Exodus 14:10-18; 26-15:2; Revelation 15:2-4
When I was a curate, I used to take assemblies in a junior school where the headteacher always liked to have the final word. By which I mean he would offer a brief gloss on what had just been said—with somewhat mixed results.
On one occasion, just before Easter, I tried to introduce and explore the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday in a way that was culturally accessible, pastorally sensitive, and theologically clear. But after I sat down, the headteacher sprang up and concluded: “So, boys and girls, we’ve seen that Easter is all about saying goodbye and saying hello again—rather like when we break up for the holidays and look forward to coming back.”
I remember thinking: that rather underplays it.
Because when the early Church reached for the story of the Exodus as a way of understanding Easter, they were making a far bolder claim about the scope and impact of what had taken place in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just as the events of the Passover and the passage through the Red Sea were seen as God’s saving works for the people of Israel, bringing them freedom from captivity and for life in the Promised Land, so the early followers of Christ recognised Jesus as the Lamb of God, whose blood was shed on the cross for the forgiveness of all sins, and whose resurrection brings new life to all creation.
This was not something that happened to one man; this was an epic, cosmic event for the whole world.
One of the specific dimensions of the Exodus story, depicted in our reading today from Exodus 14 and 1, is the very public dimension of the victory of Yahweh, the LORD, over Pharoah and all his armies. It is not simply that the Israelites escape, but that Pharaoh and his armies are vanquished, washed away in the waters of the Red Sea. The LORD gains glory over Pharoah, and his power is defeated – for all to see. Hence Moses’ song, joined in with by all the Israelites ‘I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously’.
How might this very public victory foreshadow the events of Easter? To answer this question, we need to be clear about the nature of the enemy. In the pages of the New Testament, the enemy is not a person - Satan is mentioned only rarely - but the forces of evil seen in sin and death. They are what overshadow the human condition: the propensity to distort what is good and turn it to evil, and the finality of death undoing God’s good creative work and separating us from our maker.
If the cross of Jesus is about freeing believers from both the penalty and power of sin, then the resurrection, which we celebrate this Easter Day, is about destroying the enemy of death. Christ bursting from the tomb breaks the hold which death has over humanity. As we heard in our anthem words from Paul’s letter to the Romans, ‘death has no dominion over him’, and such is true for all who place their faith and trust in the crucified and risen Christ.
In the Deanery hallway there is a wonderful wall painting depicting Jesus stepping out of the grave and treading on a rather hapless Roman soldier. But it is not simply the Roman empire over which Jesus is triumphing. In his resurrection he triumphs over the final enemy of all, death itself. Such is his public victory.
Easter Day is not about saying hello again. It is nothing less than God gaining glory for himself through triumphing over sin and death. This is victory day.
What might that mean for us today? Let me offer two thoughts.
First, it means we can see the conflicts of our world in their true perspective. We live in a time of deep division and instability. Nations are set against one another, differences are sharpened, and enemies are easily named and vividly portrayed. It is not hard to feel anxious about what lies ahead.
But Easter invites us to see more clearly. For the deepest conflict—the one that matters most—has already been decided. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the decisive victory has been won over sin and death. That does not make the troubles of our world unreal. But it does mean they are not ultimate. Even the worst that can happen—death itself—has been overcome. And so, while there may well be dark times ahead for our world and our nation, Christians are those who live not in fear, but in the light of a victory that has already been won.
Second, we can sing of the Lord’s victory. The song of Moses has become the song of the Lamb, and we can sing of Jesus’ resurrection not simply as something that happened to him but as something that has both cosmic and personal significance. I mentioned the global reach just now, but let me end with a personal story.
Two weeks ago the funeral took place of Bishop Andrew Watson, the Bishop of Guildford, whom I knew from my time as Vicar and Area Dean in his Diocese. Andrew died just a few months after a diagnosis of a particularly aggressive cancer, at the age of 64. Before his death Andrew wrote two very moving letters to his Diocese, and in the last of the two he wrote of how he was facing death.
I don't fear the prospect of dying and find to my relief that my faith in the 'resurrection of the body and the life everlasting' has only grown stronger over the past few weeks. I've sometimes had private worries that, when faced with the starkness of a terminal diagnosis, my faith in the Risen Christ might falter. Well, it hasn't. Or better still, God hasn't faltered. Quite the reverse.
God hasn’t faltered. He hasn’t—and he won’t. This Easter Day we celebrate not a simple story of endings and beginnings, but God’s decisive victory over sin and death. Christ is risen. The victory is won. And the invitation for us is this: to trust in him, to sing of that victory, and to live in the sure and certain hope that, in him, we too shall pass through death into life everlasting. Amen.