Happy Easter!

I have just returned from our Sunrise Communion service. It is always a joy to gather with members of our church community outdoors, around a bonfire, before entering church with the new paschal candle lit from the fire. I rejoice that we always have 25-30 hardy individuals who gather at dawn for this special Easter celebration. This morning was bright and clear, the birdsong was amazing; earlier, there had even been a flock of honking geese flying over, symbols of the Holy Spirit in Celtic thought. It felt like resurrection.

I don't go to London often, but when I do I like to ride the Underground. Checking the destination board (1st train...2nd train...3rd train...), the distant rumble, the rush of air pushed out ahead of the train, the loud, almost deafening clattering and then the light as the train emerges from the tunnel. It always seems to me to be going too fast to stop in time! This subterranean experience speaks to me of resurrection.

Mary Magdalene and friends had not read the script ('they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead'); they had not heard the rumblings of new life in Jesus' words, nor felt the rush of the Spirit's breath which told them God was on the move. So they were caught completely by surprise that first Easter day. Not so with us. We have read, heard, felt, even seen evidence of the resurrection to prepare us for that general resurrection on the Last Day.

Henri Nouwen writes movingly of an Easter morning service in a l'Arche community. Philippe is a badly disabled and disfigured young man, by an accident of birth. Incapable of speech, he cries out from deep within himself as the Easter liturgy proceeds. Nouwen notices his plight, but also the loving, tender care Philippe receives from community members. One day, Philippe will have a new body; meanwhile the attention he receives prefigures that resurrection and is in preparation for it. Just so, the love, the tenderness, the care we show for others is in readiness for that day when all shall be gathered up in Christ and all will be made new.

Meanwhile, we live with the ups and downs of life, our moments of anger and tranquility, times of sorrow and celebration. This past week we have remembered the Hillsborough 96 here in Liverpool; we have also heard of the dreadful ferry disaster in Korea, with nearly 300 children drowned. The grief and the anger in both cases is past our understanding if we are not personally involved. And yet...and yet... there is hope. Hope that, one day, we shall hear those subterranean rumblings, feel the bright wind of the Spirit, be dazzled by the light, and 'we shall all be be changed' (1 Corinthians 15. 51).

For we have read the script!