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Good morning. At a public panel discussion of science and faith at our church last week, four professional scientists who are also Christians, were thrown an Easter-themed question: ‘What does a scientist make of the resurrection?’ Now, most of science is better-equipped to deal with the regularities of nature, not with such singular, one-off events. We’ve been good at tracing, in intricate detail, the history of natural systems from their origins: the evolutionary tree of life from the first simple organisms 4 billion years ago, the expansion of the universe from the hot big bang event over 13 billion years ago. Observational evidence can tell us that these extraordinary origin-events happened, although it’s proved harder to unpick the origins themselves. But actually, my own science of physics is rather used to a different way of thinking. When we observe forces and fields, physicists are always looking for the intense sources from which they flow. If there’s some gravity around, there is sure to be a mass somewhere in the form of a star, a planet or even a black hole. If we detect an electric field, it is sure to find its source in an electric charge. If the swing of my compass needle reports a magnetic field, then somewhere out there is a current, whether in a nearby wire, or in the circulating molten iron core of the Earth itself, showing me the direction to walk home in the mist. In the bleakness of a desperate and cruel world, where new suffering seems to arise every day, there is nevertheless the detectable presence of that most precious field of force – that of hope. For this physicist, just as the galaxies stream away from the singularity of the cosmic big bang, so hope flows from the singular moment of the new life that Christians call the resurrection. The Gospel writers describe an empty tomb and the appearances of the risen Christ; St. Paul writes of a new sort of body that doesn’t perish. Or as the early church letter from St. Peter puts it: ‘In his great mercy, God has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’ This week, and always, that hope is a gift to all people: those who need to receive compassion, welcome and healing, as well as those who need to give it.