“Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?” said Gandalf.
But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”
“A great Shadow has departed” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land (...)
“How do I feel?” Sam cried. “Well, I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel” - he waved his arms in the air - “I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!” (The Return of the King: The Field of Cormallen).
How can we express Easter joy? How can a preacher capture it? St. Paul has a go, when he crams it all into a few words, in a passage even more densely packed and overflowing with metaphor and unexplained allusion than usual. Christ our Passover, he says, has been sacrificed: let us therefore keep the Feast (1 Cor 5:8). We have that text for a second reading, and we sing it at the Alleluia before the Gospel, and again for the Communion. To express our Easter joy then, cries Paul, and our Easter liberation, and our Easter identity, let us keep the Feast of Easter; let us keep the feast of the Christian life; let us feast on purity of heart, with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
The ancient tradition of Gregorian Chant has a go. A jolly good go, as a matter of fact. For one thing, it gives us multiple ways to sing the word “Alleluia”. That’s the single Easter word, the Easter song, the Easter prayer, and in it is contained the whole of Easter joy. Then the Chant gives us Old Testament texts, now transformed, and alive with Easter meaning, and offering their inspired and poetic expression to enrich our Christian liturgy. So we sing these texts, we delight in them, we proclaim them. O Lord you have known my sitting down and my rising up - Tu cognovisti sessionem and resurrectionem meam (Ps 138:2). This is the Day which the Lord has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it (Ps 117:24). The earth trembled and was still when God rose up in saving judgement, Alleluia (Ps 75:9)
The tenth or eleventh century Sequence we daily sing throughout the Octave has a go. In the first place it presents us with a striking paradox. Christians, says the poet, should immolate a sacrifice of praise to the Paschal Victim. What? How can we sacrifice to a sacrifice? But the insight is a fine one. For the one who died is the one to whom divine worship is now due. He who was slain now reigns as King. He is forever alive: yet by being slain he has redeemed us sinners, reconciled us to the Father, given us hope.
St. John has a go. Like Tolkein, he’s a master dramatist, so he wonderfully presents great truths through a narrative focussed on well known characters. The Easter Gospel according to John begins with running footsteps in the dark; a breathless message; surprise; incomprehension; then a headlong race through the slowly retreating gloom of first dawn. Something very strange has happened. Could it be that something utterly wonderful has happened? They run, disconcerted, scarcely daring to hope, scarcely allowing themselves to hope, or to believe. Yet the little seed has been planted, the hinted suggestion will not quite go away, and it drives them onwards. Can it possibly be true? But no: surely that would be uncontainable, unendurable joy. There must have been some mistake. After such horrible trauma, surely nothing good whatever can be expected. But: what if it’s actually true?
The beloved disciple delights to boast that he got there first, but then very properly he waited to let Peter go ahead of him actually entering the tomb. And he describes what they saw. Emptiness. Not Jesus anyway, either alive or dead. Linen cloths on the ground, carefully rolled. Actually, not proof of anything. But it’s as Newman teaches in his Grammar of Assent: even before Jesus himself appears, the weight of converging evidence reaches a certain critical mass. Before that moment, John had failed to understand. Now suddenly light dawns; he gives his assent; he believes; and therefore for the first time he understands. And in that act of belief, and of understanding, is contained, and expressed, all Easter joy.
We therefore now express our Easter joy by re-affirming our faith, by reading the Scriptures, by singing Gregorian Chant, by celebrating the liturgy, by keeping with the whole Church the Easter Feast. We do so today against a dark background. No one at all is here, apart from ourselves. The Police are about, looking to fine anyone caught out of doors without sufficient reason, lovely Spring sunshine and bank holiday notwithstanding. So in Tolkein’s masterpiece, even after Sauron’s defeat Sam and Frodo still had to face trouble in the Shire, and there were sad partings to come, and loss, and the world would never simply go back to the way it was before.
So we do not cease to unite ourselves with all those suffering today, whether little or much. But we are not gloomy. We have an opportunity now for a renewed faith and a renewed joy; we glimpse even an opportunity for a new evangelisation, and we will be no use to anyone if we let this pass us by. All the more important is it in these days to celebrate our liturgy as well as we can, to pray as fervently as we can, to give thanks and praise to God with all our hearts and in our lives, with and for our suffering brothers and sisters.
The end of our liturgy is a little bit different today. As always, it bids us go. Ite! Leave this place, this image of heaven, this wonderful assembly of praise. Come down from the Mount of Thabor to accomplish the mission you have been given. But today two Alleluias are added, just to remind us to keep that Alleluia always in our hearts. Whatever our circumstances, or duties, or mood, it must remain with us: for Christ is risen from the dead. Yes, he is truly risen! Alleluia.