Easter Day 2000

Images and icons are powerful weapons. They communicate ideas and convey subliminal messages. I think of that arresting sign 'M' of MacDonalds displayed on the Champs-Élysées and taking the challenge of fast food right into the heartland of sublime traditional French cuisine. I think too of the 'Coca Cola' sign I saw years ago in the middle of an Iraqi desert with the scribbled words below 'Kilroy was here'.

Today business leaders pay as much attention to the message communicated by their brand images as they do to the rise and fall of the share prices they pore over anxiously each morning. They know how important the 'logo' is because, before a word is said, the image has already uttered its message.

So, to say that our current symbols and images are associated with power, success, fame and money is to state the obvious.

How strikingly different, then, is the image associated with this season of Easter - the cross: a symbol of weakness, humility, abandonment and suffering.

One of the earliest and most striking examples of that ever discovered is the second century AD graffito found during the excavations of the Imperial Palatine Palace in Rome. It shows a young Christian slave boy kneeling before a cross. But it is no ordinary cross. The crucified figure has a human body but the head of an ass. The mocking words beside it read: 'Alexander is worshipping his god!'

Nevertheless, the cross, the icon of Christianity, is a powerful and potent image. It has inspired and mystified artists as well as ordinary believers down the centuries. At the moment the National Gallery is holding a wonderful exhibition entitled 'Seeing Salvation'. It is perhaps the best thing running in London currently with the exception of Lambeth Palace's 2000 Exhibition!

Within it there are many images of the person of Christ dating from the third to the twentieth century. However, there is one that expresses for me all the sadness, helplessness and yet wonder of the Christian faith. It is a late medieval life-size figure of Christ sitting on a cold stone. He is naked and abandoned; emaciated, exposed and vulnerable. His head rests on his hand and the crown of thorns digs deep into his brow as he awaits his crucifixion. Emile Mâle, the art historian wrote of it: 'The seated Christ summarises the entire Passion; he has exhausted the violence, the ignominy, the bestiality of man… Here is the abyss of suffering… he thinks and suffers. Thus, art had to express the profoundest moral suffering imaginable and link it with the extreme of physical suffering'.

But such images of powerlessness do not necessarily portray something that is fundamentally weak. St Paul knew that in his day: 'Jews call for miracles and Greeks look for wisdom but we proclaim Christ - yes, Christ nailed to the cross'. The powerful Roman Empire is no more. The former Palatine Palace where the 'donkey Christ' was discovered lies in ruins. But the Easter image of the cross is a universal sign, still potent and relevant in its appeal.

But what is it a sign of to our generation?

First it is one of protest for humankind. I mentioned the striking figure of the abandoned, naked Christ on the cold stone a moment ago. I saw it the very day pictures were being shown on our television sets of emaciated children dying in Ethiopia. One, a picture of a young boy being supported by his mother, bore an astonishing similarity with the emaciated Christ. It reminded me that the Cross calls on us to protest for humankind.

The mission of the Church everywhere is to stand alongside the very poor, the weak, the starving. To leave them is to betray them. Even more terrible, to ignore them is to abandon a key tenet of our Christian faith. Central to our 'raison d'être' is to be a voice for those without voices and to help those whom others have given up.

I am concerned at present that 'Africa fatigue' is beginning to affect us all. If it is not Mozambique and the floods, then it is Sudan and the forgotten war. If it is not Rwanda and the genocide, then it is Sierra Leone and the forced amputations of limbs from men, women and children. If it is not Uganda and Aids, then it is the famine in Ethiopia. All too easily, in the face of such overwhelming suffering, we can shrug our shoulders and turn away from the pain. But the Cross compels us never to give up striving, working, hoping and praying - because it is God's people we are standing for and it is his love that we are reflecting.

But the Cross is not merely a protest - it is also a symbol of victory. Some months ago I had a special tour of one of the largest of the catacombs in Rome. Its Director said a most interesting thing. Unlike in its pagan catacombs there is one word that is not to be found anywhere in the Christian burial sites. It is the word, 'vale'- farewell. The symbols of the Christian catacombs breathe, instead, life and hope, victory and glory.

And that is what Easter Day is all about. Of course it cannot be understood on its own without the message of Good Friday. Without that its symbol might well be only a chicken, or an egg, or a daffodil. But Easter gathers in the Cross and symbolises the tremendous victory of God over death and sin, over despair and hopelessness.

And, in the light of that victory, another image associated with the Cross comes to mind. It is a sign of hope.

Earlier this year I was in East London, South Africa. With others I visited the statue of Steve Biko, the great South African liberator, which stands in front of its Town Hall. More than many it was Biko who gave Black South Africans a belief in themselves. As the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement he proclaimed 'the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed' and it was those shackles he was determined to release. He too died of terrible wounds at the hands of security forces and his naked body too was dumped and abandoned. And at the foot of his statue, as we gave thanks for all that he had achieved, I pointed out that Christ in a much greater way has raised us to new life through his death and resurrection.

For the Cross, this great symbol of weakness, like a huge field of energy, is able to give life, inspiration and renewed hope. It gives us a reason to go on believing, celebrating and rejoicing because Christ is risen.

And what a glorious message this is for our 'dot.com' society. It reminds us of the most basic and important values of life. We are so often seduced into believing that all that matters are things like power, success, fame and money. No. These are transitory, paltry things when compared to the ultimate things of the Spirit. They are not to be despised but they should always take second place. And our country and her children must be rooted in these truths of the Easter faith - in the love of God and his personal and passionate commitment for each one of us. If not we shall mistake the temporal for the real world, and suffer terribly as a result.

So today, and every day, may this Easter faith in the death and resurrection of Christ renew your faith and trust as you face the future. And may each one of us wear the cross proudly: the icon of God's love. A protest for humankind and his sign of victory and hope for our lives.