BBC Radio 4 2016-03-29

BBC Radio 4 2016-03-29

Good morning. The ghastly bomb blast in Lahore, which a Taliban splinter group claims was aimed at Pakistani Christians, is a painful reminder that there are two Easter stories. There’s one that has chocolate eggs and Easter Bunnies and seems perpetually swathed in the colour yellow. And there’s another that’s seared with the colour red – of sacrifice, death, and cruel persecution.

When individuals and groups of people are targeted for their faith, it’s common today to respond by saying faith is a private matter and people should be left alone to practise their religion. But the early Christians didn’t for a moment believe faith was a private matter. When the disciple Thomas meets the risen Jesus and Jesus says, ‘Put your finger into the scars of my hands and side,’ Thomas responds, ‘My Lord and my God!’ He’s explicitly using a title frequently given to the Roman Emperor. What Thomas sees is something the Roman Emperor could never aspire to, something beyond the imagination of even the most powerful force on earth: what Thomas sees is power over death.

But here’s the crucial point. What Thomas sees is power – awesome, astonishing, glorious power. But that power is in the hands of one who continues to be gracious, loving and forgiving even after his disciples’ betrayal, denial, and desertion. Sometimes people treat Christians as an interest group who should have rights and protections and respect for their way of life. As a Christian I’m not at all sure I should be asking for this. Of course I want people to see and experience the power of God. But I believe people are more likely to do so if when they meet Christians they find people who are not obsessed with their own rights and dignities but people who are gracious, loving and forgiving.

Just as there’s two kinds of Easter, the yellow one and the red one, there’s also two kinds of responses to a ghastly incident such as the bomb blast in Lahore. One says there must be revenge attacks, the Taliban must be rooted out and destroyed, Christians must be protected and their rights upheld. The other one says, how did it happen that the world came to see Christians as anything other than gracious, loving and forgiving? How in the face of violence and massacre can Christians yet be heard to say, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do?’ How can Christians find ways to repay hatred with love, injury with pardon, despair with hope?

Is Easter really yellow or red? Only in the face of persecution does faith show its true colours.