When we celebrate Easter we hold holy the memory of God’s great act in raising Jesus from the dead. We believe that God’s graciousness will be extended to ourselves and that our own death will not be the final word. Our faith educates our hope that we will participate in Jesus’ resurrection on the last day. But a question raises itself: is our faith in the resurrection limited to remembering Jesus’ resurrection and hoping of our own on the last day? What happens between times? What about today?
When we look at our world today we have to go close our eyes and ears not to see and hear how suffering and violence continue to disfigure so many people here today who can feel their wounds.
What does the resurrection of Jesus say to all this today? The challenge of Easter today is to understand the history of human suffering in the light of Jesus’ resurrection. This means that we have to take God’s part in protesting against the violence and the suffering that are accepted so readily as inevitable. As Christians we have to make our protest against death in the midst of life.
Death is not just a fate that we meet at the end of life. We see death all around us in the midst of life. This point was made movingly by the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann in an Easter sermon when he said: Death is an evil power now, in life’s very midst. It is the economic people who are oppressed; the social death of the handicapped; the noisy death that strikes through bombs and torture, and the soundless death of the apathetic soul.
To accept this litany of death as inevitable is to empty the resurrections of its power for today. A resurrection faith faces the cross and protests against the finality of that violence. It educates us to see as God sees; to act as so many of God’s chosen do act today when with enormous courage they refuse to genuflect to the powers of darkness that use suffering and death as their tools to keep power.
The resurrection of Jesus is a proclamation that this outcast from Galilee is the beloved of God who cannot be held in the keep of death because someone else takes action. Jesus did not raise himself; he was raised by all those who want that miracle repeated in the midst of life. They believe that God’s work continues – not least because they believe Jesus’ words: “I am the resurrection and the life”.
We can all catch something of the reality of the resurrection when we experience new life in the midst of hopelessness. We see it in hospital wards, when tired nurses hug people back from death. We see it in the men and women who risk their lives protesting against the mindless violence inflicted on their fellow human beings. We can see it in the beloved disciples who see in the dark what no one else sees. For all this we rejoice. It is Easter in our midst; it is the refusal to accept that anyone should be left for dead.
The Priests of the Parishes would like to wish everyone a Holy and Happy Easter.
