Easter Message 2001
'God so loved the world' is the message we hear at Easter; God's love was such that he sent his Son to earth to live, suffer and die so that we might be set free from guilt and from the fear and hatred of ourselves that guilt involves. But there is more; and the 'more' is what really should be in the forefront of our minds at Easter.
Jesus rose from the dead. And this is not a happy ending or a spectacular proof that God was at work in the life and death of Jesus. It is a vital part of God's love for the world. God brings Jesus back to life in his body - not just as an idea in people's minds. God, in other words, loves the material, bodily world. When God gives mercy and salvation to the world, he gives it to the whole person, not just to the mind or feelings, and to the whole environment. Something happens to the entire physical person I am when God's love is at work, and to the entire material world as well.
But we have plenty of evidence just now that we don't share God's love for the world in this sense. We are at one level very eager to meet our physical needs for stimulus and pleasure; but that's not quite the same thing. We continue our ludicrous abuse of the physical environment; some of the most depressing news of recent weeks has been the refusal of the new American government to approve the internationally agreed protocols about lowering pollution rates. And this at a time when the effects of global pollution seem to be getting more obvious year by year. The USA's attitude is only the most extreme example of something we are all involved in to a greater or lesser degree in the wealthier world.
And the mass slaughter of animals we have been witnessing recently - does that give a message that we love the world around us? We expect from our farmers such levels of production, such speed and industrial efficiency, that we can't come to terms with the idea that farming really demands more patience, a slower pace. And when profits are threatened, the only possible response that will save the business structures of our agriculture is large scale butchery, even of livestock not fatally ill, even of uninfected animals. The questions here are complex, I know. But we need to be asking how we came to be in such a situation, to ask about the appetite for cheap food that stokes the fires. It is uncomfortably close to the consuming greed that underlies the wider environmental crisis.
So one subject to think about this Easter might be, 'Do we love the world?' Not, 'Do we love humanity?' only, but do we have the sort of love for the physical world, the nature we are part of, that God sows in raising Jesus from the dead? That love is surely part of the good news of Easter: God loves us as we are, mind and body, loves our whole world. How do we make that good news a reality in relation to the whole of our threatened environment?
With every blessing for Easter.