Listen for a moment, to the story of one of the most dramatic victories we Christians know anything about.

The night Jesus was born angels came to shepherds near Bethlehem, and one said, "I bring you good news of a great joy." That was a happy greeting.

But a deep, dark valley of sorrow lay between that salutation and the joy it promised. For the new-born Child, trials and sufferings began almost immediately. When he was just a baby a jealous king tried to kill him. When he grew up the people at Nazareth threw him out of their city. He became a wandering teacher - homeless, often hungry and weary, tempted and sorely tried. He was hated, accused, denied, betrayed. At last, there came a Friday when a wreath of thorns was pressed hard on his brow, and he was spat upon, scourged with whips, nailed to a cross, and by mid-afternoon he was dead. Before sundown, his body was placed in a tomb, lent for the purpose through the generosity of a kind-hearted man. The life whose beginning was heralded by the happy song of angels had been one long sequence of heartbreak and pain.

But the story does not end here. On the first Sunday following his burial, very early in the morning, Jesus met his friends walking in the garden outside the tomb, and his first word was this: "All hail!" - the Greek word "chairete," "Joy be to you!" "Be of good cheer!"

This greeting was a happy one, this greeting in the garden. Here, perhaps not more than an hour away from the tomb, Jesus picked up the theme of joy precisely where the angels had left it more than thirty years before. And here today, nearly 2,000 years later, let us echo that theme again: "Be of good cheer: we bring you good news of a great joy!"