From here:

The Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali, recently retired 106th Bishop of the Church of England/Diocese of Rochester, will be a guest at St. Helena’s, Beaufort, from April 5-14.

On Wednesday, April 7, Bishop Nazir-Ali will be joined by Bishop Mark Lawrence, Bishop FitzSimons Allison, and Bishop Alden Hathaway. Together, they will engage a conversation about the Anglican Communion and its emerging global biblical mission. All are invited to this special event.

The Gospel has revealed to us the fulfilment of the ancient figures: in his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ has freed us from the radical slavery of sin and opened for us the way towards the promised land, the Kingdom of God, the universal Kingdom of justice, love and peace. This “exodus” takes place first of all within man himself, and it consists in a new birth in the Holy Spirit, the effect of the baptism that Christ has given us in his Paschal Mystery. The old man yields his place to the new man; the old life is left behind, and a new life can begin (cf. Rom 6:4). But this spiritual “exodus” is the beginning of an integral liberation, capable of renewing us in every dimension ”“ human, personal and social.

Yes, my brothers and sisters, Easter is the true salvation of humanity! If Christ ”“ the Lamb of God ”“ had not poured out his blood for us, we would be without hope, our destiny and the destiny of the whole world would inevitably be death. But Easter has reversed that trend: Christ’s resurrection is a new creation, like a graft that can regenerate the whole plant. It is an event that has profoundly changed the course of history, tipping the scales once and for all on the side of good, of life, of pardon. We are free, we are saved! Hence from deep within our hearts we cry out: “Let us sing to the Lord: glorious his triumph!”

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Where do we go from here? Nearly everyone agrees that we are standing at the end of an age, perhaps at a new axial period. We have left modernity behind almost as surely as we have left antiquity behind. We are “postmodern”. But we do not yet know what that means.

From our unique experiment in living without a set of objective values, only two roads lie open: return or destruction. Once the sled is on the slippery slope leading to the abyss, we either brake or break; and no amount of rhetoric about “progress” can alter that fact. Crying “progress” as we die will not raise us from death.

–Peter Kreeft

Ten years ago, during a time of steady churchgoing that followed the birth of my daughter, my first child, I made friends with a gruff old… [Episcopal] priest to whom I confessed my perennial difficulties with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Easter’s for-me elusive main event. He listened with a big fist propped under his chin as I listed my doubts and puzzlements, which went back to childhood. More troubling for me than the supposed miracle’s scientific implausibility, I said, was its murky dramatic character. In what sort of shape was the Savior’s body once it was reanimated? I asked. Pierced and bleeding or intact and shining? And why did Our Lord not fly straight up into the sky rather than hanging around down on the ground? I went on like this for half an hour, until the old man raised his square gray head and stopped me. “Walter, here’s the important thing,” he said. “It either happened or it didn’t, and if it didn’t, if it’s all a lie, neither of us should be in church today. But we are,” he said, “aren’t we? Yes, indeed, we are.”

I’ve come to call this thoroughly circular argument for Easter’s significance the “Presence Principle.” It implies, in a way that my intellect resists but my heart is willing to entertain, that the terrific annual to-do involving lilies, hymns and dexterous rabbits is, just by virtue of its continued existence, not an absurd, unwarranted phenomenon. A celebration, by my old priest’s reasoning, means that its celebrants must have something to celebrate, and the bigger the celebration, the bigger the something. Because I suspect that no man will ever succeed in satisfying me further on this matter, I’ve stopped asking questions; I take Easter as a fact now. And Passover too, for the people who observe it. I’ve decided that faith is what some facts are made of and that the true meaning of Easter isn’t just the escape from sin and death but, in part, the escape from thought itself, one of humanity’s direst oppressors and, perhaps, the hardest to shake off.

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We conclude with these observations about the fundamental facts of our polity:

1. The Presiding Bishop’s office is regulated by the constitution and canons and exists historically for the good order of the church. It is not a metropolitical office. The title ”˜presiding Bishop’ was chosen with care and inheres with the notion of good order when the wider church gathers. It is not an office with independent political authority.
2. The existence of diocesan canons in The Episcopal Church is a departure from the model typically followed in the polity of other provinces of the Anglican Communion. The existence of these canons goes hand in hand with the history and sovereignty of the diocese in The Episcopal Church as the basic ecclesial unit of catholic Anglicanism.
3. That no mandate exists that can be enforced by canon law for dioceses to pay assessments beyond the good operating of their own affairs is likewise evidence of the catholic and missionary integrity of the dioceses of this church.
4. Diocesan Chancellors exist to assist the Bishop and Standing Committee of the Diocese in maintaining the legal good operating of the Diocese and the undertaking of its internal affairs.
5. General Convention resolutions as such have no canonical force. They represent the mind of those gathered and are not legislative in character.
6. As a province, The Episcopal Church has no single authoritative voice, but exists with a dispersed character at the provincial level, involving individual diocesan Bishops, diocesan conventions, a triennial General Convention, House of Bishops meetings, and the office of Presiding Bishop.

We fully support Bishop Lawrence and the diocese of South Carolina in their defense of these principles.

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Q: The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist finally got its new bells and steeple, growing in height and volume. Looking at the downtown Charleston skyline from the Cooper River Bridge, one sees three steeples in close proximity, not just two. The landscape has changed. Do you think this is a symbolic reflection of changes in the diocese?

A: It is symbolic in that the Catholic presence in Charleston is visibly presented in this wonderful addition to the Cathedral. Catholics are an important part of South Carolina, and we do a lot in terms of faith, education, health care and outreach to the poor, elderly and lonely. I wish we could do more, and I hope to expand our ministries if we can build sufficient resources to do so.

Q: Who’s your favorite saint, and why?

A: Francis of Assisi. He was focused on the mission given him by God and came to appreciate all that God has given us: This beautiful world, all of creation which inhabits it. (He was not interested) in any materialistic goal.

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Dr. [Betty] Lim said doctors at Massachusetts General might have been right in offering palliative care a year earlier. “She passed away in unfortunately quite a painful scenario,” she said. “Many people would not have chosen that route.”

Yet she respected Dr. [Desiree] Pardi’s choice and was not ready to write off her stubbornness as denial. “She was very much in control of the situation,” Dr. Lim said.

Dr. Lim attempted, in her own mind, to reconcile Desiree Pardi the palliative care doctor who believed in a peaceful death, with Desiree Pardi the patient who wanted to keep fighting.

Dr. Lim said she believed that “somewhere deep inside, she knew this was not fixable.” But Dr. Pardi “knew exactly how much she was willing to endure,” Dr. Lim added. “And she was able to endure a lot.”

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By December 2005, subprime mortgages that had been issued just six months earlier were already showing atypically high delinquency rates. (It’s worth noting that even though most of these mortgages had a low two-year teaser rate, the borrowers still had early difficulty making payments.)

The market for subprime mortgages and the derivatives thereof would not begin its spectacular collapse until roughly two years after Mr. Greenspan’s speech. But the signs were all there in 2005, when a bursting of the bubble would have had far less dire consequences, and when the government could have acted to minimize the fallout.

Instead, our leaders in Washington either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted the bubble. And even when the full extent of the financial crisis became painfully clear early in 2007, the Federal Reserve chairman, the Treasury secretary, the president and senior members of Congress repeatedly underestimated the severity of the problem, ultimately leaving themselves with only one policy tool ”” the epic and unfair taxpayer-financed bailouts. Now, in exchange for that extra year or two of consumer bliss we all enjoyed, our children and our children’s children will suffer terrible financial consequences.

It did not have to be this way. And at this point there is no reason to reflexively dismiss the analysis of those who foresaw the crisis. Mr. Greenspan should use his substantial intellect and unsurpassed knowledge of government to ascertain and explain exactly how he and other officials missed the boat. If the mistakes were properly outlined, that might both inform Congress’s efforts to improve financial regulation and help keep future Fed chairmen from making the same errors again.

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Four or five Sundays in 2005, his own atheism notwithstanding, Dale McGowan took his family into the neo-Gothic grandeur of St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis on a kind of skeptic’s field trip.

Mr. McGowan went because he wanted his three young children to have “religious literacy.” He went because his mother-in-law, Barbara Maples, belonged to the congregation. He went because, as a college professor with a fondness for weekend sweatpants, church gave him the rare chance to wear the ties she invariably gave him for his birthday.

Something else began to strike Mr. McGowan on those visits. He listened to the vicar preach about ministering to the poor, and he learned that the cathedral helped to sponsor a weekly dinner for the homeless. Most importantly, he watched as the collection plate moved through the pews and as his mother-in-law, who volunteered at those dinners, dropped in her offering.

All those details added up to a nonbeliever’s revelation. The theology and the voluntarism and the philanthropy, Mr. McGowan came to realize, were part of a greater whole, a commitment to charity as part of religious practice. And on that practice, this atheist felt lacking. To put it in church slang, he was convicted.

Rather than adopt faith, however, Mr. McGowan set out to emulate it, or at least its culture of giving. He set out to, in effect, create the atheist’s collection plate….

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Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast–unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

–1 Corinthians 15:1-7

Make our hearts to burn within us, O Christ, as we walk with thee in the way and listen to thy words; that we may go in the strength of thy presence and thy truth all our journey through, and at its end behold thee, in the glory of the eternal Trinity, God for ever and ever.

O Lord Jesus Christ, who on the evening of the first Easter Day didst appear to thy disciples when they were afraid and didst speak to them thy word of peace: Grant to us thy servants that same holy peace, that we may walk henceforth in the light of thy presence and know the power of thy risen life, until we come to the joy of thy everlasting kingdom.

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right.
Faith and Hope triumphant say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.

While the patient earth lies waking,
Till the morning shall be breaking,
Shuddering ‘neath the burden dread
Of her Master, cold and dead,
Hark! she hears the angels say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.

And when sunrise smites the mountains,
Pouring light from heavenly fountains,
Then the earth blooms out to greet
Once again the blessed feet;
And her countless voices say,
Christ has risen on Easter-Day.

Up and down our lives obedient
Walk, dear Christ, with footsteps radiant,
Till those garden lives shall be
Fair with duties done for Thee;
And our thankful spirits say,
Christ arose on Easter-Day.

–Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Question 45. What does the “resurrection” of Christ profit us?

Answer: First, by his resurrection he has overcome death, that he might make us partakers of that righteousness which he had purchased for us by his death; (a) secondly, we are also by his power raised up to a new life; (b) and lastly, the resurrection of Christ is a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection. (c)

(a) 1 Cor.15:16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: Rom.4:25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. 1 Pet.1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (b) Rom.6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Col.3:1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Col.3:3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Eph.2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) Eph.2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: (c) 1 Cor.15:12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? 1 Cor.15:20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. 1 Cor.15:21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Rom.8:11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

Eight in all–check them out.

O God, who by the glorious resurrection of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ hast destroyed death, and brought life and immortality to light: Grant that we, being raised together with him, may know the comfort and strength of his presence, and rejoice in hope of thy everlasting glory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be dominion and praise for ever and ever.

”˜One morning you will see in the newspapers “Moody is dead”. Don’t believe it! I shall never be so alive as I will be that morning.’

–D.L .Moody (1837-99)

Believing in the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth has the following implications:

1. It carries a pledge of the future resurrection of believers, for ‘though in Adam all die,

in Christ all shall be made alive’ (1 Corinthians 15:22).

2. Jesus isn’t a memory, but a living presence ”“ even the dearest memory fades.

3. Jesus isn’t a figure in a book but a living person to be met.

4. To be a Christian isn’t about knowing about Jesus, but one of knowing Jesus and trusting him implicitly.

5. There is an endless quality of life offered by Jesus Christ. He isn’t simply a model for life; he is a living presence to help us to live.

6. Christ did for us that which we couldn’t do for ourselves: He died ‘with us’, ‘for us’, and ‘instead of us’. And his Resurrection cut us loose from the chains of death and made it possible for us to be given new life in a new community for all, where God’s will is being done.

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The music is from the Second Chapter of Acts originally (a verse was later added by Keith Green). Listen to it all.

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What’s it like to live in Sydney? Great. Great Climate. Great food. Great people. Great sights. ”¦just great.

Outwardly that is true. But is it so within our hearts?

A Sydney psychiatrist, Dr Tanveer Ahmed recently claimed that in his experience our glittering city contains so much loneliness:

”˜Increasingly I have been called to patients, rich and poor, with vague physical complaints only to realise they merely want someone to talk to.’

He suggests that may be as many as one in four people lack a close confidant to talk to.

So, you can have it all and still be miserable.

The Christian message is about restoring relationships.

First, our relationship with God: that is what he was doing at the first Easter, when Jesus dies to take away our sins and restore our friendship with God.

Then, our relationships with each other. As a result of what Jesus did we are meant to reach out to each other, to care, to love, to serve.

We are not meant to be alone. That is a major social problem. At its heart, is a spiritual problem and we need to seek God’s solution through Jesus.

The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation ”” This story begins and ends in joy.

— J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

…the New Testament suggests there may be something more at work when people fear the gospel and the cross. Our second reading today hints at this. As so often in these early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, St Peter underlines the fact that the resurrection of Jesus means that the one who was so decisively, annihilatingly, dismissed by the religious and political establishment of the time is the one who will decide the destiny of every human being. We shall all be judged by our response to him, to the divine and human person who has carried the cost of our mindless violence, our pride and self-satisfaction, our reluctance to face the truth. The court of final appeal in all human affairs is Christ; how we define ourselves in relation to him is a matter of life or death.

This is not about some fussy insistence on saying the right words and joining the right organization, as if St Peter were simply recruiting members for the Christian club. Jesus himself reminds us starkly in the gospel that we may be seeing him where we think we can’t see him or don’t know him ”“ and that we may be failing to see him when we’re making all the right noises about him. One day we are all going to discover in the presence of God who we are and how we stand with God, whether we can bear the presence of God for eternity; and in that moment of discovery, what will be crucial is how we have reacted to and understood the gift of God in the life and death of a man rejected and tortured to death.

The preaching of Peter and Paul and all the witnesses of the Risen Jesus says that two basic things are demanded of us. First: we must acknowledge our own share in what the cross is and represents; we must learn to see ourselves as caught up in a world where the innocent are scapegoated and killed and where we are all unwilling, to a greater or lesser degree, to face unwelcome truths about ourselves. We must learn to see that we cannot by our own wisdom and strength cut ourselves loose from the tangle of injustice, resentment, fear and prejudice that traps the human family in conflict and misery.

And second: we must learn to trust that love and justice are not defeated by our failure; that God has provided from his own strength and resourcefulness a way to freedom, once we have become able to recognise in the face of the suffering Jesus his own divine promise of mercy and life. The resurrection is the manifesting to the world of the triumph of a love that uses no coercion or manipulation but is simply itself ”“ an indestructible love. The challenge of Easter is to believe that God is not defeated by the most extreme rejection imaginable.

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The story of Easter is told this year in a context where many of our key ‘institutions’ are under serious scrutiny -and it is right that it should be so. Institutions are necessary for the ordering of society, but they can take on a life of their own and become self-serving. That applies, of course, not only to the institutions of politics and society, but also -and equally- to the institutions of the church, which can be just as fallen, just as sinful, and even more profoundly disappointing, because they claim to exist for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Holy Week is a time when the institutions of Jesus’ day are exposed for what they really were. Judas, the financier of the disciples, had become selfishly attached to money, and was prepared to sell his soul for a few pieces of silver. Pilate was a political leader without the courage of his convictions, prepared to wash his hands of decisions which would not gain the popularity of the masses. And the religious leadership of the day was not prepared to brook any opposition to their status and control – even if that meant destroying the Son of God.

In the midst of it all, Jesus stands out, both in one sense as the victim of the institution, and as the perfect example of One who knew what was truly important for the human spirit – a deep and loving relationship with the Heavenly Father, which is beyond and above any religious structures, and can never be contained in human systems.

Institutions do actually matter in society: we would be in chaos without them. But this week is a serious reminder of their weakness and Easter Day is a confirmation of something even more important to grasp: that the power and life of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is set and seen even more clearly when we find ourselves in the context where human institutions let us down. Institutions grow up, and institutions have their day, but the power and reality of the living Christ endure for ever.

May you have a truly blessed Easter in the presence of the Lord of Life.

–The Rt. Rev. Harold Miller

Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers and wouldn’t have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were not saying: “I think he’s still with us in a spiritual sense” or “I think he’s gone to heaven”. All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical and theological nerve.

The historian must explain why Christianity got going in the first place, why it hailed Jesus as Messiah despite His execution (He hadn’t defeated the pagans, or rebuilt the Temple, or brought justice and peace to the world, all of which a Messiah should have done), and why the early Christian movement took the shape that it did. The only explanation that will fit the evidence is the one the early Christians insisted upon – He really had been raised from the dead. His body was not just reanimated. It was transformed, so that it was no longer subject to sickness and death.

Let’s be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything, more so. When St Paul speaks of a “spiritual” resurrection body, he doesn’t mean “non-material”, like a ghost. “Spiritual” is the sort of Greek word that tells you,not what something is made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God’s life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul, that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect – and in the whole world.

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O God, who by the glorious resurrection of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ hast destroyed death, and brought life and immortality to light: Grant that we, being raised together with him, may know the comfort and strength of his presence, and rejoice in hope of thy everlasting glory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be dominion and praise for ever and ever.