Thought for the Day, 13 April 2009

The Rev. Dr Giles Fraser

Yesterday morning, just a little before dawn, my congregation gathered on the banks of the River Thames and lit the Easter fire. People returning from night jobs on the number 14 bus peered out of the window at this strange little gathering - some looked puzzled, some smirked, others crossed themselves. I lit our Easter candle from the bonfire and processed it within the pitch-black church. As we stumbled to find our places, the sun rose up above the river. A new dawn had broken.

Many churches are built in such a way that the people in the pews face directly east; that is, in order to be lined up with the sunrise, towards the new dawn of the resurrection. Yet despite this fact, some Christians subscribe to a version of the Easter story that doesn't really give the resurrection anything much to do. For some argue that Jesus saves humanity on the cross, that it's on the cross that Jesus pays off the debt of sin that human beings owe to God. Now this is not a version of Christianity I subscribe to for many reasons - not least of which is that it treats the resurrection as a spectacular afterthought, giving it no real work to do in the overall scheme of human salvation.

In contrast, for many of the earliest Christian accounts, the story of Easter is the story of how Christ defeats the powers of darkness. Here what is going on is an epic battle between good and evil, with the love of God emerging triumphant over the powers of sin and death. On this model, the resurrection clearly has very important work to do. Indeed, it's the crux of the thing, for the resurrection is the ultimate expression of God's victory over darkness.

But too many believers get stuck on the cross, misled by the idea that Jesus' death is some sort of cosmic payback for human wrong. Not only is this theology too much about violence and retribution, but also, it never properly makes it to the resurrection and so to the good news that the love of God is more powerful that the forces of death and destruction.

I have little interest in debates about how the resurrection actually happened or what historically went on. What I do know is that Jesus' followers were transformed from a sad bunch of defeated cowards into a group of confident and charismatic people, preaching a message of good news based on the conviction that with God there is always hope. Something transformed these people, something changed them, something that I want to call the resurrection.

And that is what we were doing out in the rain yesterday morning before dawn, recreating with the symbols of sunrise and candles the basic drama of the Christian faith. As St John put it in his famous prologue: "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it". When there's as much darkness out there as there seems to be at the moment, what more appropriate thought can there be than this? Happy Easter.