BISHOP’S EASTER MESSAGE 2008

A little over forty years ago in a ruined monastery near the massive Egyptian temple of Abu Simbel which towers over the waters of the Nile above the Aswan High Dam an ancient Coptic prayer book was dug out of the sand. It includes the text of a hymn which the Lord is said to have recited to his disciples as he contemplated his coming passion. The Cross on which he is to die is addressed as itself a living reality. Christ embraces the Cross and the Cross embraces him. The hymn (or prayer) runs as follows:

Rise up, O holy Cross, and lift me, O Cross. I shall mount upon you, O Cross. They shall hang me upon you as a witness to them. Receive me to yourself, O Cross, But be joyful, O Cross, Amen. I have put on the crown of the kingdom.

Go to a very different part of the world, to Ruthwell in southern Scotland, and there you find an ancient eighth century cross and on it is carved in ancient runic lettering part of a poem which we know as the Dream of the Vision of a Rood. Once again the cross is personified and speaks of that moment when Christ was lifted up in suffering and as king. The young warrior – it was God Almighty – stalwart, resolute, stripped himself; climbed the high gallows, Gallantly before the throng, resolved to loose Man’s bonds. Trembled I when this warrior embraced me Yet durst I neither bow nor fall. I must needs stand fast. As a rood I was raised up, bearing a noble king…With dark nails they pierced me, leaving scars yet visible.

These two ancient expressions of Christian devotion remind us of the centrality of the Cross for Christian faith. The Cross is seen from many angles – as a place of a criminal’s death, as a place of torture and suffering, but yet as the place where a king is enthroned. When I am lifted up, says Jesus in St John’s Gospel, I will draw all men to myself. The word ‘exaltation’ or ‘lifting up’ has a double resonance – the physical lifting up on the cross, and the exaltation, even enthronement, of a king in triumph. Pontius Pilate nails over the head of Jesus a notice ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’. With bitter irony Jesus is condemned for what he is, and not only the king of the Jews but the Lord of all the world. In incarnation God gave himself into the world he had created. He took our human nature, our human experience, standing where we are.

Where we are is in a fallen world, a world created as wonderfully good by God in all its richness, and yet a human world which is deeply flawed, scarred by evil, and the distortions of human desire. Jesus, we say, ‘takes away the sin of the world.’ Sin is the condition of apartness from God; it is what results from a choosing of self rather than God, of the idolatry which gives other things than God our ultimate allegiance. The war and violence, abuse, and addiction, of which we are made so sharply aware day by day in news reports, are the landscape of this fallen and sinful world. Our human lives are also mortal lives, bounded by death, which comes at the end to us all, and which we know before it comes to us in the death of those whom we love. We know death in the death of relationships, and the diminution and suffering of disease and the erosion of personality through dementias of various kinds. Jesus ‘takes away the sin of the world’ by entering into that reality. As St Paul writes to the Philippians he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. In that reaching out in humility, in that outpouring of love, the one who was in the form of God became humbler yet, he became obedient unto death even death on a cross. The incarnation reaches through cross and crucifixion, to the desolate emptiness of death. From beginning to end it is a work of love, and it is love of God that descends into hell, the place of the departed. I treasure a story told to us by Bishop Jack Nicholls, the Bishop of Sheffield, who asked a sixth-form girl where she thought Jesus was between Good Friday and Easter. She replied, after she had thought a little, ‘I think he was in deepest hell looking for his friend Judas.’ That is love’s redeeming work, the love that stoops down to the very lowest part of our need, which bears the weight of sin and death. In St John’s imagery, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness is not able to blot it out.

Sin and death are not only destructive but imprisoning powers. On Good Friday and Holy Saturday the light seems snuffed out; the love of God seems defeated and destroyed. The victors are those who seem powerful in the world – the corrupt justice of an occupying power; the self-interest of religious leaders; the betrayal and desertion of friends. It is a world of no hope.

But the one who is the Lord and Giver of life, who has chosen to bear the weight of sin and to enter into our dying, is the one whose victory we celebrate at Easter. At Easter something new and overwhelming and surprising happens. The crucified Lord is the one whom God raises – not to the old life, but to the life of the new creation, a new and transformed life. He catches others into that life – into the resurrection light – Magdalen in the garden; and the disciples in the locked room; and the sceptical Thomas; and Peter who had denied him and is told to feed his sheep; and the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, where the Lord is made known in the breaking of bread. He breathes out upon them, upon us, his life-giving Spirit. He creates his church, the first-fruits of this new creation. He who is Easter makes of you and me and all who seek to follow in his way of love, Easter people also. As Hopkins, the poet, says ‘Christ Easters in us’ – for Easter is not just a noun about a past event, but a dynamic verb, a resonant life of love triumphant and victorious, which makes of our dying ‘the gate to life immortal’. In the light of Easter we know why we ‘call this Friday “Good”.’ For as George Herbert put it in the first of his Easter poems.

The cross taught all wood to resound his name,

                        Who bore the same.

His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key

Is best to celebrate this most high day.

As I send you my blessing for this Holy Week and Easter, I pray that all in this Diocese may be renewed in the hope and joy that our Risen Lord invites us to both share and live. For we are indeed ‘Easter people and “Alleluia!’ is our song.’

+GEOFFREY GIBRALTAR