Village Shepherd

We Christians are often reckoned to be a sad bunch, at least in the opinion of non-Christian western society. And sometimes, I think they're right. We must seem a bit pathetic to normal red-blooded human beings as we go to church each Sunday, singing hymns and indulging in all kinds of odd rituals, when we could be cleaning the car or shopping or playing sport or otherwise enjoying ourselves.

And they could also be right, looking at Christianity itself from a worldly point of view. We worship a leader who had none of the attributes usually associated with success, like wealth and status. His friends were mostly poor, many of them weren't particularly well-educated, and none of them had any power. They were a ragged bunch, many of whom were on the outskirts of society and were despised by decent people, and none of them held high office or had any political influence.

And to cap it all, that leader of whom they had such high hopes, who was able to work wonders and had the sort of magnetic personality which drew people to him, was executed as a criminal after just three short years of ministry, thus prematurely ending the hopes of all his friends.

What's more, we Christians don't always look as though we have much to be happy about. Our worship sometimes tends to be solemn and involves embarrassing features like self-denial and confession. And we often beat ourselves on the breast because generally speaking, we tend to fail. No matter how hard we try to be like Jesus, we continue to sin. And somehow or other, even trying to be good is something which is often sneered at by others.

In today's epistle from the first letter to the Corinthians, St Paul too says we're sad people. Our present Western society is quite similar to first century Corinthian society in many ways. Anything went in Corinth, which was notorious as a hotbed of illicit sex and sleaze. So maybe it's not so surprising that St Paul thought the Christians there were sad.

But then he suddenly turns ideas of sadness on their head. We're sad, he says, if we have the idea that Christianity is only to do with this life. If that's what we think, we've only picked up a fraction of the full story and we're selling ourselves short, for Christ was raised from death, and that makes all the difference. It means that Christianity certainly is a religion for this life, showing us how to live in this life and helping us get to know God for ourselves, but Christianity is also a religion for another life after death.

Easter is the central focus of Christianity, and it's a very sharp focus because it's full of huge contradictions. On Good Friday (and many non-Christians may wonder why it's called "good") the leader of our religion was executed after a rigged trial featuring dishonest witnesses and a great deal of prejudice. By Holy Saturday it was all over for Jesus' followers. They were plunged into that awful stage of bereavement when nothing seems quite real except the unremitting agony of being without the loved one, that stage when you can't concentrate on anything except the huge black hole within.

The dream was over, and in such a hideous way involving shame and disgrace as well as torture. And shame and disgrace have a habit of sticking to anyone within reach. No wonder Peter hurried to distance himself when he was challenged as a friend of Jesus.

But as we all know now, it wasn't over. For Christianity, it was just beginning. Despite his well-attested death, Jesus was seen again alive by many people. Clearly he was alive in a different sort of way, for although less than 48 hours earlier he'd been so ill that he'd died from his wounds, he was now fit and well and left only with scars.

At this distance of time and space it's difficult to know exactly what happened, but we can hang onto the fact that many people saw the risen Jesus, that all four gospels proclaim it, and that St Paul based his whole life upon it. So something very out of the ordinary happened, which has made a massive difference to the lives of millions of people since.

Because human beings are imperfect, they eventually die. The first human being - Adam - died, and this has been the pattern for human life ever since. But Jesus was a new kind of human being, the first of a new breed. He died, but was then seen alive again and has remained alive ever since. So in a way, Jesus counteracts Adam. The first man died - and the new man died too - but then the new man overcame death and remains alive forever.

And that's exactly what Jesus promised his followers. He promised that they too would overcome death just as he had overcome death, and would then remain alive forever. They too would live in some different dimension where they would be fit and well, no matter how they died. The only difference is that somehow or other Jesus re-entered this dimension for a few short weeks to show what we could expect, and we don't seem to be able to do that. We remain in the new dimension.

You'd better believe it, says St Paul, because if you don't you're selling yourself short and that makes you a really sad person.

There is plenty of resurrection in this life. Christians, if they can hang on maintaining their own integrity when bad things happen to them, will experience resurrection in this life. Their lives will blossom again, and they will again know happiness.

But there's more than all of that. There's this very special promise that after physical death the real person, the real "me", will go on to a new kind of life after death. And for those who have learned to love in this life, that will be a life spent in God's presence, living and loving with him.

No wonder we fill the Church with flowers at Easter. What a terrific message of hope and joy Easter brings us.