The Father Oliver Coss Column: True hope is Easter hope

Very soon, however, those ‘hosannas’ turned into cries of ‘Crucify him, crucify him’, bellowed at Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor. He saw nothing in what Jesus had done that might justify execution on a cross, but found that he had no choice if he was going to remain in control of the city. Terrible things happen to people when they feel out of control: their words, thoughts, and actions can become warped caricatures of their best selves and we do what we have to in order to survive. But even Pilate would wonder, forever after, whether this one life was worth the peace he managed, temporarily, to secure.

On Maundy Thursday we remember the institution of Holy Communion (sometimes called the Eucharist, or the Mass) given as a remembrance of Jesus to his disciples, and a key part of his promise that, though he would eventually be taken from them into the heavens, he would be with them always. In sharing bread and wine, after we ask God to send his Holy Spirit to consecrate them, we remember closely what he said – “This is my body”, as he shared the bread, and “This is my blood” as he passed the cup of wine. In participating in the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood Christians believe that we are being kept from eternal death and made part of God’s own life.

On Good Friday we watch by the cross as his sacrifice is made perfect and complete, amid a weeping Mary and a sorrowful friend, who are the last to leave his side as he endures intolerable suffering for our sake. We see every condition of humanity laid on him as he goes to the cross, our greater and lesser faults and vulnerabilities, so that (in the words of a recent preacher here) we understand that he knows that we sin, even though we don’t have to.

All these things have their place in documented history, and after them a great silence prevails. It might have stayed that way, and become nothing more than a temporarily influential person in our human past. But as his friends came, three days later, to the tomb in which they had hurriedly laid him, they return to find that death has been emptied of its power, and a way made open for humanity to pass through it, and no longer be lost forever in it. I hope, that as Easter comes and we celebrate the joy of Christ’s rising, the true abundance of it might not be in its conclusions, but that it opens for human beings a new hope that we never saw coming.

Happy Easter!

You can find information on Holy Week and Easter at All Saints’ Northampton at www.allsaintsnorthampton.co.uk

Worship on Easter Day takes place at 8am and 10.30am.