Britannia Radio

Today, Easter Sunday, is a day of new hope for all and a day of 
rejoicing for Christians.  But tragedy is never far away nor is evil.

The only thing I would say about the e-mail story filling the media 
the last 24 hours is that it is more than politics.  That anyone 
should plan a campaign of character assassination based on totally 
fabricated stories is not only an example of shocking politics,  it 
is plainly evil  transcending politics altogether.    The shocking 
thing is that such evil minds should ever have been tolerated at all, 
anywhere.

We should never tolerate evil but the Church in the midst of today's 
rejoicing has antagonism to face all the time that's message is one 
of hope and love.

The Sunday Telegraph's leader below spells out this antagonism while 
after that I send an Easter message from Canon Lucy Winkett which I 
commend.

HAPPY EASTER TO YOU ALL
xxxxxxxxx cs
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SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 12.4.09
1. Leader:   Christians face a new persecution
Telegraph View: This Easter, Christians have a mountain to climb in 
an increasingly hostile environment.

Easter Sunday is the most confident and optimistic feast in the 
Christian calendar. And Christians presently need all the confidence 
they can muster. The latest EU draft directive has alarmed the Church 
of England, with good cause. In the name of outlawing discrimination, 
it would compel faith schools to admit unbelievers and force churches 
to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples.

Neither of these impositions is reasonable. What is being attempted, 
under the guise of eliminating discrimination, is discrimination 
against Christians. Since legislators in Brussels must be well aware 
of this, it is disingenuous of them to pretend to be well-
intentioned. The wider agenda is to remove anti-discrimination laws 
from the jurisdiction of Westminster to Brussels, when public opinion 
favours a reverse process - the repatriation of authority to Britain.

This country achieved religious harmony with Catholic Emancipation in 
1829. Brussels, in contrast, is heir to the bitterly anti-clerical 
politics of continental Europe, which is no part of the British 
tradition. Yet even Westminster legislation has closed Catholic 
adoption agencies, while a politically correct reign of terror is 
afflicting our workplaces, with the latest victim a charity worker 
who chatted casually with a colleague about his religious beliefs 
excluding same-sex marriage. Health workers who have offered 
Christian comfort to ill people have intolerantly been penalised.

So, this Easter, Christians have something of a mountain to climb in 
an increasingly hostile environment. They should remain undaunted: 
they have been here before. Persecution of an infinitely more 
virulent kind than anything at the disposal of the European 
Parliament is part of their heritage.

Jeers and mockery come with the territory when the ground being 
covered is Calvary. God is dead, claim their enemies. If they look 
more carefully they will see that the tomb is empty.
===============
2. As the bad news gets worse, the Good News keeps getting better
In all the uncertainty of the 21st century, it is more important than 
ever to reconnect with the traditions and the paradoxical truths of 
Easter, says Lucy Winkett.


Easter Day is the day Christians celebrate Jesus Christ rising from 
the tomb. The resurrection of the dead is not an easy or obvious 
concept to describe; artists, poets and musicians have all struggled 
to depict it well. And yet, despite these challenges, in recent years 
there has been a revival in how this story is told by the Church in 
its liturgy.

Once again, many communities will have walked through the streets 
with a donkey on Palm Sunday, will have built a large wooden cross on 
Good Friday before processing through their town or village, and will 
have lit the first fire of Easter outside the church building on 
Saturday night or at dawn on Easter Day.

These are ancient customs, revived to bring to life the extraordinary 
events of Holy Week in a society where most adults live their lives 
without reference to any organised religion. It's a story we hear 
through a series of cultural filters, and, for a modern generation 
unfamiliar with its vocabulary and characters, it needs translation.

The turbulent political and religious environment of 1st-century 
Palestine provided the historical backdrop for the arrest of Jesus 
Christ, his isolation when his followers ran away, and his subsequent 
trial and execution. But the themes are universal.

Jesus's disciples had their lives turned upside down. At the moment 
of his death, they were fearful, living under occupation and behind 
locked doors. The news that the women in their group had seen him 
alive astounded them and completely changed the way they lived. Their 
fear was transformed into courage, their anxiety turned into 
confidence, and they were able to speak publicly about what they 
believed to be true.

It is often said that Jesus Christ never wrote any books or held 
public office, hardly travelled from the place where he was born, or 
produced any plans for the ordering of society. Yet all the armies 
that ever marched or kings that ever ruled have not had so profound 
an effect on the world as that travelling preacher and healer. That 
is because of the resurrection message that was transmitted across 
the known world by excited men and women who had found something 
extraordinary.

Jesus's disciples thought they had lost the teacher who had taught 
them that the kingdom of God belongs to children, that human life 
should be characterised by compassion and dignity, whatever your 
status, and that life is lived not for the maximising of one's own 
comfort but for the common good.

Two thousand years later, these themes are more relevant than ever. 
We live in a half-changed world. We saw the collapse of controlled 
economies at the end of the 20th century, and at the beginning of the 
21st we are learning that unbridled market forces in the end indulge 
our worst instincts for greed, selfishness and arrogance.

On the eve of the G20, the Prime Minister, in search of moral tenets 
on which to base a new global economic order, quoted the "Golden 
Rule". It's a well-known saying, quoted by Jesus, that is shared by 
many world religions, and an inspiring ethic by which to live: "Do to 
others as you would have them do to you." But, at the Last Supper

just before his death, Jesus said something else, too. He said not so 
much, "Do to others as you would have them to do you", but "Do as I 
have done to you".

The Easter message of hope and new life lives today in the compassion 
and sacrifice of people all over the world in their local 
communities. Christ washed the feet of his disciples, he brought 
healing and forgiveness into a divided world, and he challenged any 
who abused their religious authority or political power. Ultimately, 
he laid down his life for his friends.

Easter joy is not an individualistic smugness that comes with 
believing in pie in the sky when you die. Easter joy is born of an 
irrepressible belief that a life of love, justice, forgiveness, 
compassion and service cannot in the end be destroyed by cynicism, 
violence and despair - the forces of death. This is why the dramatic 
story of the trial, execution and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth 
will continue to be retold in parishes, schools, hospitals and 
prisons all over the country.

In all the uncertainty of the 21st century, it is more important than 
ever to reconnect with the traditions and the paradoxical truths of 
this tale. Easter joy takes root in us only when we have recognised 
despair for ourselves, when we have known the pain of our own Good 
Friday. To keep hoping and believing in change for a better world 
takes determination and strength.

Easter hope does not translate into easy optimism or a naive 
prediction that everyone lives happily ever after; life is much more 
complex than that.
But life has meaning and depth that we can hardly imagine, and we 
find it today in the fire and bread and wine
of Easter.

Lucy Winkett is a Canon of St Paul's Cathedral