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Jesus voluntarily gave up His freedoms in order to win forgiveness and life for sinners. He was ‘imprisoned’ to the Will of God through a willing obedience. At the end of His life He was captured by Roman soldiers, mocked, beaten and crucified. After He breathed His last on the Friday afternoon, His body was incarcerated in a sealed and guarded tomb until the Sunday morning. Then He broke free of the chains of death and rose back to life. Demonstrating a power that could even escape the grave, Jesus resurrection life is now marked by an unrestrained freedom to go and do as He chooses. That first Sunday evening Jesus’ friends had gathered in a room and locked all the doors for fear that they could be treated as the master had been. But a locked door was no hindrance to Jesus. He appeared in the room - a real physical presence - showed them His wounds and brought them a message of peace. A similar thing happened in another locked room a week later. On the day of Pentecost t...

There was a tragically sad photograph on a news report yesterday. It showed forty or more simple wooden coffins being buried in a mass grave, somewhere in New York State, which currently has an extremely high number of coronavirus cases. They contained the remains of people who were either too poor to afford a funeral or who had dropped out of regular society, losing their formal identities somewhere along the way. By the end of the first ‘Good Friday’, Jesus too was dead and buried. The soldiers made certain by piercing his side with a spear, rupturing His heart, though it had already stopped beating. Jesus was too poor to afford a grave. He had died alongside two men whose crimes were so socially and politically unacceptable, that their ‘identities’ were being permanently wiped out. His body was eventually taken and laid in a tomb owned by a generous donor. The tomb was sealed with a large stone and a team of Roman soldiers put in place to guard the body. His burial was an impriso...

We are familiar with the idea of a hero giving their life to win freedom for other people. Giving up your freedom to save lives - as we are being asked to do as we voluntarily stay inside during this coronavirus lockdown - is a much more counter-intuitive idea. One dimension of the Christian message which we reflect on at Easter is the way in which Jesus voluntarily gave up His freedoms in order to save lives. If there had been any other way, He would have chosen to avoid the pain and suffering of that first ‘Good Friday’. But there was no other way and He had wrestled the issue through before God in agonising prayer the night before: “ Not My will but Yours be done !” He was committed to being “ obedient unto death - even death on a cross”. Jesus was, if you like, voluntarily ‘imprisoned’ by the will of God. Within the restraints and constraints of the divine purpose Jesus found Himself literally imprisoned. He was betrayed by His disciple Judas, arrested by a team of soldiers,...

The bruised body of an Australian actor pretending to be a Scotsman is stretched out and tortured in front of a blood thirsty crowd. Rather than recanting his opposition to the English king in order to hasten the inevitable end, he resists and then, with all his remaining energy lets out a, by then anatomically impossible, scream: “Freeee-doooom!” We are familiar with the image of someone giving up their life in order to win freedom for other people. “Freedom” is the pet ideal of Western culture. Our heroes fight to win their freedom or they die trying. What we are being asked to do now is the exact opposite of that. Perhaps this is why so many people are ignoring Government advice and social distancing laws. We are now being asked to give up our freedom because it is believed that this will save other people’s lives. It goes completely against the grain of what we are used to. Giving up freedom seems completely mundane, especially when we compare ourselves to the real heroes, t...

What a horrible scene! When a loved one is on their deathbed the family want to be close by, to hold hands, to say goodbye, to be there. In those final moments we know instinctively that how important presence is. But what if the loved one is in an isolation ward? Being present will put the family at risk of infection. Even if there were enough protective suits to go around such a suit is, in itself, an undesirable barrier. It is impossible to get as close as you would like to be. What a terrible situation! The fact that Jesus is ‘Immanuel’, God with us, is good news but it is still not enough. This is only one side of the bridge - it doesn’t reach the other side of the chasm. God has come to us but how do we get back to God? Our selfish actions need to be forgiven and our selfish hearts need to be washed clean. The Bible teaches that Jesus accomplished this for us by dying in complete isolation - isolation from family and friends and society and isolation from God.  He...