Weekly Reflection – A Tariff-Free Easter

As I write, the words ‘tariff’ and ‘Trump’ continue to dominate our news feeds. It’s springtime for business journalists, who are currently all over the media expounding their views on where the economic pieces that President of the USA has thrown into the air will fall. Depending on your point of view, this is either a much-needed reset of the financial markets, or the gateway to financial Armageddon for us all. The truth is, that it’s too soon to tell what the consequences of tariffs will be. History moves more slowly than the individual events of which it is constituted.

The relentless stream of news from across the Atlantic has pushed from the headlines the needs of those across our world whose voices cry out to us out of the depths; out of the misery wrought by human cruelty and neglect, natural disaster, and the climate crisis. The grim Cook’s Tour of despair, wearyingly familiar, struggles to compete for attention in a news cycle that is unremittingly dominated by the mercurial approach of one man to the responsibilities of government.

As we prepare to celebrate Easter we give thanks to God for this Queen of Seasons. We celebrate hope renewed, life restored and human frailty transformed by the love of God. In an often-misquoted remark the late Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, said of the resurrection of Jesus Christ that it was ‘more than a conjuring trick with bones’. In other words the resurrection was no mere illusion, but nothing less than a complete reframing of our reality. This new reality in turn brings to birth a new song whose tune and words tell of death overcome, a world healed, and all things restored through the (tariff-free) grace and gift of God. Alleluia! Happy Easter.

With love and prayers,
Dean Simon