For me Easter is a time of joy. Happiness doesn’t quite do Easter justice. In the gloom of job losses, the shock and grief following the recent earthquake in Italy, and the solemn challenges facing the world at this time, we need something more substantial than happiness. We need to rediscover Easter joy.

On the evening of the first Easter Day Jesus, risen from the dead, came again to the upper room where he found his Disciples distraught with fear. He greeted them in a way that was both ordinary, and radically new. “Peace be with you,” he said. But this would be no easy, comfortable peace. Nor can it have been immediately reassuring to hear. The peace he bade them was one that would radically reshape their lives.

Politically, it would look more like upheaval. The way chosen by Jesus, the way of integrity and compassion, the way of the Cross, had exposed the culpable complicity of pretty well everyone in the amorality of the system. Now a new and radically subversive power had been revealed – the power of God, the power of forgiveness, the power of love.

The Disciples’ first instinct was fear. With the fickleness of the crowd, the discovery of a traitor in their midst, the arrest and torture of Jesus, and the long slow road to His Crucifixion which not only took Him away from them but also ridiculed everything He had stood for in the process. Jesus, risen from the dead? Could they trust themselves? Could they believe their eyes?

And yet as the truth dawned on them, meeting Him alive from the dead, they realised that what they had perceived as failure was, in fact, a glorious victory. Christ had been beaten, spat on, pushed, shoved, humiliated and dragged all the way to Calvary, carrying his Cross until he could do so no more. The soldiers had grabbed an African from the crowd to carry it for him to the Place of the Skull. There were arguments about the inscription at the head of the cross: “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews”.

This is what happens to “trumped up” messiahs. This is what happens to people who rock the boat. This is what happens to those who threaten the establishment. This is what happens to those who lift up the poor and broken-hearted. This is what happens to those who choose the way of love. Christ’s last words from the Cross, the shout “tetelestai” (“It is finished”) had seemed to mean “it’s all over”. Jesus’s life had ended, so it seemed, in ignominious defeat.

But it was a cry of victory: “It is done! It is accomplished!” So what had seemed to be finished had for them only just begun. The risen Jesus sends them back to Galilee, where it had all started, and they have to relearn it all in the light of Easter.

So the fearful became fearless. They and those who came after them would stand before emperors. They would brave the lions. They would travel to the ends of the world, driven by the fire burning within them, the message that Christ is risen, showing that God is love.

A “Happy Easter” is not going to resolve the crises of today. It is joy we need, surprising, transforming joy. The joy that floods and overflows. like a dark room that’s suddenly flooded with light. The joy that is found in knowing forgiveness of past wrongs, life in the present and hope for the future. This is Easter joy.

The opposite of joy isn’t sadness. The opposite of joy is fear. And that’s why we respond to the call of Easter Day: “Christ is risen” with the certainty of joy. At this time of crisis and gloom, let the joy of Easter break through. Give in to the joy of knowing, forgiving and being forgiven. Those simple acts of love, the random acts of kindness, those acts of affirmation and generosity, big or small, stand like lights in the darkness.