In a world beset by problems and failure, in his Easter message, Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, the Bishop of Rochester, speaks of the hope to be found in Jesus' resurrection. Watch his message or read it in full below.
Bishop Jonathan’s Easter Message
One of the most encouraging things about the Bible is that it is full of stories of failure. Stories of people who have made a real mess of things, but whom God has turned around and given a fresh start. People like Jacob and Joseph, like David and Peter and Paul, and many more besides.
I find that encouraging because it offers hope for me and for our world. We mess things up and get ourselves in a right pickle, but God can still intervene and create something wonderful, far beyond anything we could have imagined.
And that is the heart of the meaning of the Cross and Resurrection, of the events of Holy Week and Easter. Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly on Palm Sunday, but by Good Friday morning he has been arrested and the crowds that had welcomed him are now baying for his blood. He is crucified, deserted even by his friends, and finally laid to rest in a tomb hewn from the rock.
Dead. Buried. End of the story. Except of course that it wasn’t.
Three days later, Jesus was raised from the dead and the news of his victory over death began to turn the despair of his friends into joy and delight. And so was born the community of disciples who went on to share the story of what God had done right across the ancient world, until the Roman empire itself bowed its knee to the very one it had crucified.
As things stand in this country, it can feel as though faith is on the retreat, that the message of the crucified and risen Jesus is somehow irrelevant to the world of today, with its complex challenges, and its slick, hi-tech answers to its problems.
But when we stop to think, we begin to realise that we human beings have not got things quite as sussed as we thought, with climate change and war and the refugee crisis and so many more issues besides. Perhaps after all we are not as clever and as capable as we like to think.
T S Eliot once said that humankind cannot bear very much reality. We try to hide from the mess we have made of our lives and of our world, filling our time and attention with things that amuse and distract us.
But that can only work for so long – and I think we are perhaps approaching a tipping point beyond which we will no longer be able to hide from the truth of what we have done to ourselves and the world in which we live.
Just now when it may seem that the Christian faith is in danger of being forgotten in our society, perhaps this is the time when the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection, of failure and new beginnings, has the chance to be heard once more.
Quite plainly, we human beings do not have the capacity to sort things out for ourselves. We need someone to come alongside us and save us from ourselves, someone who can offer us a new beginning and a better way.
Our world needs a saviour – and we as Christians need to let them know just who that is.
Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Rt Rev Dr Jonathan Gibbs
Bishop of Rochester
Easter 2023