Easter Day - 11:00am Sung Eucharist, 5 April 2026 - Dean Anthony
Yes, it is Easter Day and early in the Spring, and I have a personal reason for rejoicing – the birth of a first grandchild, now just two weeks and two days old. As part of adjusting to our new status in the world, Clare and I have got out the photographs of when we were new parents. Unlike my eldest son and his wife, we were the first of our contemporaries to have children, and had pretty much no idea what we were doing.
Discovering for ourselves how children develop and grow was both a joy and a continual challenge. Amongst other things, we saw how much children learn through observing, copying and imitation. A recent example I enjoyed was a flurry of videos during the Winter Olympics, showing children imitating the curling. Not having an ice rink to hand, nor the smooth stone launched by the curlers across that ice, the children used household items like brooms and mops for the ‘sweeping’, while sending toys, kettles or one those blue ice packs across kitchen floors towards a masking tape target.
Even if you’ve never seen curling, I’m sure you will nonetheless recognize the human behaviour I’m describing: our brilliant capacity from a young age to imitate what we see, and to be inspired to do something by the actions of others. As infants we learn to speak by echoing what we hear, and are introduced to what is safe and what is dangerous from the expressions on the faces of our parents and grandparents. Through imitation we discover the world, and how to develop increasingly complex skills.
This is all good, but there are downsides. If you put a toddler in a room full of toys, the most attractive thing is almost certainly the one toy already being played with by another child. Sharing, as we and most new parents discover, may be problematic! We learn what to want, as children, and as teenagers and adults, by how desirable something is to others. And since we live in a world of limited resources, this can lead to rivalry and conflict in much more serious ways than a playground dispute.
Another aspect of this theme, is the role of smartphones in young lives. I’m glad advice on how to handle this is getting clearer. For part of the destructive power of Instagram and other social media platforms is the holding before us of glittering images designed to make us envious of the beautiful, successful lives portrayed. Images that can only ever leave us feeling inadequate, frustrated and unhappy. In the real world, imitating and attaining what we see is impossible.
Social media influencers have huge followings, but are not usually worthy role models. So where might we find examples of good living, worthy of imitation? The news is full of stories of public figures with feet of clay, Radio 2’s Scott Mills being the most recent example. Politicians and indeed priests don’t have much of a reputation these days; often, sadly, for good reason. This has been true for years, but it is new to have, as the leader of the free world, someone who appears to have forgotten the virtues of courtesy, humility, and telling the truth; someone ready to unleash the full destructive power of modern weaponry into the complex powder keg of the Middle East, without a consistent plan, or any regard at all for international law.
If this is a model of how to live today, God help us all. But then, in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, that is exactly what God has done. In the crucifixion, with state and religious power nailing a man to a cross, God is found in the midst of those considered of least account, with the victims of war and violence. And then, in the resurrection, we see the indestructibility of divine love; that our human failures and destructiveness cannot destroy the mercy, justice and peace found in God alone. So as the angel said to the women at the empty tomb, and then Jesus himself, we need not be afraid, for Christ has been raised from the dead. The healing resources of the resurrection are sufficient even for a world such as ours.
The love of God, seen in the crucified and risen Christ, is not coercive or manipulative. We are not commanded and forced to accept it. But we are invited to recognize the compelling truth that in Christ everything has changed. In him we finally have a role model worthy of imitation. To recognize that to imitate Christ’s way of living in the world, his way of being human, is the only way to free ourselves from the destructiveness and self-deception that so bedevil our lives.
You may or may not be in the right place to accept this divine invitation, and all that follows from it. The disciples are told they must travel to Galilee if they want to meet the risen Christ. Some have found it takes a change of scene, time away from ordinary routines, to truly see what kind of life Christ is inviting us share in. A soldier, for example, recovering from his battle wounds in hospital, allowing his imagination to wander. He noticed that when he imagined himself involved in brilliant military victories, he was left feeling empty and dissatisfied. When, however, he pictured himself outdoing the saints in following Christ, he felt consoled, inspired and at peace.
This is not a made up example, but the real experience of soldier turned priest Ignatius of Loyola. That bit of self-observation changed his life. Ignatius left hospital with a limp from his injuries, and a changed man in other ways too: he went on to teach a way of praying used by many today, in which you are encouraged to use your imagination to picture being with Jesus, seeing and hearing him for yourself. Being with Jesus, for example, when as he is being put to death, he prays, ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do.’ Or being with the frightened disciples after Jesus’s death, when he returns to them in his risen life. You know you abandoned and denied him, but rather than appearing with words of blame or revenge, he says, ‘Peace be with you.’
In these ways, and with these words, Jesus shows there is a better way than the cycle of imitative violence that runs through so much of human history. If you hurt or kill members of my family or my people, we will do the same to you. Your violence is inexcusable, mine is wholly justified. You attack me with missiles and drones, I will do the same to you. As I said, we human beings are brilliant at emulation and imitation.
How does he break this terrible cycle? Jesus comes to his frightened disciples living simultaneously in two worlds; he is risen from the dead, yet still bears the wounds inflicted by human history. He shows them his hands and his side, the Good Friday wounds, but this is the risen Christ, raised from death by God the Father, sustained by the divine life, speaking words of Peace and forgiveness, and sending out his disciples to do the same. Because he shares God’s life, Jesus is able to transcend the human cycle of violence. What he longs for, desires and wants is for the whole of human life to be shaped by the God of peace who raised him from the dead. It is true that from our earliest days, we learn what to want from other people. So, with that bit of self-knowledge in mind, let us learn from Jesus, let our lives and actions be shaped by his.
Given the ongoing European war in Ukraine, as well as across the Middle East, let me be clear on one point: I do not believe God in Christ calls us to pacifism. The people of Ukraine have every right to defend themselves, just as the people of Britain and our allies were right to take the fight to Hitler in the Second World War. But doing this is not something Christians can ever rejoice over or exult in; to suggest that it offers ‘glory to God’ is pretty close to blasphemy. War is always a tragedy, not least when it involves the death of civilians as well as soldiers, children as well as adults.
I can’t wait to see how the life of my new granddaughter unfolds; to see who inspires her, who she will want to be like, what she will want. As part of her life, I hope I will have the chance to share stories that will leave her, like Ignatius, feeling inspired and joyful, not dissatisfied and empty. Perhaps, for example, the story of six year old Ruby Bridges. Ruby was the first black pupil to attend, following a legal ruling, a previously all white school in Louisiana, in the American south. Every day for a year, marshals escorted Ruby to school through an angry crowd who would curse her, shout racial slurs, and hurl death threats. Her story caught the attention of a professor and child psychologist named Robert Coles, who came to investigate. A teacher gave him the following account: ‘I was standing in the classroom… and I saw Ruby coming down the street, with the federal marshals on both sides of her. A woman spat at Ruby but missed. Ruby smiled at her. A man shook his fist at her; Ruby smiled at him. Then she walked up the stairs, and she stopped and turned around and smiled one more time! She told a marshal she prays for those people every night before she goes to sleep.’
Intrigued, Robert Coles interviewed Ruby, asking why she would want to pray for such nasty people. She hesitated and thought before saying, ‘I go to church, and we’re told to pray for everyone, even the bad people, and so I do.’ Ruby may have only been six, but was already being shaped by a way of being in the world that did not involve destructive imitation. She did not spit back, or shake a fist in return. This is the way of the risen Christ, the role model we truly need, the one who really is worth imitating and following, whatever your age, wherever you currently are in your life.
Jesus our risen Lord invites us to live as citizens of two worlds: rooted in human history, we are to bear witness to the peace and compassion of God, not just for our friends and people we find congenial, but for the whole world. I wish you a joyful, peaceful, and very Happy Easter. AMEN.