Easter is a great time to work on peace and justice. In fact, the Easter Season calls us to rejoice in a God who refuses to leave the dead forever dead. Jesus did suffer a violent death. But God had no intention of letting Jesus rest in peace. He gives death no permission to hold Jesus as a permanent victim of other people's injustice and violence. Resurrection is God's answer to those who think death and violence have the last word.

During Easter we praise God's great act in raising Jesus from the dead. We believe that God's grace will be shared with us and that our own deaths will not be the final word.

Our faith teaches that we will share in Jesus' resurrection on the last day. But our faith is not restricted to remembering Jesus' resurrection. The question is: what happens to our faith in Resurrection between Jesus' resurrection and our own lives? How do we live without faith in resurrection until our own last day?  Looking to our world today, we cannot deny the suffering and violence killing so many people, everywhere. Of course, we have here today people who have suffered very bitter things.

What does our faith in resurrection say to all this and to all of us right now?
We are an Easter people. Our challenge is to understand the history of human suffering in the light of Jesus' resurrection.

It means that we have to take God's part in protesting and denouncing injustice, oppression and violence. As Christians, we have to resist the forces of death in the midst of life.

Death is not only our own personal death. Death is part of our human social reality. Death is something deeply rooted in the social structures of our community. Death is around us in the midst of life.

Death of those killed by the market's priorities; political death of those oppressed; death of the hopeless and alone, death of thousands killed by militarism, death by torture, death everywhere, painful death.

To accept death as a regular part of our life in society, or to accept it as inevitable is to empty Christ's Resurrection of its power for us today.

Resurrection is not about reform. Jesus' resurrection was God's radical revolution, a real transformation, from death to abundant life.

A resurrection faith faces the cross and fights against the oppressive powers of our society. Our calling is to live as so many of God's chosen people. They refuse to kneel to the powers of death, they fight against violence and oppression as means of maintaining economic and political power.

The resurrection of Jesus is the witness that the Suffering Servant is God who cannot be held in death. And God works for liberation and abundant life. We know the reality of resurrection when we see new life and transformation in the life struggles of the poor and oppressed.

Powerful witnesses of God's life are visible in people who risk their lives struggling against the oppression inflicted on their sisters and brothers. We see similar hope and power in the disciples who see in the dark what no one else sees. For all this we rejoice. It is always Easter and the Lord is with us, right here, right now.

Living that same Easter faith, we will be stronger for the struggle. No one should be left for dead. Resurrection takes place when we defy reality. Even if, from a human point of view, Jesus life was a dead failure. Nevertheless, the disciples began to discover that Christ was still alive. And he had rejected life based on power and wealth.

He had gone through pain, death, and resurrection and this was also to be our way, the way of his followers. Our networking together, during all these last 14 years, has produced lots of good fruit; seeds of resurrection; growing awareness, deeper commitment and solidarity, newer and more demanding challenges to the Anglican Communion. Despite our mistakes and few resources, God keeps calling us, as all other Christians, and other faiths, to witness to God's original intention of love, liberation, and healing.

May God keep us walking together, sharing the same bread, recognizing the Lord with us in our lives and vocations.

On behalf of all our Provincial representatives, my fellows and companions, let me say how thankful we are, to God and to you, for your kind hospitality and support.

Let us all offer to God's glory and for the transformation of our human family our prayers and work for more concrete signs of resurrection in our society.
I'll conclude with a poem and prayer:

He is Risen! That through him, we may rediscover faith: in ourselves, in our world, in our God.
He is Risen! That through him we may rekindle hope for the abandoned,
for the despairing, for the dreamless.
He is Risen that through him we may restore love to those from whom we have kept it.
To those who are most near us, to those we will never meet, to all and everything.
He is Risen. Alleluia!