“I’ve learnt to love Easter.
I know this must sound a bit strange but Easter Day when I was a teenager always seemed to be the day when in our house there were the most ugly arguments.
The grand triumphalism of the resurrection was met by disappointment.
I’ve learned to love Easter I think because I’ve discovered that resurrection experiences rarely come with a trumpet fanfare or massed choirs, but instead they come quietly. They grow upon us, like a flower unfolding, like the cherry blossom tree in my garden where the green buds open ever so slowly until one day you wonder where this blaze of beauty comes from.
In other words, Easter Day is a great day of celebration.
Why would we not celebrate the day that reveals God’s irrepressible capacity to transform an ugly cross into a thing of beauty? But most of us come to this realisation through a series of quiet and unremarkable moments when, unexpectedly, light breaks in or when new life, new possibilities open up against all the odds.
Those moments when fear is overwhelmed by hope. So Easter is a time to sing but it’s also a time to listen, to watch, and to be ready for the gentle in-breaking of new life that we discover, sometimes only in retrospect, and to which we respond less with loud hallelujahs and more with an astonished silence.
Have a happy Easter.”
Read the Bishop’s 2018 Easter Day Sermon at St Mary’s Cathedral, click here
