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EASTER VIGIL, Year A: March 23 2008

In so many ways Christianity — at least in Western Europe — can sometimes be its own worst enemy. Go into any church here in England or on the Continent, and you will see that the central focus — the object that draws our eyes — is generally the High Altar with its candles and its Crucifix or Cross; sometimes the East Window behind the High Altar depicts Christ on the Cross; sometimes there is a rood screen, carrying an image of the Crucified Lord. We Christians are accustomed to this, but to the majority of people in this country who now have no knowledge and no understanding of the Christian Gospel, our church furniture and décor can give the impression that ours is a religion preoccupied with suffering and death.

But it hasn't always been like that. In the churches which were built in the first thousand years of Christianity, very often the central focus above or behind the High Altar (either in mosaic or fresco) was the Risen Christ, a glorious figure pulsating with life, and radiating power and energy — not a dead or dying Christ, a tortured body on a Cross, broken and defeated.

Somehow the Western Christians, particularly during the last five or six hundred years, have been more preoccupied with what sin and death did to Jesus, rather than with Jesus Himself and what He has done to sin and death. For the most part, we Western Christians of all traditions and denominations have tended to emphasise the dark and tragic side of the Gospel — the sufferings of Christ — and we give the impression that our religion is primarily concerned with sadness and gloom rather than with joy and life. It is not surprising that so many people assume that Christianity diminishes life, and so they look elsewhere for what they will believe will enhance and give joy and meaning to their lives.

Of course the Cross is central. St Paul was proud to preach 'Christ crucified, the power of GOD and the wisdom of GOD' to drive home the point that the risen Lord whom he served hadn't evaded suffering and by-passed death — humankind's ancient enemies. Jesus had died — there was no question, no doubt, about it — and had been buried. All four Gospels are emphatic and clear about it; this was no pretence, no sham, Jesus had died and had been buried.

But read St Paul as a whole, read the New Testament as a whole, and you can't miss the fact that these are the writings of men who believed in a living Lord, not merely a hero, a good man, who had been unjustly put to death. They don't worry about how Jesus has come alive. What they know is that He is alive, and that He is 'the Resurrection and the Life'. And many of them suffered and died for their conviction that that is so, that it is a fact beyond all denial and qualification. They were convinced that nothing 'in all creation', not even death, 'could separate [them] from the love of GOD in Christ Jesus [the] Lord'. They were convinced that in His victory over the grave a new age has dawned, the long reign of sin is ended, a broken world is being renewed, and our human nature is on the right track at last.

And so those first Christians didn't worry about death. The question of how the resurrection works was not any easier for them than it is for us, and they certainly recognised that all flesh, all mortality, must go through the natural process of dying. They did not kid themselves into thinking or pretending that death isn't real.

But they believed that despite the difficulties, and contrary to all outward appearances (which were just as obvious to them as they are to us) they had been delivered from bondage to sin and the fear of death, into 'the glorious liberty of the children of GOD'.

They believed this because they knew themselves to be 'made alive' and energised by the living Spirit of the living Christ. They trusted the Lord's words when He said, 'If anyone has faith in me, even though they die they shall come to life, and whoever lives and has faith in me shall never die'.

GOD grant us to hear those words again, and to have the courage and humility to accept them as the truth, and to live at all times in the joy that comes from accepting them.

It is worth calling to mind an ancient Jewish tradition which says that the Messiah, when He should come, would be born in the grave.

And it is also worth remembering — on a night such as this — as our brothers and sisters of the Orthodox Churches of Russia and Greece never fail to remember, that what we Westerners refer to as the Sepulchre of the Lord, they refer to as ''the life-giving tomb''.

But for all of us, no matter what our tradition or denomination, it is our Christian faith that through the death and resurrection of Jesus 'the old has passed away, behold the new has come' and that with Jesus 'we have passed out of death into life'.

Signed with the Cross, baptised into Christ's death and resurrection, we are the Easter people, and Alleluia is our song.