AN Easter message from the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu.

"I don’t know how you feel about life at the moment. Our nation is beset by division, we are facing challenges of debt and austerity, we hear reports of our young people struggling with self-image and with stress and anxiety caused by social media, and the fortunes of York City Football Club is of great concern to me – as the Club’s Patron.

And yet I feel full of hope! Why? How? Well, because the story of Easter is the story of how the ultimate division has been forgiven and reconciled, the greatest debt paid and the deepest disillusionment replaced by joy that can’t be taken away.

If you’ve ever had a falling out in your family, you’ll know how painful it is. That pain is only an echo of the pain God knows when we forget that he made us and loves us, and when we treat each other without remembering that each of us is loved and is of unique worth in God’s sight.

It’s so hard to do – impossible! And so we end up falling out and hurting each other. And you know how hard it is to be the one to make the first move to fix things up.

But the amazing thing is that God did just that! Jesus, the only one in the whole world who loved everyone, and never turned his back on love and God his Father, was willing to die so that God’s one human race could be healed – so that we could be adopted as children of God and get to know our Father God.

What about debts, though? Debts get worse with time. Interest piles up. And the same happens with relationships. The longer the divisions go on, the worse they get. You can’t just wave a magic wand and make it better.

You have to have the cash to pay the debt off. What if you could wipe the slate clean with all the mess we make in our lives, and all the hurt that other people have done to us…? What if it could be paid off in one huge lump sum? It’s not possible, surely? But that is exactly what the Easter story says. 'He became sin' – when Jesus died all that hurt and mess died with him and the debt was chalked off.

But hang on a minute, I hear you say. Us Yorkshire folk aren’t so easily taken in. For a start, Jesus died. How’s that a good thing? And if his death was meant to heal divisions and give us a clean slate, then how come we’re here, divided and disappointed? Friends, this is the really good bit.

Jesus’ followers were just as disappointed, just as dubious, when he died. It seemed like the end of everything they’d pinned their hopes on. It was like losing the election, losing your job, getting no likes on Instagram and being relegated – all at once. Actually they were in deep shock, shame and grief, profoundly traumatised and bereft.

Easter speaks to us of the physicality of the resurrection of the Crucified and Buried Jesus of Nazareth. It’s new life – life the way it should be. The world is not ‘all as it should be’, as one famous Christian song puts it, but Easter tells us that nothing is too bad, nothing is too hopeless, nothing is impossible! Death isn’t the End. The End is Life in God.

Jesus was raised from the dead, and his downcast, downtrodden, disillusioned followers became the beginning of a Resurrection movement that continues to change the world for the better and tells this story of new hope, new beginnings, forgiveness and healing.

I invite you to join me on this Pilgrim journey. There is a free app to sign up https://www.churchofengland.org/pilgrim for daily emails; each containing a short Bible reading, an invitation to reflect, a suggestion for prayer and a prompt to act. The Pilgrim resources can be used by anyone, at whatever stage of a faith journey.

I’m not sure I can promise better results for York City, although I have great hope for them “for we are YORK!” But the empty cross and the empty tomb of Easter promise radically better things for all who believe. May you know the joy and hope that come from new life this Easter."

The Archbishop will be preaching at York Minster on Easter Day at 10am.