Letter from Clare

Not for the first time in my life, though for the first time for a long time, I find myself undertaking prison visiting. There are few things more chilling, than the sound of doors or gates being shut behind you and the key being turned in a lock. At the turning of the key, there is a sense of finality, something is destroyed within. 

I have been visiting a friend in prison since the beginning of Lent and it feels like there are points of convergence between the two experiences, Lent is a time of wilderness and desert experience, of questioning, wrestling, discovering, a place of aloneness. The experience of serving a prison term is not dissimilar. 

Lent is a sobering experience- if entered into in depth, the joy of Easter in contrast is intoxicating- when you emerge from the wilderness, the journeying with Christ to the cross, it’s the difference between vinegar and champagne, stone and bread, dark and light, incarceration and freedom. The Lent Easter story mirrors the Passover story of the journey of the Jewish people from captivity in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. There is a sense at Easter of having served your sentence and being released, liberated into freedom. 

For each and everyone of us there are times in life which are painful, which expose our vulnerability, times of woundedness, rejection and suffering, these can be moments of crucifixion, the Christian Gospel proclaims a God who is not removed from such experiences, but a God who in Jesus identifies with all human pain and suffering, but for whom it is not an end, the story does not finish at the cross, it journeys on into Easter, where the stone is rolled away, the grave cannot keep the love of God captive, for his love is one that bursts through the barriers and the  human constraints we try to place upon it and brings resurrection, liberation and freedom. 

In St. Johns Gospel we are told of the disciples meeting behind locked doors for fear of the Jews, when Jesus comes among them, with words of peace. Our world is locked into fear, distrust, enmity, violence, the same things that led Christ to his cross and we desperately need to hear Christ’s words of peace in our world today, we need to receive and know his love which casts out all fear. In our churches we often exchange the Peace, with the same words that Christ used with his disciples, this moment in our worship is a powerfully symbolic enactment of our Easter faith that celebrates freedom, liberation, peace in an imprisoned, frightened and divided world.

May you, may we, may our world, know his words "Peace be with you" and then we shall be free. A very Happy Easter to you all.

Clare Sanders