Newsletter - 14 April 2024
What does resurrection mean?
Easter is not a day but a season – 50 days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost to reflect on the great mystery of Christian faith – Christ’s resurrection.
What does it mean for us here and now? Here are a few thoughts by Canadian musician and songwriter Steve Bell.
First, resurrection implies there is something in need of re-creating—that something has gone wrong. We are not blind to our history of terrible wars, human brutality, … We know too well the sinful impulse to devalue and control the other, even nature itself, which we were given to steward, not to exploit.
Second, resurrection implies divine intervention. Human effort and ingenuity, … as well-meaning as they may be, will not bring about the utopia that our misdirected hopes presume. Instead, we need a God whose love will not let us go, and who will resolutely prevent the way of death from being the last word.
Finally, resurrection may not imply destruction so much as re-creation., … Jesus’ glorified body used the material of his earthly body, and the earliest disciples understood the significance of this. … “Redemption doesn’t mean scrapping what’s there and starting over again from a clean slate, but rather liberating what has come to be enslaved.” (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope)
Could it be that Jesus taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven” precisely because that has been God’s plan all along? His intent was not the earth’s destruction and our escape to an immaterial bliss, but rather the marriage of heaven and earth, of which Jesus is the first fruit, and we are, as Wright describes, the witnesses in word and deed to God’s “future-arrived-in-the-present,” speaking of what is to come, indeed, of what is already here.
“Christ has risen!” cries the priest on Easter Sunday. “He has risen indeed! Alleluia!” responds the congregation with a mighty shout. And our alleluias are neither naïve nor fortified by false opiates, but are invigorated by our risen Lord, who sends us out with the gospel of repentance and forgiveness so that the new creation may be seen in the flesh, and so there may be real hope and joy now even as we await the final resurrection.
Deacon Ted Wood, ccn
Focus of the Week
Priest Training Fund
Good Shepherd Sunday - 21 April
Next Sunday is Good Shepherd Sunday, the day we pray for priests and for vocations to the priesthood. The annual collection for the Priest Training Fund will take place next weekend. Your generous donation helps ensure we can support these men who are called to be like Christ the Good Shepherd. Donation envelopes are available in the entrance hall.
You can use the QR code to make your donation or visit rcdow.org.uk/donations