Easter Wishes

UK ARCHBISHOP’S EASTER MESSAGE TAKES STEP AWAY FROM BUNNIES AND EGGS TO HARD COLD REALITY OF JIHAD…….

While life in the West can be summed up as an egg roll on a warm lawn, people elsewhere are being butchered by jihad, and the jackals of Islam are soon to be howling at our own gates.

In a world so full of terrible atrocities, Easter eggs are a cruel irrelevance: A stirring – and unashamedly political – Christian message from the Church of England’s most outspoken Archbishop 

For sufferers and bereaved people, the jollity of Easter egg hunts may seem like a cruel irrelevance, says Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York

For sufferers and bereaved people, the jollity of Easter egg hunts may seem like a cruel irrelevance, says Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York

As I tell God’s tremendous story of Easter this year, I will also be asking myself how I would console the relatives of passengers and crew who died in that murderous plane crash in the French Alps.

What of others, who have witnessed unspeakable atrocities in Syria, and in Iraq where Christians have been expelled from villages that were home to their forebears for thousands of years? Or on the continent of Africa, where whole communities have been decimated by the ebola plague and thousands more have died from HIV/Aids. Where is the solace for them?

The Easter message must apply to humanity in its deepest distress. I was told of a recently bereaved widower who looked out on his garden ablaze with daffodils, his eyes full of tears.

‘How she loved this view each spring,’ he said. Grief at the death of his wife had eclipsed the beauty of the moment.

What for others would have been a glorious scene was a painful reminder to him of his loss.

For sufferers and bereaved people, the jollity of Easter egg hunts may seem like a cruel irrelevance. No one would deny children their fun, though one day they, too, will know that eggs and bunnies have little bearing on reality.

Christians are not excused suffering. In many parts of the world right now, they are actually at greater risk because they follow Jesus Christ.

In the midst of all this is the virtue of Christian hope, which comes from the contagious conviction that death, grim as it may be, is actually the prelude to something else. A comma, not a full stop, a pause, not the end.

If you take a glance at the New Testament, you will see that it all stems from encountering Jesus of Nazareth alive again from the dead.

His followers would have all abandoned His mission if He was not risen from the dead. They were demoralised, broken-hearted, frightened and confused when He was crucified. Within days, the same people were totally reinvigorated by the physicality of His resurrection. It gave them a new and dynamic confidence.

Read more:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.