St Johns with St Barnabas

I realised recently that I have reached that stage of life where I spend a surprising amount of time looking for things I’ve just put down. Keys, glasses, the phone that is somehow in my hand while I’m searching for it - lost, then found, often in the most obvious place. It’s reassuring, in a small way, that not everything lost stays lost.

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But Easter confronts us with something far greater than misplaced keys or absent-minded moments. It speaks into the deepest human experience of loss - loss of life, loss of hope - and makes an extraordinary claim: that Jesus Christ, who truly died, truly rose again.

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This is not a vague spiritual idea or a comforting metaphor. The Christian faith stands firmly on this historical claim. As the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 v 14, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” In other words, if the resurrection didn’t happen, Christianity simply doesn’t work.

Yet Paul goes on to emphasise that it did happen—that Jesus appeared to many witnesses after his death (1 Corinthians 15 v 3-8). This was not private wishful thinking, but public testimony. The earliest Christians were not sharing a philosophy; they were proclaiming an event.

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And this event was not unexpected. The Old Testament had long pointed forward to it. In Psalm 16 v 10, we read, “you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.” Peter later explains in Acts 2 v 24-32 that these words find their fulfilment in Jesus. Likewise, Isaiah 53 v 10-11 speaks of one who suffers and dies, yet afterward “will see the light of life.” The resurrection is woven into the very fabric of God’s promises.

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So why does this matter for us today?

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First, the resurrection confirms who Jesus is. Paul writes in Romans 1 v 4 that Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God in power… by his resurrection from the dead.” The empty tomb is God’s decisive statement: Jesus is Lord.

Second, it means that sin and death have been defeated. What looked like defeat on the cross was in fact victory. As we read in 1 Corinthians 15 v 54-57, “Death has been swallowed up in victory… thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Death no longer has the final say.

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Third, it means new life is possible for us now. “Just as Christ was raised from the dead… we too may live a new life” (Romans 6 v 4). Christianity is not simply about turning over a new leaf - it is about being made new from the inside out.

And finally, it gives us a living hope. Peter speaks of “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1 v 3). This is not fragile optimism, but a sure and steady hope that holds firm even in the face of life’s hardest moments.

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All of this leaves us with a simple but profound question: if this is true, how will we respond? Easter invites us not just to reflect, but to trust—to place our lives in the hands of the risen Jesus.

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As for my lost keys, they usually turn up eventually - often exactly where I should have looked in the first place. Easter reminds us that the greatest “lost and found” story is not about what we may have misplaced, but about what God restores - and the new life he offers through Jesus.

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With every blessing this Easter, Ed