April 9th, 2026
Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s video.
I’m standing by the Cathedral’s Easter Garden, early on Easter Sunday morning, the greatest day, which we celebrate every Sunday. Technically, even during Lent you get a pass on fasting on Sundays. Thie resurrection is so momentous it enlivens everything it touches.
I wouldn’t be so grandiose as to describe myself as a scientist, but I certainly had a scientific education and my career before ordination involved translating the latest agricultural research into practical advice for my clients. For that reason, I find the need for proof compelling. However, science and faith are often portrayed as in opposition to each other. Surely, to give up a nicely paid career for a life of ministry is a form of intellectual suicide!
From a modern secular perspective, such an accusation makes sense, but it fails to understand how science actually works. In theory, scientific theories are constructed to explain observable facts. Each theory then becomes accepted orthodoxy. Over time, people develop a vested interest in the theory being true. Research grants begin to depend on it being true. Eventually, increasing data begins to chip away at the theories’ foundations until, in the end, it crumbles to be replaced with a better theory to explain the observable facts. One would hope that such developments would be greeted with open minded enquiry, but so often vested interests lead to powerful resistance. In the earliest phases of scientific enquiry, such resistance was positively dangerous. At the time of Galileo, everyone thought all the planetary bodies revolved around the Earth. This theory was partly superstition, partly distorted theology, and partly a ‘it makes sense’ populist frame of mind. Look up at the sky; surely it's obvious that everything revolves around us. Galileo used his telescope to examine the skies and concluded, rightly we now know, that the earth revolved around the sun. His observations didn’t fit the theory, and eventually, despite violent opposition, the old theory was consigned to the dustbin.
A similar, rapid reassessment of reality happened on that first Easter Sunday. New information is rendering all previous assessments of Jesus obsolete. While he was alive, he had occasionally asked his disciples who people were saying he was. In the account in Matthew 16, they reply, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It was an accurate assessment based on observations of his life thus far. Jesus then goes on to tell them the implications of this for his future death, something Peter cannot accept. The evidence is that his death, when it came, crushed all their hopes. But then comes the entirely unexpected resurrection. Jesus may have spoken of it to them in advance, but they had no categories of understanding for such an event. Matthew’s account is a raw story of the women’s experience of the risen Jesus and the supernatural events that surrounded it. There is little explanation, just wide-eyed wonder and a re-framing of their experience. Life can never be the same again.
The disciples were forced to the unavoidable conclusion that Jesus was God, the real God, showing himself as a human being. As God, he would be the one who would judge the world at the end of time, assessing everyone’s actions, living and dead. The resurrection vindicates all that has gone before and all that Jesus taught. Jesus has died for us; if we receive the benefits as a gift, we can be forgiven and given a new start. Because of the resurrection, the power of God himself can be released into human hearts. Because of the resurrection, death has been defeated, and eternity is open.
It is the incontrovertible fact in history that upends all other theories of life, the universe and everything. Life may sort of work if it doesn’t take account of it, but it isn’t the life in all its fullness that Jesus envisaged.
After the resurrection, the disciples gave a very different answer to the question, “Who do you say I am?” The old theorems must be ditched in the light of the new evidence. The resurrection is where science and faith meet. As the disciples went into the world post Pentecost proclaiming the resurrection, they added to the question. It wasn’t just, “Who do you say I am?” but “What will your response be?” Will you live in the light of this new reality, or will you continue keeping your options open? In the Easter season, its will be good to ask ourselves the same question.
+Richard