivel up into mere existence.

Thomas Hardy has a sombre poem called
“The Dead Man Walking” which begins

“They hail me as one living,
But they don’t know
That I have died of late years,
untombed although”

He goes on to describe all the ways in which
his life has gradually been diminished,
how love and hope have died –
so that his existence has lost its meaning and vitality -
He says he can’t say when exactly he finally died,
but he knows
“I live not now”

There are so many people who live lives in despair or sorrow,
who feel so diminished or imprisoned
that they feel like they are already living in the tomb.

And if you recognize yourself (wholly or in part)
in that entombed description of half living,
then hear the Easter message to you today -
Easter tells not jut of a future hope but of a present promise –
the Angel waits here and now to roll back the stone.

One of the most influential theological books of recent decades
was written by Harry Williams and called “Resurrection Now” -
He gives a whole series of examples
of people who have known resurrection –
not at the end of their earthly lives but in the middle of it.
They are stories of “people who come through
experiences that feel death-like, whether it be
the deep despair of a relationship that has broken down,
or a period for an artist or a musician where inspiration will not come,
or the loss of faith.
For each there is a dying, a deadness,
and maybe a long period of patient waiting and then,
sometimes at the moment they least expect it,
either the sudden sense of new life or hope,
or perhaps a gradual dawning,
the sense of light at the end of a dark tunnel.
The light is the light of the Risen Christ.
The new life is true resurrection now.”

[overview quoted from Bishop Michael of Gloucester]

This is of course is what Christ’s earthly ministry was all about –
he was bringing light and hope and new wine and healing
and sight and wholeness to people saying
not “I will be” but “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Christ is ranged against the Pharisees.
The Pharisees are well meaning religious people
but they are determined to stifle joy and freedom and celebration,
determined to limit God’s love to those within the holy club.
And rather than bringing life and freedom,
they bring imprisonment and a living death.

The wonderful film Chocolat
can really be read as a story of Jesus and the Pharisees –
of the dead hand of oppressive religion
and the new liberating life of the Gospel.

It tells the tale of a repressed and legalistic 50s French village.
It is under the thumb of the puritanical Mayor
who effectively rules the village and the Church –
he even writes the young Priests sermons for him.

Lent is starting and the Mayor requires strict Lenten observance.
No one ever dares oppose him at least publicly.

To be accepted and acceptable in the village
you have to keep to the strict rules laid down by the Church –
those outside that circle are spurned, chastised, excluded or ignored.

Then the North wind blows and with it comes into the village Vianne –
a free spirit who comes to set up a Chocolaterie
and sell the most wonderful chocolates –
in the middle of Lent of all times.

The Mayor warns the villagers to boycott the shop,
and he tells the young priest to preach against it.
He tells Vianne to leave the village.

But Vianne doesn’t leave.
She is the Christ figure in this fable –
she does all the things which Christ would have done,
whilst the Church - sad to relate -
does all the things the Pharisees would have done.

Vianne befriends precisely those who are shunned by the others,
including the visiting Irish canal travellers.

¨ She helps the battered wife find a new life away from her abusive husband,

¨ she encourages the old man to declare his love for the widow
he has loved since the widow’s husband was killed
in the 1^st World War 40 years before,

¨ she reunites the grandmother and grandson
who has been kept apart by family bitterness.

Vianne is Christ wining and dining with sinners and outcasts –

She doesn’t say “You have to believe to belong”,
she says “You have to belong to believe”

She doesn’t say “Keep the rules” she says “Have some chocolate”

And if Vianne is Christ, then the chocolate is his love.
Vianne chooses always the right flavour chocolate for each individual –
this is not abstract broadcast general benevolence,
it is carefully offered love
tuned to the precise needs of each individual
and offered with no strings.

At the end of the film, the village, which was dead, has found new life.

Chocolat begins in Lent and ends at Easter –
when the young priest, finally freed of his shackles,
preaches his own sermon,
not the one which the Mayor has drafted for him –

His message is about inclusion and acceptance and unconditional love.

And in the square outside the Church stands
a dour statue of one of the Mayor’s ancestors.
It has a mean and miserable down-turned mouth.

At the end of the film a final shot shows the same statue
with a child’s red balloon caught on its arm
and blowing in the wind.

And yes – look carefully –
the stone lips are now smiling!

Christ is risen –
and if we don’t shout it,
the very stones will proclaim the good news!

So may the Risen Christ blow into our lives this Eastertide.

He comes here to this very table and says

Here’s the bread of life –
a foretaste of the heavenly feast, nothing less!

And maybe on this special day
as we kneel at the rail,
is it too fanciful to think that the Lord might
smile and whisper in our ear –

“When you and I meet in heaven
that will be some party –
but meanwhile what are you waiting for -
Let’s start living now!”

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ORDER OF SERVICE

Easter Sunday 8 April 2007

10.30 am Holy Communion led by Rev Andrew Sails

Offertoire pour le jour de Pâques - Jean-François Dandrieu

Sarabande for the morning of Easter – Herbert Howells

Greeting: Minister: Alleluia! Christ is risen!

People: He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Hymn: 193 “Christ the Lord is risen today”

1. 예수 부활했으니 할렐루야
   만민 찬송하여라 할렐루야
   천사들이 즐거워 할렐루야
   기쁜 찬송 부르네 할렐루야

2. 무덤 권세 이긴 주 할렐루야
   왕의 왕이 되셨네 할렐루야
   높은 이름 세상에 할렐루야
   널리 반포하여라 할렐루야

3. 대속하신 주예수 할렐루야
   선한 싸움 이겼네 할렐루야
   사망권세 이기고 할렐루야
   하늘문을 여셨네 할렐루야

4. 길과 진리 되신 주 할렐루야
   우리 부활하겠네 할렐루야
   부활생명 되시니 할렐루야
   우리 부활하겠네 할렐루야

5. King of Glory! Soul of bliss!   Alleluia!
     Everlasting life is this,   Alleluia!
     Thee to know, thy power to prove,   Alleluia!
     Thus to sing and thus to love:   Alleluia!

Prayers (Methodist Worship Book pp.160-161)

Bible Reading: John 20:1-18

Hymn 202 “Low in the grace he lay”

Sermon: “Chocolat”

Hymn: 204 “Now the green blade rises”

Prayers of Intercession

Minister: In the power of the resurrection, we offer our prayers to God, saying Jesus, Lord of Life: