The Empty Tomb and the Emptied Urn
“While speaking of the Christian belief in the resurrection of the flesh, I called my hearers to reconsider what their funeral plans testified about their hope for the future. I reiterated a position — long-held in the history of the church — that burial, not cremation, best pictures the imagery of death as a sleep from which one is awakened at the last trumpet.…”
– Russell Moore, Dean of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, writes at Christianity Today.
Proposed Covenant to be overseen by Primates’ Joint Standing Committee
“Provinces, not individual dioceses which violate the terms of a proposed Anglican Covenant, will be subject to a disciplinary process overseen by the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council, according to the third draft of the document released on April 8…”
– Report from The Living Church.
(Context: Who’s on the ‘Joint Standing Committee of the Primates’? Photo from the last JSC meeting in November 2008, courtesy ACNS/Rosenthal.)
Peter Jensen’s Easter message 2009
Archbishop Peter Jensen’s 2009 Easter Message
We are a bit short of hope today.
People are asking, what is there to look forward to?
The good times are over and we fear the future.
Poor President Obama was described in one headline as ‘the hope of the world’.
But we only ever had one Messiah that good.
And it’s a bit hard to live up to Jesus.
Australia used to be such a hopeful nation.
What’s come over us?
Well it’s hard to go past the fears we all feel about the Global recession.
In the midst of the pain many of us are feeling, we need help and we need hope.
Hope keeps you going.
Try to live without hope and you may as well be in your grave already.
Now the funny thing about real hope is this — it was born in a grave.
They consigned Jesus Christ to his grave after they did away with him.
They sealed the grave.
They set soldiers to watch the grave.
But it was no use.
He broke the power of death and came out of the grave to show us that it can be done.
After all, what is the end?
What’s the worst thing?
To die.
To die without having made peace with God.
To die and to pass into eternity with no one to be a friend.
That’s hell.
But no-one has to do that.
There is someone who died for you and who passed through death for you.
When it comes to your present and your future, when it comes even to death and
judgement, Jesus will stand by you, stand for you, stand with you.
Do you want to connect with Him?
You only have to ask.
Dr Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…