Easter: what’s the deal?

Easter: what’s the deal?
Sunday 4 May 2025

Sermon by The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury

Extraordinarily, the lunchtime ‘meal deal’ first appeared in supermarkets in 1999.  The average person in the United Kingdom now eats seventy-three of them every year; together, we spend more than six billion pounds on them annually.  Who doesn’t love a deal?

For the uninitiated: a Tesco Clubcard allows the discerning diner to select a drink, a snack, and a main for £3.60.  The most popular combination in 2024 was the Chicken Club Sandwich, the Egg Protein Pot, and a bottle of Coke.  Total cost without the deal: £6.50. Saving: £2.90.  What’s not to like?

The appeal of the deal (there’s a book title) is visceral.  We emerge from Tesco with four things in our shopping bags: a drink, a snack, a main, and the satisfaction of knowing we’ve got one over on a supermarket giant.  We’ve read the rules, and we’ve scanned the shelves to extract maximum advantage from the rules.  Millionaire’s shortbread might not be the ideal accompaniment to a teriyaki salmon roll, and the thought of washing it all down with a banana and apple smoothie makes me feel queasy, but hey, by selecting that menu I’ve saved £6!  I’ve gamed the system, maxed my purchasing power, and I’ve won.

It’s intoxicating, and it appears to be intoxicating those who lead us, among whom the steal of the deal (there’s another book title) is fast replacing the ancien regime of international law.  Conventions; treaties; resolutions: so dull, so last century, when there’s a peace deal to be done, or a trade deal to be done, or a mineral rights deal to be done.  It’s lunchtime writ large.  Scan the shelves for rare earths or disputed territory; max out power (political, economic, and military); extract advantage from the opponent, even if they’re historically an ally (especially if they’re historically an ally); win: welcome to the new world order.

Well, a new world order is what we proclaim at Easter; a new world order is what we celebrate this evening; and the scoffers and the sceptics, the curious and the cautious, the cultured despisers of religion might well channel the spirit of the age and ask us, ‘so what’s the deal.  This Easter thing – what’s the deal?’

Sisters and brothers: there is no deal.  I’ll say it again: there is no deal.  No deal that any self-respecting gambler, autocrat, or retail customer (delete as appropriate) could countenance.  Easter is not God’s deal of all time with us.  Easter is not our deal of all time with God.  On Good Friday Jesus scans the shelves and throws away his Clubcard – in fact, he throws away all his cards: he is betrayed by his friends; he is condemned by his enemies; he is tortured; he is executed; his lifeless corpse is sealed into a rich man’s tomb.  At the end the only card he holds is confidence in the one he calls ‘Father’, confidence that appears seriously misplaced, given his shameful and lonely death.  As night falls on Good Friday Jesus looks like the very thing that the gambler, the autocrat, and the retail customer fear most.  Jesus looks like a loser.

And only then does the miracle happen.  Only then, when the shelves are empty, when there is no advantage to extract, when there is no power to max, when there is no winning: only then does the miracle happen.  Jesus is raised from the dead.  He is raised from the dead because God’s love for him is ultimately stronger than the worst of which human beings are capable.  Betrayal, condemnation, torture, death: this is the way that Jesus walks, and (here’s the unwelcome news) there’s absolutely no guarantee that those who follow Jesus will be allowed to avoid them.  ‘Follow me’ Jesus says, and we think that’s a great idea until we see where he’s leading us.  Some deal. Betrayal, condemnation, ridicule, incomprehension, prejudice.  But God’s love trumps them all.

Which is a nice way to use that word.  No savings – salvation.  No beating the system – no system to beat.  No cheap lunchbreak – never-failing companionship.  For ever.

No deal.  Only what’s real.  God’s love: it can’t be bought, blagged, or bargained.  It just is.

We’re told there’s such a thing as the art of the deal.  Perhaps.  But there’s no artifice in what’s real.  Amen.