OUR culture is ambiguous about Easter, the proclamation that life can triumph over death. The aching shock of caring for a relative with an incurable disease and then the death of the beloved does not fit an annual holiday season. It feels more like being plunged into a rock-strewn whirlpool. But a friend said after the death of her husband: “Yes, I experience moments of resurrection,” thinking of shining moments for him and for her in the past and now. Colleagues remembered a private incident in the courts — he was a lawyer — when he felt that the widow of a fatal accident victim was meanly compensated. He not only waived his fee but also made a payment from his own pocket to make up what he considered a fair award. Though he would have been the last to say it, it felt as though eternity had broken into routine for an instant.

Several of the stories read at Easter have similar hints of recognising resurrection not as a steady state but momentary, more like flashing lights than somewhere on a map. Death does irreparably change relationships. To recognize Christ as risen was beyond the two disciples walking to Emmaus. It was beyond common sense and required a change in direction of life and a subversion of earlier attitudes.

British communities after the two world wars, confronting collective grief and hidden anger at the casualties, wished to express something they sensed in the fallen. In the Cheshire village of Wrenbury, 26 were killed in 1914-1918, and 8 in 1939-45. The church, the councillors, the British Legion and local activists worked for a better life in the community — new council housing instead of tied agricultural workers’ cottages, mains water and electricity. They erected a sandstone cross in the churchyard with the names of the dead and added a simple inscription from the Greek tradition: “The burial place of noble men is in the hearts of their friends”. Easter is the enemy of the status quo.

Janet Morley, a leading contemporary liturgist, in Praying with the World’s Poor — Bread of Tomorrow (SPCK/Christian Aid), notes the bemused difficulty of recognition in the Gospel Easter stories and wonders whether we, as the relatively wealthy of the world, find Easter elusive because we are so far from the hungry poor. She gives us 22 prayers from around the world which recognise resurrection. Those oppressed by war, Aids, civil strife and starvation can be the concern of our national policies, charitable cash and prayers. We can roll back the stone of indifference and have a moment of hope.

Most English liturgies, ancient or modern, lack the language which can inspire our concern for street children, the impoverished or victims of sex tourism. It is no accident that the Gospel resurrection stories were about recognizing new relationships with travellers, fishermen, sceptics and the crowds. Morley quotes a prayer from Guatemala entitled Threatened with Resurrection, praying for “the old man without a doctor, asking for the bread of justice at the door of a locked church”. A recent immigrant, a victim of torture, achieved an English allotment. It was fresh life, resurrection life, to be able to grow food for his family in safety. Our current orthodoxies, scientific materialism or literal interpretation of what happened to Christ's body may block our recognition of the flashes of resurrection which come our way from God.

The Bible asks: “Can these dry bones live?” An honest answer, especially in our embittered world, seems to be: “Impossible”. But the mystical writer Monica Furlong, who died in the past year, replied: “Impossibility leads straight to the heart of passion, the passion of man, the passion of God”.We have all had moments when in deep suffering light dawns, reconciliation, newness and creativity take control and hope rises again. If we have experienced in this life the miracle of gracious freshness — as individuals, as churches, as countries — is it impossible that after death we may be given moments of resurrection? We do well to pray those Old and New Testament words: “Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.”

The Very Rev Alan Webster is Dean Emeritus of St Paul's