By The Right Reverend Michael Maxwell, Anglican Bishop
I greet you fellow Barbadians, at home and abroad, and those visiting our shores, with the peace and love of God on this glorious Easter Day.
In our world today, Christians celebrate the joy of knowing that our Creator God has revealed, through the resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ, the truth about the quality of life that leads to greater life for us and those whom we leave behind to continue their sojourn here on earth. In raising Jesus from the grave, God didn’t utter words from heaven as he did at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration but He clearly made it known, through those who witnessed his Son’s resurrection, that Jesus was certainly the One in whom He was well pleased. God loved and was delighted with Jesus when he lived here on this earth for just 33 years; and this bears testimony that it is not the quantity of years of a person’s life, say three score years and ten, that is important. Rather, it is the quality of our lives that leads to greater life, the victory of life with our Creator.
It is well known from the accounts concerning Jesus’ life that he only considered it to be well- lived when he focused on revealing and sharing the love of God through his words, actions, and interactions with others. This is the quality of life in which we celebrate the victory and resurrection at Easter. It is a life in which God’s love is shared with all persons, and that stems from a deep understanding as to who and whose we are, as we live the life He has given us.
Knowing who and whose he was, Jesus was guided by His Father into living a quality and purposeful life here on earth; and we can have the same, provided that we too know who and whose we are.
We are all children of God, created in His image and likeness and beloved by Him, whether we acknowledge Him, love Him in return, reflect His nature in and through our daily lives or connect ourselves to Him as the Source of our being. However, when we do accept this truth, and deepen our relationship with Him, we open ourselves to walk in the way of love for God and one another, to be raised, nurtured and guided by Him to live as children of light who spread the fruit of goodness, righteousness and truth in our nation and world (Ephesians 5:9).
Like Jesus, we are to possess, and be willing to pass on, such an awareness or consciousness of who and whose we are, of our Creator God and the essence or way of life to which He has called us to live as revealed through His Son Jesus Christ, our resurrected Lord.
As His children, we are called to love Him and to love and care for each other as we do for ourselves. We are to provide for those with great need, protect the vulnerable, and seek to alleviate the social challenges and conditions which some people face.
For these things to be realized, we need to encourage and support our leaders to address the unjust structures and inequalities in our society that foster discrimination, abuse, violence, prostitution, trafficking and crime. We are also to be promoters of life and good stewards or caretakers of our environment, striving to protect ourselves from chronic health conditions, food shortages, contamination, and severe climate conditions. Living such a quality of life as children of light will allow the light of Christ to shine in our homes, in our schools, in our places of work, in our communities, in our nation, and in the world.
I invite us on this Easter Day, as a people and as a nation, to not only celebrate the fact that God has made known to us, in raising Jesus His Son, His power to raise us on the last day to experience life beyond the grave, but let us allow the life that Jesus Himself lived, the light of Christ, to shine in our hearts, to inspire and raise us to commit ourselves to a way and quality of life that closely matches His and benefits all. May God raise us up as His children of light, bearing the light of Christ, to enable our nation to better experience the fullness of His presence, love and peace.
On behalf of my family and the Anglican Church of Barbados, I wish you and yours a joyous, peaceful and blessed Easter season 2023.
