President's Easter Message

The Rev'd Helen Cameron, President of the Methodist Conference, shares her message for Easter.

Happy Easter

I want to begin this message at Eastertide by inviting you to reflect that creation and resurrection (we are made, and we are yet more wonderfully re-made) are mirror images of each other. They are held together by the will and loving purposes of God. Put at its simplest we know thar God is our Life-giver. Such knowledge has endless implications and ramifications for us, all of them glorious. In our life with God, there are no dead ends, a new door can open in what seemed to be a brick wall; in God there is endless patience and resourcefulness that cannot be defeated by even the worst of our sinfulness. We should rejoice that the cross and the empty tomb have been present in the heart of God since the very foundation of the world.

It is notable that the account of the resurrection begins in darkness and despair. The women friends of Jesus creep out to give the dead body of Jesus the proper care that was not possible as his body was removed from the cross in a hurry. None of the 12 disciples are present at this dawn moment. Perhaps their despair overwhelmed them. Perhaps they are frightened for their own safety. Perhaps their grief has paralysed them. It is a group of brave women who go and are the first witnesses to the resurrection. No-one believes them. They have gone with spices and oils to anoint a dead body but find, instead, an empty tomb and receive a message that Jesus is risen.

Only Peter, last heard of weeping bitterly at his denial and betrayal of Jesus, goes to the tomb to check up on their story which they struggle to articulate.

Does Peter go with the first fledgling beginnings of wild and desperate hope?

Does he go, suddenly remembering the strange things Jesus predicted?

Does he go sensing in his body and his soul that strange, living, powerful presence of God that had been such a strong part of the time in Jesus’ company?

Does he go because he is outraged that someone has stolen the dead and tortured body of his friend?

Peter is given a chance to start again. His betrayal of Jesus is not the end of their friendship, as Peter expected and deserved, but the beginning of Peter’s new life, in which Jesus entrusts his gospel to Peter and the friends who abandoned him in the garden and at the cross.

The joy of Easter Day is not about a happy ending, after all, to the story of Jesus but rather and more importantly it is good news that we are all, like Peter, forgiven people and healed of out memories of injury, guilt or failure. We are, the Church, a community of genuinely forgiven people called to show plainly to others that we are a community of forgiving people and a forgiving Church. The resurrection of Jesus is the remaking of creation itself. The resurrection of Jesus is the word of God speaking in the heart of darkness tand to bring life out of nothing and to bring the human race into existence as the bearers of his image and likeness.

When I was welcomed into the Northampton District as Chair the Order of Service had an image of an Icon of the Resurrection on the front cover (reproduced with permission). It showed the resurrection of Jesus in a particular way. The image shows Jesus rising from death and smashing grave stone as he strode powerfully into new life and the new creation. He is not pictured alone. He is holding the hands of two people, Adam and Eve. They are pictured as old people, with lined faces, as people who have known pain and distress, suffering and heart ache.

In the icon they are pictured being re-made and entering a new creation.

I share the detail of this icon with you because resurrection is not just something experienced by Jesus but something which encompasses us now in all we are and do as forgiven and redeemed people. Then when we die we merely recognise a country we have already entered and somewhere whose light and warmth we have already experienced. Dying then, is going home.

God is in the resurrection is re-making us, moulding and filling us. God is holding us by the hand and leading us onwards into renewed and redeemed life. This Easter we rise with Christ, we are a new creation called to be a faithful witnessing community filled with the power and love and grace of God. Each of us is called to remember and to understand that God forgives and God calls us into new life – to live to Gods praise and glory.

I am always glad to remember that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks of God “eastering in us”. In God our life begins afresh day by day, because God is and always will be, God with us.