The dawn broke heralding a new day. The first sounds of creation were all around us welcoming not just any day but Easter Day. The day of celebration, the day that changed everything, a day that offers hope and peace. 

I read the resurrection narratives in John’s Gospel and listened to Vaughan Williams ‘The Lark Ascending’ on the radio. In the still, quiet early morning, we make our way to the Secret Garden, just off the High Street for an Easter morning Garden Reflection. We gather in an unexpected, ‘sacred space’ with other believers to listen to Scripture, reflect and ponder on that resurrection appearance of Jesus to Mary in the garden. 

Over 40 years ago I encountered something of the presence of the risen Christ on the side of a mountain in the Cairngorms of Scotland, an experience that was to change my life and orientate it away from the mountains and into the ministry. Now many years later, it is not on the mountain top but in the garden that I get a hint of awareness of His presence. In that moment of contemplation, of quiet prayer and reflection I am also mindful of a world beyond the tranquility of these moments; of those whose hearts were broken in Sri Lanka today by the mass killings of believers gathering to celebrate Easter, their lives ended as a result of terrorist bombs. 

I’m enjoy listening to my toddler granddaughter Lyra, pottering around the garden, exploring its many delights but my prayers take me to think about her namesake, Lyra McKee. A gifted and courageous young journalist who was shot dead in Northern Ireland on Thursday night.

Suffering and death remain a tragic scar on the face of humanity. Only the cross and resurrection makes any sense of such evil and devastation and the consolation and hope that such things will be no more.

Travelling south I think about some of the happenings in our world and cannot escape thinking that I am part of a generation that has been so consuming of our own wants that we have been blind to the consequences of our actions for our children and grandchildren. For all the amazing progress that we have made, we have consumed the world with little care for God’s creation. TheExtinction Rebellionprotesters have reclaimed the streets of London and other cities and injected fresh energy into the climate movement. Whilst not endorsing all of their tactics I appreciate their courage and attempts together with the YouthStrike4Climate movement to bring society’s attention to the current and the impending global ecological crisis. 

Driving to Oxford, in central reservations and by the side of every road that we have travelled, is the litter and plastic detritus that is polluting the planet as a result of our careless disregard of our ‘ Garden of Eden’. 

I think of that passage in the Bible which speaks about creation crying out and groaning for its redemption. 

In Ukraine this evening, the country has elected a TV comedy actor, with no political experience other than appearing in a soap drama as their next president. He has deposed Petro Poroshenko, who whenhe became president of Ukraine in 2014, swept away the notion of Ukraine as an inherently divided state, by winning in every region.

All across the world, including the West, the former and noble aspirations of democracy are being challenged by populist movements. The thought of a Brexit Party, gaining seats and being in the lead of current opinion polls, holding influence is a disturbing one. The movement’s clever propaganda, the hypocrisy of its proponents and the capturing of peoples’ hearts and minds on single issue politics is reminiscent of those employed by Goebbels in 1930s Germany. Self-interest, national interest, a right to sovereignty, fearing and blaming the stranger in our midst, trading insults at other nations, falling out over trade deals and running down established institutions all contribute to the arena in which populist movements fester and grow. 

Many people are coming to wonder at the way in which the referendum was conceived, how it has been handled and what it has revealed about divided Britain, (created not by the EU but by us) as one of the saddest and most disturbing periods in modern British history. 

The task of beginning to unite a fractious and divided Britain along with that of climate change are among the greatest challenges we face as a society. 

So how might we have any hope of ever making a contribution to such a task? By seeing in the events of that first Easter both the challenge and hope that is found in Christ. His rising from the dead is proof that evil will not conquer, that redemption is possible, that fear can be set aside, peace with God and between nations can be expereinced and the earth can be renewed. In Christ, God is always making things new and bringing hope and transformation.

The movement that was born on that first Easter Sunday was to turn the world upside down. A movement of ordinary men and women, meeting the risen Christ and empowered by his Holy Spirit went out with the gospel of peace and love. A movement that truly was motivated by love not hate. A movement that eschewed all traces and traits of nationalism, racism, sexism and sectarianism. “Your kingdom come, your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven”.

In that quiet garden this morning we were reminded in the reflection that the same word for ‘garden’ is that used for ‘paradise’. 

God calls us to shine in a dark world, to speak and work for peace amidst conflict, to be bearers of hope and to share the joy that comes from recognising the presence of the risen Christ in the garden or wherever we are. So that the world might experience something of paradise here on earth.

Christ is risen; He is risen indeed. Hallelujah!