“Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Rom 6:8). We have died with Christ; we have suffered the agony of our sin that He carried for us on the cross; we have failed Him, fled from Him, come back in shame and sorrow to kneel beside His tomb.

And then – into the darkness of Holy Saturday shines the light of Easter. An empty tomb. Shock, fear, awe, joy. “He is not here, for he has risen” (Mt 28:6).

Now, only now, can we raise our voices in praise with Paul: “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom 6:9). Christ is risen – not a legend, not a hope, not a spirit, but the Son of God in new, strangely transformed life, the firstfruit of the new creation.

Christ is risen! And that changes – everything. “For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:10-11).

Christ is risen! How can we sing out loudly enough to convey the joy, the utter and earth-shaking joy of those words? It is the pivot-point of history. It is the sure foundation for everything in our life and work and worship.  It means that Jesus is the world’s true Lord – that Jesus, and not Caesar, is God. Christ is risen! How can we find language to carry that meaning?

One poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, comes closer than any other in capturing the mingled awe and joy of the Resurrection – perhaps because Hopkins was, like the Lord he served so faithfully, a man well acquainted with grief and troubles. Hopkins writes:

…the Resurrection,

A heart’s clarion! Away grief’s gasping, joyless days, dejection.

            Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade and mortal trash

Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire, leave but ash:

            In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

            Is immortal diamond.

Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!