Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
March/April 2009

Home
Current issue
Previous issues
Noticeboard
Discussion board
About CTiB

Pastoral Letter

by Rev’d Raymond Chapman

Resurrection Today

At the heart of the Christian faith there is the Cross. It is present in our places of worship and in the silent meditations of our prayers. In itself, it is a bleak symbol, an instrument of shameful death suffered by perfect innocence. But for the Christian it is a symbol of hope and joy because it points to the Resurrection; it opened the way not to extinction but to new life. Through all the centuries, it is the Risen Christ who has encouraged those who trust in him, an unseen presence in every believer, the guide and sustainer of the Church which he founded.

The current situation is not cheerful and there is much understandable anxiety in the world, even in our comparatively comfortable situation here. We are not starving, deprived of clean water or victims of military aggression, but the comfort, perhaps the complacency, created by years of material growth seems to be falling apart and giving way to an uncertain future. Yet we may too easily suppose that we are particularly unfortunate to be living at this time. Life has never been without its problems, personal and collective. From the beginning of history the human race has lived with personal sorrows, national disasters, and the shadow of death. The Bible nowhere promises an easy ride in this world, but the power of the Resurrection brings hope in our fears, confidence in our doubts.

We may imagine how joyful the first Easter morning must have been, but in fact the Gospel accounts tell of fear, doubt and bewilderment when the tomb was found to be empty. The original version of St Mark’s Gospel ended with the stark words, ‘for they were afraid’. In the evening Jesus came to his Disciples who were meeting behind closed doors ‘for fear of the Jews’. Even a week later, the doors of the room where they met were still closed. It took time for the wonderful truth to be accepted, and then the frightened men who had deserted their Lord before his Passion were filled with courage by the Holy Spirit, given confidence and eloquence to proclaim the good news.

Perhaps we fail fully to accept the wonderful message of Easter. We continue to be uncertain and anxious, while Jesus is waiting for us to open the closed doors of our hearts and let him enter to transform us into true disciples. Jesus came to his first followers not as a ghost or as a dead man strangely revived, but in a new form which was totally familiar yet totally changed, free of the limitations of the human condition which he had taken upon himself. We cannot confidently imagine or portray that wonderful body, but we can try to grasp how God preserves all that is familiar to us, yet at the same time transforms it. The signs of Resurrection are all around us, all the time: in the yearly renewal of nature, in recovery from illness, in reconciliation after estrangement, in every new birth.

These are the types, the frail but powerful evidences, of resurrection. They challenge us to look for new responses in our own situation, to take the opportunity of making past failures into future victories. God mends the things that are broken, and empowers us for renewal in the little ways as well as the great. The Easter message is for every day, a pledge that nothing is beyond the healing power of divine love. It is not a promise of utopia in this world. The Risen Body of Christ still bore the marks of the Cross: it was a wounded Body which ascended in glory, to lift our humanity into divinity.

The Resurrection experience does not wipe out the past, we have to go on living with our wounds, damaged perhaps, but no longer under the power of disappointment and resentment, because the love of God has brought life out of death. Christ ‘died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them’. (2 Corinthians 5. 15)

Back to the top