Sheila Cassidy concludes her Lenten reflection at Calvary

Brave enough to walk by Jesus
GOOD FRIDAY PEOPLE
THE more I think about it, the more I see the issue of the empty tomb as a red herring, a sort of chorus of sirens luring us away from our true course and on to the rocks of theological bickering and discord.
Of course the question of who moved the stone and what exactly we mean when we say that Jesus rose bodily from the dead is fascinating but it is not central to our belief in the resurrection of Christ.
The questions "how are dead people raised?" and "what sort of body do they have when they come back?" are perennial ones and Paul had no patience with them.
"Whatever you sow in the ground has to die before it is given new life and the thing that you sow is not what is going to come; you sow a bare grain, say of wheat or something like that, and then God gives it the sort of body that he has chosen: each sort of seed gets its own sort of body . . .
"Then there are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the heavenly bodies have a beauty of their own and the earthly bodies a different one" (Corinthians 15:36-8, 40).
The rising of Christ in the spirit, and whatever form his new body took, his descent among the dead and his harrowing of hell are central to our faith, for that is the cornerstone of our belief in a God who has power over evil and death.
Even more important, and for me totally breath-taking, is the image of the wedding of earth with heaven, the union of frail human beings with their immortal unknowable God.
This is the essence of our faith: the immortal, invisible, God only wise, Yahweh, El Shaddai, the ancient of days who lives in light inaccessible, has somehow entered into his world, into his creatures and become united with them.
This is such a mysterious, incredible state of affairs that we cannot cope with it, we are blinded, dazed and, lowering our gaze, search for something concrete to wrestle with, something like the mystery of the empty tomb.
We rush about, examining the discarded shroud, looking behind the bushes, completely ignoring the patient angel who says, "Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen."
The church, patient and exasperating mother of us all, does her best to explain the wonder and the mystery of Easter to us. Like a master detective she sets out each Easter night to reconstruct the events leading up to the victim's death and, having laid out all the clues before us, proceeds to explain their significance and how she arrived at her conclusion.
Our great tragedy, it seems to me, is that we are often so familiar with the story that we become blind and deaf to the evidence and in so doing completely miss the truth.
We are like people watching a familiar late-night movie: we know the story so we think we don't need to concentrate and our mind wanders or we drift off to sleep.
For two and a half hours we drift in and out of consciousness, and then, the lights go up and everyone sings the "allclulia".
We rejoice. Lent is over, Christ is risen and we go off to drink cocoa and cat Faster eggs. Happy Easter. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. But what does it mean?
Let me turn the video back.
It is night. Darkness covers the earth. it is the beginning of time and chaos reigns. The black waters rage and the earth is a formless void. People and priests stand silently around an unlit fire: we are waiting for the beginning of life.
The spirit of God broods expectantly over the silent chaos and, suddenly, there is a spark of light. The spark catches and there is a flame: it is the new fire, the light of God, suddenly bursting into flame on earth. Our hearts leap: this is the night!
We tremble because we are afraid that we too may be called to powerlessness, to follow Jesus along the road to Calvary. We fear the pain, the weariness, the humiliation, and the loss, but most of all we fear that we may not be equal to what is asked of us. it's all right for them we say; they're special, holy, stronger, braver, somehow different from us, a people set apart. But are they so very different, I wonder?
I don't think so. I believe that we are all, all, potentially Good Friday people. We are all frail, earthen vessels who may, should the potter choose, be fashioned in his image and for his own mysterious purposes.
He chooses the weak and makes them strong in bearing witness. Their strength is his. The light they cast is his. And we, all we have to do is remember that his love is better than life itself, and say "yes".
From Sheila Cassidy's "Good Friday People" (Dorton, Longman and Todd, f5.95). Dr Cassidy is medical director of St Luke's Hospice in Plymouth.