The Lamb calls us to follow him wherever he goes; into the dark places of the world, the dark places of our own hearts, the places where tears blot out the sunlight, the places where tyrants pave the grass with concrete; and he bids us shine his morning light into the darkness, and share his ministry of wiping away the tears.

And in that knowledge we find ourselves to be Sunday people, called to live in a world of Fridays.

But with Easter we have hope; because hope depends on love; and love has become human and has died, and is now alive for evermore, and holds the keys of Death and Hades.

Jesus is the one with the eyes of fire and the voice like a waterfall, who died but who is now alive for evermore. Then he is the Lion of Judah, the Messiah who becomes the sacrificial Lamb, who by his blood defeated evil, and rescued human beings and the world from its tyranny. And now, at the end of the story, he is the bridegroom, the one for

kingdom shall come, and his will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Our ultimate destiny is not a disembodied heaven, just as the ultimate destiny of this created world is not to be thrown away, abandoned as secondary or shabby. It’s the tyrants who want to blow the world to bits. God wants to re-create it.

But what then is the full hope which Easter unveils? The tumult and battle of the middle chapters of Revelation lead up to the great victory of the Lamb over Babylon, the tyrannous city that has opposed God and his loving purposes. Then, in the last two chapters, we find the vision of the new city which takes the place of the wicked, tyrannous

Easter is all about the wiping away of tears. In our fear of terror and joy, we have forgotten the purpose of tears. We have become embarrassed by them — and with good reason, since they are a God-given reminder of the truth which our culture, as much as any communist propaganda, has done its best to make us forget: that we are neither naked apes

And on Easter Day Jesus calls Mary by name, and asks, ‘Why are you weeping?’ He calls us all by name, calls with a voice like the sound of many waters, a voice which goes through the defences that we put up to keep the terror and joy at bay, calls with a voice which we recognize, calls with a love which is stronger than death. And he says to us,

Here is the Easter message in vivid picture-language. The Lion, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, has become a Lamb, a sacrificial Lamb, the Paschal Lamb; and by his death he has conquered the powers of evil; so that now the plan of God, God’s rescue operation for the whole cosmos, can be unrolled and put into dramatic operation. The strife is