We meet this morning at the tomb of the risen Christ. The Paschal discovery we make invites us like the women on that first Easter to run to the world, to hurry back to our own place and to shout "Christ is risen!"

The Freedom of Barabbas

But first let's flashback three days. Let me take you to an unexpected place on Easter Day. Like a great cinema production the credits rolled on the trial of Jesus on Friday. The crowd shouted and Barabbas was released. And you can imagine the swell of the incidental music as Barabbas walks free, but Jesus is led out to his torture. Dead man walking!

I wonder, whether like me, you have ever asked yourself "What happened to Barabbas?" What if, instead, the sequel had followed his path?

The leading Swedish writer of the twentieth century and 1951 Nobel Prize winner for Literature Par Lagerkvist draws an interesting picture of the acquitted Barabbas in his short but engaging novel of the same name. It became a play in 1953 and a film in 1962 starring Anthony Quinn.

It's about the search for religious belief: your search and mine. In Barabbas we see the desperate - and inconclusive - quest for meaning in human life.

In this fictional account Barabbas becomes obsessed with the fact of his acquittal and, therefore, too, with the man who died instead of him. We see him preoccupied with the darkness that fell over Jerusalem, and fixated with the murmurings in the streets of the city about the crucified one. Hanging about and snooping around, he revisits places and even meets Peter. From the bushes he sees the women on this day coming to the empty tomb. He sees their confusion, their hesitation, their joy, their panic, wonders who they are talking to - but he himself sees nothing.

"It all happened so quickly that he couldn't quite follow it - now of all times when he really should have had his wits about him. The sepulchre was empty! … At first he was so amazed that he merely lay staring at the opening into which he had himself seen them put the crucified man... But then he realised what it was all about. Nothing had happened in actual fact.

Barabbas crept out of his hiding place and went to inspect the sepulchre properly. As he passed the grey kneeling figure in the road he glanced down and saw to his amazement that it was the girl…He stopped short, remained standing, looking down at her. Her starved ashen face was turned towards the empty sepulchre and her ecstatic eyes saw nothing else. Her lips were parted but she scarcely breathed;… She did not see him.

It gave him a peculiar feeling, almost of shame…"Why are you kneeling there like that?" he asked. He barely heard her whisper to herself; - "The Son of God is risen…"

It gave him a queer feeling to hear her say it. Against his will he felt something - he couldn't make out what. He stood there for a moment not knowing what to say or do. Then he went up to the sepulchre, as he had thought of doing, and made sure it was empty, but he knew that already and it meant nothing one way or the other. Then he went back to where she was kneeling… He asked her cautiously how she thought it had come to pass, how the crucified man had risen from the grave?

She looked up at him for a moment in surprise. Didn't he know? Had he not seen it? Barabbas looked down and said that he had not, and deep down inside he thought how very pleased he was not to have seen it…"

Later in the novel Barabbas is sentenced again, chained to a fellow slave and sent to work in the silver mines. The slave is a Christian and Barabbas comes under his influence. He swings in and out of faith and existing on the margin, hovering between decision and indecision - a place where perhaps many of us drift, and like so many in the Gospels we come to Jesus in the twilight - in the half shadow of that first dawn or perplexed by the light games of twilight. I see something of this Barabbas experience in all of us as Lagerkvist describes it. So many of us dither tentatively on the edge of the holy resurrection mystery.

Reaching out to the Mystery

In the bar of my business hotel in Dublin one evening after Church meetings I sat chatting with a visitor from England. We had a drink and watched the football. And then he asked me about God. He wanted proof as perhaps the logical mind of a computer programmer would, indeed as many of us would love to have. "At the end of the day" I said to him "it goes past proofs. You have to reach out to the mystery"

But we are here and we do reach out to the mystery and that reaching out allows to say "Christ is risen!"

Easter Reactions: Then and Now

Even today reactions to the shocking Easter news which go against our post-modern rational mindset are little different from those on that first Easter morning: Mary was shocked and ran away. Peter and John raced there in disbelief. Some are confused. Others believe. Still others try to tie it in with things he had said during his lifetime or words they had read in their holy books. Luke tells us that the news of the resurrection seemed at first to the disciples to be "an idle tale". Mary cried - inconsolable and desolate - as if his grave had been desecrated. And she saw the gardener - he says to her "Mary!" and she recognises him.

Easter is about Hope!

The overriding sense I have of all this moment of resurrection ministry is summed up for me in the word "hope". After all that had seemed to go so wrong on that Friday, now on this first day there is hope again.

Hope! and we know so well that this is the message our society and we need again this Easter.

Why do so many seem to have lost hope?

Isn't it a strange and disturbing paradox that in the midst of years of good times so many people have not only not found hope but seem actually to have lost it?

Foot and Mouth: The Church well placed to help

Our growing hope that the Foot and Mouth Crisis was on the wane has been unsettled by the confirmation on Friday night of another outbreak of the disease on our island. Leaving aside the economic cost, important as that it is, the cost in human terms has been immense, and our primary focus has to be on people. We read this week that The Samaritans have responded. The Church too, which, unlike so many other institutions in society, has not withdrawn from rural areas, is well placed through its leaders and members to respond to the human needs of the crisis, and it has been doing so. In Christ's name, and in partnership with other agencies in society, we bring hope - practical hope - catalysed by action and pragmatic concern.

This disaster has helped us to see again the value of our traditional and coveted community solidarity - something which in the midst of our new and valued opulence might so easily have been lost. Perhaps it will remind us that the price of individualism and self-serving greed is too high, that we do need one another, and we are dependent on one another.

Suicide: Call for inclusive communities and an inclusive Church

As long ago as 1998 in a paper I gave to Church leaders entitled Leadership in a Changing Context I referred to the paradox of the gnawing pessimism of our post-modern age as manifested so tragically in the rising trend in suicides, particularly among young males. Again in a newspaper on Friday reports appear to corroborate this as it is reported the level of suicide has jumped six fold over three decades. I wonder is it in small part due to our loss of community and people becoming more isolated?

I believe, that as Churches, we have a responsibility to counter a lonely individualist culture of our time by cultivating an open, inclusive sense of belonging - a community where people feel that they are accepted in God's name, understood, heard and valued. The irony is that the Church's record in history, in spite of our pastoral claims, has not always been good. We have too often pushed to the edge people in particular categories (for years it was women) who don't fit our mould or unquestioningly espouse our way and sub-culture. We have not always been to the fore in acknowledging the diversity of humanity as God has so richly created it. In actual fact the risen Christ's way of love is one of embracing the stranger and sustaining the weak. Ours is the responsibility to promote this message of Easter hope for all.

Unhappy with course of Teachers' Strike: Years of Partnership undone, but Hope needs to be restored to a disillusioned Profession

We dare to hope also for the sake of students, school communities and teachers themselves that a way forward is being found to resolve the current dispute between the ASTI and the Department of Education and Science. Many of us have not been happy with the course and strategy adopted in the strike. From my involvement in this sector I am profoundly aware that it will now take years to rebuild partnerships. Having said that it is essential that hope be restored to disillusioned teachers. I spoke to a young honours graduate recently who told me that he wanted to teach but wouldn't unless conditions made it a more viable option. People can decry teachers all they want, but if the job is no longer attractive we will not be able to resource the profession. We see the shortages already, for example, in the difficulty in getting science teachers. We see it in other professions too. It's not just money that keeps hospital wards closed it's the shortage of nursing staff. In our involvement in education the Church has the challenge to help to restore hope and to rebuild partnership.

Churches have not been a sign of hope

And a finger to point at ourselves! The Churches in Ireland, by our so public disagreements and our failure to make demonstrable progress, have given cause to some Christians to lose heart and to become cynical. We will never be a credible witness to the Easter Christ unless it is perceived that we are overcoming our divisions and working in meaningful partnership together. Recent public haranguing of one another has done anything but to engender this. Of course, we're working together. But that's not the message that's coming across. The restoration of that hope has to start with each one of us and with each local church in our renewed ecumenical resolve and hope.

"Do not hold onto me…": Titian - Noli me Tangere

What brings us here today in the midst of so many challenges? It's this: We dare to hope. And in Christ's name we offer that hope to his world.

It's a hope that brings new beginnings and fresh confidence. It's a hope gestated and procreated in the love of Christ. Born anew in us, not so that we can feel cocooned and secure in it for the days to come, no! Rather, it's a hope that drives us forward in action.

When Mary met Jesus in the garden on that morning - you remember the one she thought was the gardener? - he told her "Do not hold on to me…"

This scene has been painted beautifully by Titian Noli me Tangere - Touch me not - a strange and perplexing moment. And in the garden we see Mary reaching out, enthusiastically for reunion, leaning on the jar of ointment she has brought to anoint his body. But Christ draws back. Mary yearns for him, but he, why ever for we do not know, gracefully pulls away.

We reach out in this Easter Eucharist and on every Sunday celebration of his resurrection to the mystery of the Easter Christ.

The only difference is that now he does not pull way. In fact, he invites us to hold on to him. In him we find hope - a hope that energises our service for him and to his people.