Christian Viewpoint: 'Jesus broke the spell of evil and burst into new life'
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“Look out for crosses hidden in plain sight,” said Church of Scotland moderator Martin Fair, launching an Easter photo competition. Where could we find the cross shape in our everyday environment – on buildings, metal fences, in nature, writes John Dempster.
The cross is important to Christians as a symbol of the wooden cross on which Jesus was executed by those in power as a political and religious threat. Some of the crosses Christians wear depict Jesus hanging there – the cross is the place of suffering.
Others are empty crosses, reminding us that Jesus’s death was not the end.
In my experience, other than specifically religious symbols, it’s much harder to find crosses in plain sight than Martin suggests. Yet in another sense, we are surrounded this Easter by crosses hidden behind brave faces.
We have all suffered to some extent from the coronavirus, but for many the suffering has been intense and all-consuming.
Easter teaches us that God comes down and suffers with us. Wherever there is a cross in our lives, Christ hangs there beside us, sharing our pain and darkness.
But the story continues beyond Jesus’s death on Good Friday. He died for us, the scapegoat we made him, showing the full extent of God’s costly love. In dying, he broke the spell of evil, defeated death, and burst into triumphant new life on Easter Sunday.
Christians believe that as a result of Easter, Jesus Christ offers (to individuals, communities, nations, the world, the whole cosmos) hope, forgiveness, freedom from fear, transformation, and a glimpse of the great wild love of God.
But many of us wonder – I know I do – as we suffer and weep and struggle to continue our lives with courage and dignity: how real is all this? Sometimes the bright Christian stories of lives changed seem implausible.
I take it on trust that it is not simply the cross that’s hidden in plain sight. The risen Jesus also is hidden – hidden in acts of kindness, gentleness, love and tenderness, hidden in the beauty and loveliness of the world. Christ comes to us in those who bring us comfort, and at times we are given the gift of recognising him in them.
But often these things seem so ordinary, so everyday. We want more – a certainty that there is hope.
“Please open my eyes! Please help me believe that despite the oppressive sadness this is an Eastering world.
“Let it be Easter in the depths of me!”
And God will find a way to whisper “I am with you,” and we’ll realise that God has been with us all the time, at the very core of our being, hidden in plain sight.
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