The Evening Standard did an interesting survey earlier this week. They asked two dozen people, twelve each from East and West London, to say what events in history Good Friday and Easter are based on. Less than half got both answers right, and, in the case of the Eastenders, only one person under forty years old. A typical reply was that of Stuart Peters, a young printer from Islington, who said of Good Friday: "It's about hot-cross-buns. I don't really know the religious significance and I am not bothered about not knowing it".

Well, Stuart's reply may worry us; but at least was being honest about his ignorance. What is far more worrying are those people who come to church every Sunday without realising that it is the Resurrection which Christians are celebrating, and who, if challenged, would be hard put to it to say what practical difference the Resurrection makes to their everyday lives?

Such people exist, that’s for sure. How come then that they manage to "miss the many-splendoured thing", the open secret which lies at the heart of God’s plan for the world, and for them in particular?

It’s due in most cases to their failure to relate what they experience during Holy Week to the whole picture of our redemption. It’s like buying a postcard in an Art Gallery without realising that the person or object it portrays is only a detail of a much larger picture. It may be a very important, very beautiful detail, but it’s not the picture itself. Holy Week and Easter are the climax of the Christian Year, but they must be considered long side all the rest of God’s plan for the salvation of the world through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Those Bible readings which we heard earlier this evening help to fill in the rest of the picture. They describe what St Peter called the deliberate intention and foreknowledge of God. Let’s look at them in turn.

Firstly, the Creation. Genesis takes us right back to the beginning and tells us that everything that God has created, (including you and me) are created for a good purpose, that "the glory of God is the living man; and the end of man is the Vision of God" as St Irenaeus put it. In other words Genesis answers the question Why are we here at all?

Our belief that we arecreated for a good purpose (as opposed to just being "thrown up by chance") immediately sets us apart from those like Stuart Peters of Islington, who live as if creation happened by accident, and for whom life itself can therefore be no more than "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". Equally our belief in the original, and ultimate, goodness of creation separates us from those who suppose that man's destiny can onlyu be fulfille by escaping from an evil, material world, into a realm of "pure spirit". Easter puts paid to both those mistaken ideas because it is firmly grounded in the material world, concerning, as it does, wood and nails, flesh and blood, bread and wine, tombs and gardens, gravebands and ointments, and, most importantly of all, a resurrected Body which was recognized by Mary Magdalene, listened to by the apostles, touched by St Thomas, and who ate several meals with the assembled company.

But the readings do not end with Creation. The second reading The Escape from Egypt and Crossing of the Red Sea answers the next question which is How can God who is perfect be reconciled with a creation which is not?

Exodus tells us that God will open up a way for us. Reference to the Red Sea suggests that water will come into it somewhere, and the fact that the Red Sea ran back into its course after God’s people had crossed it warns us that the process of being saved from the pursuing Egyptians and their Kingdom of Darkness is going to involve a no-going-back decision on our part. Our retreat has been cut off. Baptism, which is the process symbolised by crossing the Red Sea, is a once-for-all, one-way ticket to the Promised Land. In Baptism we put our previous lives behind us and from then onwards there’s only one way to go – forward.

But although Baptism is a once-off experience, like being born or dying, Ezekiel’s Heart Surgery reminds us that God's intentions for us involve our being continually remade from the heart outwards. The Holy Spirit, who knows our heart better than we ourselves do will renew us day-by-day in the Spirit.

In those three readings, Creation (in Genesis), Red Sea (in Exodus) and Heart Replacement (in Exekiel) we have what we might call a rehearsal of the Faith which came to its fulfilment "in the fullness of time" in the Person of Jesus Christ through his Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection. Another reading which describes Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac highlights the fact that our discipleship may prove to be costly, but reminds us how much more costly to it was to God himself "who spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all.

Every one of these readings helps us to anchor the events of Holy Week in the God's overall plan for our salvation and the redemption of the world through Our Lord Jesus Christ. The services for Holy Week are not there just to remind us of events which took place two thousand years ago.

They indeed do that; but, more importantly, they speak to you and me to remind us that, just as we have shared Christ's death through baptism and have died with him to the Kingdom of Darkness of this world, we have also been raised with him from the dead by that same baptism to become the Sons of God and fellow-inheritors with him of the Kingdom of Light.