At least once in a lifetime, every human being is likely to experience pain of such calamitous proportion that it feels as if the world is coming to an end, but in truth it isn’t.

The world community could be excused for thinking that together we are now in one of those moments. Between us, we are kicking so many own goals of destruction and alienation that the cumulative effect is devastating. I won’t even attempt to list them (nor name those most responsible for kicking them!), they are all painfully familiar. But no, the world is not coming to an end. For every actuality, its opposite is hovering in plain sight. How so? Well, it is laid out in the Easter narrative, Maundy Thursday through to Good Friday.

The main character in the story is one Jesus the Nazarene. Some of you believe in him, that is you believe in him as the human face of God, as I do, while most who do not would still know something about him and have an opinion about that!

However, believing or not, it is not enough just to contemplate these three days of his passion, or even just the 30 years of his life. If you wish to come to grips with the reality that is Jesus, and what relevance, let alone presence, he has in this or any age, you must start further back.

Let me ask this. Do you think there is a pattern to life, an order to things, or is everything simply haphazard, a crazy jumble? As you look at the natural order do you detect a pattern? If you do, do you think humanity is part of this pattern or in some way stands above it. Does history reveal any truths about life as humans experience it?

Well, the Christian faith declares there is a pattern, if you like, a weaving which has been there from the beginning. While life in all its forms has, does, and will continue to evolve, the fundamental pattern remains the same. The name given to this pattern, or ordering, in the Christian tradition is “wisdom” or “word”. To use poetic language, it is this wisdom or word that sings everything into being and sustains their rhythm. The pattern is embedded in all relationships that are life-giving, and its absence is the cause of relationships that are destructive.

Now, St John commences his remarkable gospel by claiming that this wisdom, this word, this pattern, took human form in history, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. When we look to Jesus, we are looking far beyond a moment in history, we are looking at the pattern necessary for sustainable life within the very order of existence. To be mundane, we are given a mirror into the patterns of life that can be ignored, but never abrogated.

Let’s get straight into it with Maundy Thursday. Jesus washes the disciples’ feet: not a single act of service, but a glimpse of how relationships work, how leadership or hierarchy should be expressed. Everyone and everything exist in relationship and service of everyone and everything else. In an eco-system all elements are interdependent. The more significant the role, the greater becomes the obligation of service, not control. So it is in families, communities and nations. Independence is a mirage and an ambition not to be coveted. Every time service is offered, what has been broken is being restored. One act of service has a ripple effect. We all have the capacity to mend the broken. Herein is hope. Mending happens not through control or coercion, but in, and through, loving service.

That evening, a loaf of bread was broken and shared. In our world, there is, metaphorically, only one table. I sit around it with you, together we sit around it with the peoples of the world. As bread is broken, we are bound to one another. I have had the privilege of sharing bread with the Karen people of Myanmar, the Afar people of Ethiopia and with Palestinians. In a very special way, I am bound to, and with, them until my dying day. We all have the gift of hospitality. Life expands through the space we provide for that which is not ourselves. In the sharing of bread, there is hope.

Good Friday and dying. Dying reorients everything. Our lives are the gift of many past dyings, not simply dust from a long dead star. The crucifixion is not a penal transaction as many Christians maintain, (a useful glimpse into why so many US Christians support Trump) but God’s participation in the world’s brokenness, a healing from within. Herein hope lies. Grace heals brokenness. Grace outpaces ungrace. We experience far more growth in the moments of failure and loss than we do in the moments of triumph. Tragically, our default position is to cocoon ourselves in an armour of self-protection, putting us in conflict with, rather than open to, the grace always on offer. We would rather embrace brokenness than die to something better.

It is in, and through, grace, that peace prevails. Peace is much more than an absence or suspension of conflict. Peace is internal not external. When peace is known inside, peace is practised outside. Herein lies hope

And now the glorious Easter Day.

Refusing to be entombed is about much more than the resurrection of Jesus, it is about the resurrection of the world embraced by him. The wisdom or pattern which has been there from the beginning bursts afresh. Eternity is embodied in the material world. “Earth is crammed with heaven and every bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes,": Elizabeth Barrett Browning Nothing that matters is ever lost. Equally, the causes of death and destruction have no abiding power, they can be left behind. Herein our hope lies. The awful home goals humanity has been kicking do not, should not, have enduring power: they can be left behind, shed. Each new day has within it the capacity to be a genuinely new day.

Each new week begins on Sunday, the day of resurrection. It is never too late to reset the time clock of life to this pattern.