“There is no going back” says the Bishop of St Asaph as he reflects on the message of Easter this year. The symbol of the egg, so familiar at Easter, reminds us that there comes a time when “the chick bursts forth, and there’s no going back.” The resurrection of Jesus “is an invitation to us to embrace new life”.
Bishop Gregory Cameron says, “The message of Jesus bursting the chains of sin and death has also become a powerful inspiration to proclaim the end of injustice and lethargy about the wrongs of the world. It is precisely because of the conviction that Jesus wants to do something to renew the wholeness of the world that so many Christians are moved to lead the fight for justice and for peace.”
Bishop Gregory’s Easter message, published in the diocesan magazine, ‘Teulu Asaph’, takes as its starting point the hymn ‘Come, you faithful, raise the strain.’ The full text can be read below.
Full text
‘Tis the spring of souls today, Christ hath burst His prison,
And from three day’s sleep in death as a sun hath risen.
All the winter of our sins, long and dark, is flying
From His light, to whom we give laud and praise undying.
John of Damascus wrote these words about Easter in the eighth century. The whole hymn, “Come, you faithful, raise the strain” is worth reading because of the powerful images which John invokes to describe the Easter celebration, and the “bursting forth” of Christ is an amazing image. The power of God’s life was so strong in Jesus that the deathly prison could not hold him. It is the reason why the egg is Easter’s symbol – the eggshell comes to a point when it can no longer contain the fully formed fledgling inside; the chick bursts forth, and there’s no going back.
For the Christian there is no going back either. The bursting forth of Jesus from the tomb, brimming over with new life, is an invitation to us to embrace new life. Although historically the Resurrection is described as an event that took place two thousand years ago, in spiritual time, the Resurrection is an ever-present moment, an unstoppable dawn, when Jesus says to us that the winter night of our failures, mired in guilt, shame or hurt are all swept away by the love of God. The Gospel of Jesus is a gospel of liberation because we are invited to make a spiritual journey with Jesus to the Cross, where God pays the price of all the brokenness of the world, so that he may lead us on to the tomb, inviting us to let go of the burden of the past in the heartfelt prayer of repentance, and thence onward into new resurrection life.
Down through the ages, Christians have found that to make this journey in their hearts is to find new life, new freedom, and new strength. The message of Jesus bursting the chains of sin and death has also become a powerful inspiration to proclaim the end of injustice and lethargy about the wrongs of the world. It is precisely because of the conviction that Jesus wants to do something to renew the wholeness of the world that so many Christians are moved to lead the fight for justice and for peace.
So how will your Easter be this year? And how will you let the bursting forth of Jesus’ new life blossom in your heart? With the warmest of Easter Greetings. Hallelujah!
