Dr Rowan Williams delivers Easter sermon at Canterbury Cathedral

Dr Rowan Williams delivers Easter sermon at Canterbury Cathedral; ENGLAND: Kent: Canterbury Cathedral: INT Dr Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury) sermon SOT - One of the things that makes these stories so believable is just that sense of unexpectedness - the disciples don’t come to the empty tomb and say, "Well, there you are; just like he said." They arrive never having really believed that their Lord would return from death, and now they find themselves in a disturbing new world where anything is possible; and so bright is the light in this new morning that even the familiar face of Jesus becomes unrecognizable. But as the story goes on in John's gospel, we are told that the disciples anxiously gathered in their locked room were "filled with joy" when they saw Jesus among them. They have been jolted out of the rut of what is usual and predictable - and joy springs on them without warning, "Christ the tiger", in T.S. Eliot's great image. What was it like for those first few hours after the empty tomb had been found, after Mary Magdalene had delivered her breathless message? It must have been a period of alarming uncertainty, half hope, half terror; which of us would really rejoice at the prospect of a miracle that would make us rethink most of what we had taken for granted? But into that chaos steps a figure before whose face "the questions fade away" - the words with which C.S. Lewis finishes his greatest book, Till We Have Faces. And joy arrives, irresistibly. The world is even more dangerous and strange than before, the future is now quite unimaginable; but there is nothing that can alter the sheer effect of that presence. And that's another thing about authentic happiness. It doesn't take away the reality of threat or risk or suffering; it's just there. This is one of the hardest things to get hold of here. How can I feel "happy" in a world so full of atrocity and injustice? How can I know joy when I'm aware of my own failure, my ow...