The Dean, the Very Rev Bob Key

THERE is a wonderful story of a priest in Russia in communist days who was challenged to a debate by an atheist communist party official.

The debate was to take place in the local church. Many people came and the communist official spoke at great length about the death of Christianity and how it was replaced by a scientific secular society.

When he had finished and resumed his seat, the audience waited for the priest to reply. How was he going to counter all this? He stood up, went to the microphone and gave the traditional greeting that starts Easter services all around the world ‘CHRIST IS RISEN’ he shouted. The people joyfully shouted back ‘He is risen indeed, Alleluia!’

This is not the triumph of superstition over science. It is the triumph of faith in the facts of Christ over the doubts of a world that is often too busy to care about things that really matter.

The women who first discovered that the tomb of Jesus was empty had gone to finish a burial but the facts of the empty tomb and the encounter with the risen Jesus convinced them that the love of God had trumped all the evil of a mock trial in a kangaroo court and the horrendous death of crucifixion.

The men didn’t believe them. They assumed that their grief had got the better of them and only when Peter and John went to the tomb did they believe. These real people did not deal in philosophical ideas but in the cold hard realities of life, They were fishermen and tax collectors.

The Lord Jesus who rose from the dead to show us death is not the end and that forgiveness, freedom and eternal life are God’s gift in Christ still waits for us to discover the truth: God’s not dead and he invites us to walk this life and all eternity with him.

Happy Easter.