wfn.org | ACNS3376 The Archbishop's Easter Message to the Diocese of

["Anglican Communion News Service" <acnslist@anglicancommunion.org>]

ACNS 3376     |     ENGLAND	|     28 MARCH 2003

The Archbishop's Easter Message to the Diocese of Canterbury

[Canterbury Outlook] As I write, we are contemplating the threat of war, and
I have no idea how things will be by the time you read this.

It's a sobering business trying to guess where we'll be in a few weeks' time
and seeking a word of gospel to speak into this unknown situation.

Yet it's just this kind of situation that Easter is most relevant to. The
resurrection is not the solution to a problem - 'how do we go on believing
in God when God's Son dies?' It is the beginning of a new creation, a new
world: 'The first day of the week' in which God will remake the whole of the
broken universe.

I don't know yet what I need from God, I don't know how to pray as I should,
as St Paul says. But what God has to give me is not something to fill in the
gaps in my desires and my plans, but a comprehensive new relationship with
him which changes everything.

So here I sit in mid-Lent, not knowing what to pray for, not knowing what
words will be necessary if and when the reality of war overtakes us, what
words will be necessary in the aftermath of war with all its tragedies and
losses here and elsewhere in the world.

And, as St Paul promises, it is the Holy Spirit who teaches me what to do
and say: look to the new creation begun in Christ's resurrection, the
glorious liberty of God's children, and keep it in focus even without words
or specific hopes.

Just sit in prayer and long for it - because it is there, promised for us,
even when we don't know how or when or where it will fully come.

At Easter we recognise what God has done; and if God has done it, it stays
done, as we say! There is a new world. At every moment it stands at the
edges of our failure and violence, and nothing can take it away, nothing can
build a wall so high that it cannot impact on the everyday world.

But it comes always as a surprise, just as the resurrection came as a
surprise (not as the solution to a problem). What makes it clear that the
resurrection is God's action, is precisely the fact that it reshapes
everything, that it doesn't fit into our small world but demands that we
grow into a bigger world, God's world.

War or peace, success or failure, this is always the Easter gospel; thank
God for it.

___________________________________________________________________

For details about the Enthronement of the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury,
the Most Revd Rowan D Williams, visit http://www.anglicancommunion.org/

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