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Archbishop Rowan Williams' Easter message to the Diocese of Canterbury
Episcopal News Service
Issue:
Section:
2003-069-1
Posted: Friday, March 28, 2003
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The following message was sent by Archbishop Rowan Williams to the Diocese of Canterbury.
'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 recognize 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.'
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