This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

(1John 1.5)

 

It has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

(2Timothy 1:10)

 

There is a great mystery at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One man had to die for the sins of many, in fact the whole of humanity. As he died to ‘pay the price for our sins’, he overcame and rose to new life, life everlasting. The darkness of last week, is soon followed by the light of Easter. The women who were the first witnesses to the risen Christ were greeted by ‘two men clothed in dazzling robes’, who asked them, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.”

 

The resurrection of Jesus is life overcoming death, light overcoming darkness; it is God overcoming all that is wrong with the world (also known as sin). A new hope was born again. So many people continue to live in the darkness, as if they are ‘looking among the dead’ for life, when it is found only in the risen Christ. When Jesus rose again it vindicated all his life’s work, his teaching and God’s plan to ‘make all things new’, starting with Jesus, the one who took on human flesh, died to the old way (the old flesh) and in whose risen body, we too can have eternal life. So every week, when we remember the death and life of Christ in the taking of bread and wine, we hear the words, “the body of Christ keep you in eternal life” and so we remember it is ‘Christ in us, the hope of glory’. A life made new in Christ. One day all will be made new as Eden is restored, in the new heaven and the new earth and we will experience the glory of God, where it ‘does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb (Jesus) is its lamp.’ Let us be those who walk in this light now and forevermore.

 

Rev’d Mark Anderson