Easter is one of those festivals which we almost know too well. Children learn the Easter story even before they can read it for themselves (and don't believe all that nonsense about children not being taught the Christian faith at school - not in our schools anyway) and even if Good Friday is not kept with quite the same devotion as it used to be, many people still make a special effort to be in Church to celebrate our Lord's resurrection.

And yet at the heart of all this familiarity there is deep mystery. We can never know how Jesus is risen from the dead; wise and foolish theologians still argue over precisely why Jesus is risen from the dead; and more and more people are prepared to say quite openly that they even doubt if Jesus is risen from the dead.

So what are we to say to the doubters this Easter? The first thing to say is that their doubts are well founded.

The story of the resurrection is so unbelievable that the only thing that can possibly make it believable is that it is true. And even though the biblical accounts of Jesus meeting with His disciples after His resurrection tend to deepen the mystery rather than resolve it, I am convinced that those so blessed would have been laughed out of court unless their witness had been borne out by many others.

This is just as well because, as St Paul tells us, if Jesus did not rise from the grave then, we of all people are most to be pitied because our preaching is in vain, our faith futile and we have no remedy for our sins.

As to how Jesus was raised, I think we must come clean and simply say we cannot know.
But if it is God who is behind all life, then it seems logical to think that restoration is no more difficult for Him than creation.

Which leaves us with why He was raised. There are a number of theories but all seem to agree that for a people who believe that this life is all there is, God chose to lift a corner of the curtain and show us a fragment of what goes on outside and beyond our narrow human existence. And in doing so, He also gave compelling weight to His claim, first heard at Jesus' baptism, that this is indeed "my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"

In other words, God set His seal on Jesus' life and ministry, and also gave us concrete proof that a life offered to God in service will in reality be far richer and far greater than one spent in attending to our own self-centred cares and concerns.

This is our hope, for this life and the next, and having this hope we are duty bound to preach it.

And it is difficult to think of a more compelling way for God to demonstrate His capacity for forgiveness than by Him restoring to a wicked and feckless world that only "beloved Son" in whom all our hope rests, even though the world had so recently sought to humiliate and destroy Him.

Of course it is all a mystery, we cannot expect to be able to get our heads around the wisdom of God. But there are some things we can know, and knowing, should put hold our faith and trust our lives to them. And do our best to make our own witness to His presence with us, so that others too may come to believe.

Keep these (slightly amended) words from a well known hymn close to your hearts this Easter, and let us not worry too much about those things which are beyond us - there is enough and more which we do know to sustain us in this world and the next.

May each one of you meet with the risen Lord this Easter, and may you all receive His Blessing

Alan
1st April 2002