Thank you for the poem, Graham.  It is beautifully crafted and wonderfully evocative of three great creative people, all contributing to but subsumed by the Master Craftsman and Easter glory.

Wonderful to be engaged in writing poetry. And how maeningful it reached completion of Easter Day !

We have just published on Fulcrum my poem, 'Finished in the New Creation'. It was completed on Easter day...

We have just published on Fulcrum Tom Wright's 2009 Easter Day sermon preached at Durham Cathedral, 'Let Beauty Awake'. A wonderful encouragement and challenge for Easter.

Sorry to go - I expect you're used to folk going on a bit here! -- Cold Comfort Farm comes to mind --the novel and (Especially) the film. The Quivering Brethren are most instructive in their glum emphasis on Sin & Judgement. 

Come to think of it, it is a great film for the Resurrection season !

oh and of course, Wrath !

I note that it has taken us no time at all to move from Easter to some glum contributions on the fave topics of sin and judgement --rather eore-ish and perhaps show poor liturgical manners.   Blow the season we'll stick to our negative obsessions !

Well count me out, I am enjoying the evidence of resurrection all about me in the resugence of another Spring! Even reading some of this stuff has not left me feeling glum.

Try again !       

        (you never know...)

David H

“That’s why, when I sing that interesting recent song and we come to the line, ‘And on the cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied’, I believe it’s more deeply true to sing ‘the love of God was satisfied’, and I commend that alteration to those of you who sing that song, which is in other respects one of the very few really solid recent additions to our repertoire”.

It is not clear to me whether Tom Wright is saying:

It is true that the wrath of God was satisfied but it is more deeply true that the love of God was satisfied. If so, what does ‘satisfied’ mean with respect to ‘wrath’ and with respect to ‘love’? And why cannot the two truths be equally deeply true?

Or whether he is saying something else. If so, what?

Does anyone know?

Phil Almond

Phil, Themes of sin and judgement make an early appearance in the Bible and recur regularly until very near the end. They are the context of Easter but they are not the Easter message itself. The Easter message is that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36)and death has been defeated (1 Cor 15). Thus I find Tom Wright's article very much on target. He two Easter sermons are available at http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/EasterVigil09.htm  Living in Gods Future  Now! and http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Easter09.htm  Let Beauty Awake If you wan't his views on the sort of subject you raise, a good starting point is his Maunday Thursday sermon The Word of the Cross from 2007 http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Word_Cross.htm  David

What a pity that Tom Wright did not mention, among the several true things he said (Times Opinion, 11 April) the two things about the Resurrection of Christ which are the biggest offence to the world and an increasing embarrassment to parts of the Church: sin (‘delivered for our offences and raised for our justification’); and judgment (‘God now declares to all men everywhere to repent because he set a day in which he is about to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he designated, offering a guarantee to all having raised him up out of the dead’).

Phil Almond