Saturday 3rd April

If you want to know where my text comes from you've only got to go outside the church door, turn left, walk about twenty yards towards the clock tower and there, on the second advertisement hoarding are those very words – Power is nothing without control – advertising a well-known make of car tyre.

They are important words because, at one level, they represent precisely the most striking difference between the two outlooks, the two faiths, which are always competing for man's loyalty, our own no less than everyone else's; the faith of the world and the faith of the church.

In the west, the world has conditioned men and women to set their hearts and minds on power and control. As the advertisement so rightly stresses, the one without the other is useless. Power wielded without control is just as likely to damage the person who uses it as anyone else: the most powerful gun in the world will not be much use if its owner is pointing it at himself; so too with control. If the ability to control our lives is dependent upon the willingness of other people to allow us to do so then it's bound to be a pretty ineffectual sort of control; indeed when people say, as they often do, that the one thing they dread most is losing control over their lives they mean precisely this – that they are no longer able to exercise effectively their power to choose.

So far, then, the message of the advertisement hoarding is right on target. Power is nothing without control, and control is nothing without power.

But now let me tell you about the picture on the advertisement which accompanies these words.

The picture shows a photograph looking down on the harbour of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil; and it is taken from a place over a thousand feet above the city known locally as Hunchback Hill.

Now in real life on the top of this hill there stands a massive, hundred-foot high statue of our Lord Jesus Christ reigning in glory, his arms stretched out like this as if to bless and embrace the whole world which lies beneath his feet.

However, in this particular advertisement the Cristo Rei, the Christ the King figure has been replaced on his plinth by that of a well-known international footballer called Ronaldo. Ronaldo's arms are outstretched to control his balance whilst his left leg is poised to take a powerful shot at the opponents' goal. Hence the caption beneath: Power is nothing without control

But now let us remind ourselves of some things which Scripture says about the Man whom Ronaldo has displaced from his plinth. Of Christ the King it says:

He said to me "My strength is made perfect in weakness"

He said, "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many"

And again, in another place it says

"Christ being equal with God... emptied himself and became like other men are... and took upon himself the form of a servant and became obedient even to the point of dying on a cross"

There could not be a sharper contrast between the respective goals of Ronaldo and Jesus Christ. Power-and-control for the former; suffering and obedience for the latter.

However, now comes the most curious part of the whole business. In a few years' time everyone will have forgotten about Ronaldo, even if they knew about him in his heyday; and a few years after that Ronaldo will be dead and buried.

But two thousand years after his crucifixion and death Jesus Christ is still alive and very far from being forgotten.

Ignored, perhaps; misunderstood, certainly – well, he was misunderstood during his earthly ministry, so there's nothing so very new about that.

But forgotten – never, if only because there are millions of us who by doing what we do "in remembrance of him" in the Mass as he commanded us to do, make very sure that he will not be forgotten.

However, if the Mass were nothing more than a reminder that someone called Jesus walked the earth it would be little different from a moss-covered tombstone in an ancient graveyard: beautiful and moving perhaps but as powerless as a dead Ronaldo will be in a hundred years' time.

But now read on as they say in the story books.

The last passage we heard from scripture ended with the words "he became obedient to death, even death on a cross"

St Paul goes on to say:

"For this reason God has raised him up on high and given him a name that is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father".

And in another place the same writer says:

"God has opened your eyes so that you can see what hope his call holds for you, what rich glories he has promised the saints will inherit, and how infinitely great is the power that he has exercised for us believers. this you can tell from the power at work in Christ when he used it to raise him from the dead and make him sit at his right hand in heaven, far above every other power... or any other name that can be named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. He has put all things under his feet and made him as the ruler of everything the head of the Church; which is his body, the fullness of him who fills the whole creation".

You can see the paradox. No matter how much power and control people like Ronaldo can exercise over themselves or over a football, or even an eager crowd of fans, no matter how easily they may appear to displace the Risen Christ on his plinth above the harbour in Rio, nevertheless everyone's hope of resurrection to eternal life, yours, mine and Ronaldo's included, depends precisely on the very Person whose image Ronaldo's has displaced: the Son of God, Jesus Christ, "who loved us and gave himself for us on the tree", but "through whose stripes we are healed" and by whose resurrection from the dead "God has begotten us again to a living hope of eternal life in him."

Of course, that completely transforms what we are going to do together in a few minutes' time into something quite different from visiting a gravestone in a cemetery.

The women who went along to the garden on the first Easter morning set out with precisely that in mind. They were expecting to find a tomb with a corpse inside it to which they could pay their last respects.

Instead, of course, they found an empty tomb and a risen Lord.

And that's precisely whom we are going to find beneath the veil of bread and wine which conceal but do not obscure his presence from us.

Ronaldo may astound his beholders with his power and control both over himself and that football which he propels unerringly into the opponents' goal to the roar of approval of his supporters.

How much more astounding is the power of Jesus Christ, made perfect through weakness, risen from the dead, which can propel ordinary people, you and me amongst them, with equal accuracy into that goal for which God in the beginning created us.

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