Easter Day gives us
one of the most joyous greetings for use at The Peace in our worship and throughout
the Season of Easter: The risen Christ came and stood among his disciples and said,
Peace be with you. Then were they glad when they saw The Lord. (John 20.19, 20)Jesus, having departed, returns and is right in the middle of those who had come to depend on him, learn from him and cry for him.
Many of them have slipped away out of fear but he greets them all joyfully and equally, without any recriminations or rejections, and he gives to them the greatest gift possible, the gift of peace. Their instinctive response is to be happy and to be glad.
This is the gift which the risen Christ still gives to us every time we gather for worship in his name and particularly on Easter Day. The days of sorrow and of doubting are not washed away but the energy which went into them is given fresh direction. We see once again that the darkness is not triumphant over the light. Bereavement wounds and tears and it does so in particular, and indeed peculiar, ways every individual person who experiences it.
In the Christian message of hope, death is destroyed by being put to death in Jesus Christ for those who seek and find the way of peace, the truth of love and the life of community.
From fractured beginnings, the work of God in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit still makes its way to the four corners of the earth in service, in mission and in response to human need and ecological responsibility.
The people of Ireland have always found that peace is both precious and elusive. We have so
often been on the verge of it and it has slipped between our fingers because we are perhaps too well known to one another, or too wedded to our exclusive histories to see that the compromise which is necessary brings with it the dividend of new life beyond caricature.
Christianity is at its most destructive where it luxuriates in internal division and this is the very opposite Christ–given peace. Christianity can no longer afford such luxuries. We are called by God to seek out and to embrace the dignity and the humanity of all or neighbours in the free flowing waters of refreshment and in the spirit of faith, hope and love.
I wish each and all of you a very Happy Easter!
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!