| APRIL 3, 2015 -- There are over 30 million churches in the world. This Easter Sunday there will be an Easter sermon in most of them. Like snow flakes, chances are that no two of them will be exactly alike. Yet their essential message will be the same: Christ is risen from the dead. This one tenet is what separates Christianity from all of the other religious beliefs in the world. Why is this one Christian belief so important? Because it means that Christ has overcome death, not just for himself, but for all humanity.
To quote St. Paul: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”.
We affirm this also in the Grange ceremony for draping the charter. Ceres says: “…proving the trial of our Faith, in the certainty of the resurrection and the immortality of the soul. To those who look forward to a reunion in another and a brighter world, where there will never more be separation nor pain, the experience of death is shorn of its sting and life’s eventide becomes more delightful than the morning…”
Those who know me well know that I don’t usually go in for poetry. But a poem by John Donne expresses the significance of this better than anything I could compose on my own.
Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
By John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must
flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate
men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. |
