It's very easy for a church just to slide along from week to week, taking it for granted that we do our services like this and that, and we celebrate the sacraments like this and that.

Easter is about Jesus: the Jesus who announced God's saving, sovereign kingdom.

The rule of love, I say again, is not an optional extra. It is the very essence of what we [Christians] are about

Again and again the Sermon on the Mount calls and challenges us to a life of radical discipleship. Note: when Jesus says 'Blessed are the . . . . merciful, peacmakers', and so on, he doesn't just mean that they themselves are blessed. He means that the blessing of God's kingdom works precisely through those people into the wider world. That is how God's kingdom comes. That's one thing to hear afresh.

But if Christians don’t get Jesus right, what chance is there that other people will bother much with him?

Having lots of members of my family who were in ministry in one form or another, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that at quite an early age, I was very, very conscious personally of the love of God.

Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.