St Michael’s Vicarage
Alnwick
Dear People of Alnwick,
As a little boy I grew up with a girl called Jeanette who was only a fortnight younger than me.
When we played together, we shared our toys and I remember, particularly, Jeanette’s toy clown whose name was ‘Kelly’. The bottom half of Kelly was like half a football and, no matter how hard or how often you knocked it over, it would always bounce back again!
In some ways, I find that quite a helpful way of considering the victory over death which Christ won for us by his resurrection; for there we see an amazing demonstration of the God who will not be kept down.
The various groups of people who had set out to destroy Jesus must have had triumphal smiles on their faces. Having witnessed Jesus being cut down from the cross, his body limp and lifeless, they then witnessed him being sealed in the tomb. Hatred, it would seem, had done its worst but, leaving nothing to chance, a guard was placed outside the tomb.
But, just like ‘Kelly’, the love of God cannot be kept down and, on the first Easter morning, they found the stone rolled away and the tomb completely empty. Christ was risen!
And so it is for us today. In the final analysis there is nothing and no-one that can frustrate the will of God. Though many will try – and sometimes seem to succeed – and, as we all know, there is more than enough evil in the world to make us think that they do succeed – ours is a God who will finally triumph.
Remember St. Paul’s words to the Christians in Rome:
“I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
It is that love – the love which burst forth upon the world on the first Easter morning in a new and more powerful way – that cannot be kept down.
And there is still nothing that can stand in the way of him who rose victorious from the dead. So, however things may seem, and even when faith seems to fly in the face of reason, we know that in it all we can say with St. Augustine:
“We are an Easter people and ‘ALLELUIA’ is our song!”
May you know all the blessing of Easter throughout this joyful season,
Paul.
