Fugal music of Easter

I woke this morning not to an alarm rudely bleating into my dreams, but gently with the birdsong. As the dawn chorus began sometime around first light the soft, yet strident songs of the early risers drifted through to my thoughts and encouraged me awake. The chorus grew stronger with the strengthening light in some nature given exponential. This natural alarm clock knows nothing of daylight saving so for a few moments of bliss I was awake with the light and happy to be held in the softly spoken awakening – until I looked over to my clock and exclaimed to myself – What Time? – at which point I grabbed the pillow for an extra hour – only later realising the gift I had been given – when time was made shorter, I was gifted more – so much of this is of the gospel – gifting more into a place where there is perceived to be a lack. So dictated to, are we, by the mechanical time machines that it is difficult to allow ourselves to be held in created time. For me the dawn chorus is a beautiful, natural way to describe this Easter resurrection morning for it is a revelation over time from the first tentative call into the silence to the full joyous fugue like chorale with its competing melodies intricately woven, yet still all, somehow sounding out the same story. It is come. He is risen. I like most of all the simplicity of the earliest moments of this, where an individual cry is heard against the silence of the morning and before the louder, competing voices join in and how like in any fugal music the primary melody returns again and again to restate that first voice. I like to think that we can grasp something of the simple beautiful reality of the resurrection in this and what it means for us going forward without the technicalities of the how. A little gentle theology can carry us a long way. Violence will not eradicate violence. It only serves to fuel the next uprising or give credence to the oppressed become oppressor. As Jesus did, we have to step into the place of violence with a new narrative. Have to remove the need to make scapegoats of others in order to end the practice to begin with. To end the poverty of the poorest, the poverty of everyone needs to be addressed. Have to establish peace which is for all in order to offer peace for some. Some of us watched the film ‘The Old Oak’ this past week – a Ken Loach film. It is the story of the resettlement of refugees into an area of the north east which knows itself only too well what poverty is like as they live still in the shadow of the miners strike and the poverty of a working class society. Into that community arrive refugees, resettled after fleeing the violence of their homeland. If you’ve not seen it, I’d encourage you to seek it out. It’s a traditional Ken loach film, very ‘ordinary’ and natural – no gloss of Hollywood – there is a simple message, though as ever, not so simple to enact. The violent reaction of some locals to the new arrivals is tempered with the care and generosity of the refugees and a few local people who truly understand loss, rather than the charade of entitlement that others carry, almost as a badge of honour. And as we reflected last Wednesday lunchtime there is always still a place for Judas, in fact it is a voice that is needed, for this is the voice that acts as a catalyst for change.  As the film begins we see a camera taken and broken. The broken camera a metaphor and a way in to begin to mend the broken society.  As we reflect this Easter Day on the events which took place in what we now call the Holy Lands, we remember the devastation of the people in that place. There will be no peace, until there is a peace which is for all. For Palestinian and for Israeli. Until the full humanity of another is recognised by each person, there can be no settlement in peace. And if Palestine is too far away from home to understand, if not empathise, where are the broken relationships here which only an Easter moment can heal. Where are the jealousies or hurts that we too need to cast aside in a generous act of love. For as the Easter song begins to arise from the ashes, we can take this moment, this gift to begin again. Behold, I make all things new. Beginning with you. And starting from today. Pasg Hapus.