If felt to me that Easter brought together all the themes we have been exploring over the last few months, themes like Kingdom, justice, restoration & creation. On Sunday morning we reflected on the resurrection account in Luke, and also this wonderful image by Stanley Spencer (click for a very large version). He imagines the resurrection in his own village church yard at Cookham in Berkshire, a new easter morning with creation and humanity restored together.
Easter is our declaration of the hope that God has not given up, that life matters, and it will endure into eternity, in the midst of a bleak and suffering world. This is what we proclaim.
UPDATE
Matt Wall was preaching at the remembrance service this morning and he referred to another Spencer Resurrection painting, commissioned in the aftermath of the First World War, and drawing on Spencer’s own experience as a medical orderly in Macedonia. It is called ‘The resurrection of the Soldiers’.