Easter pictures

It is extremely difficult to find suitable images for an event that took place 2000 years ago and still has a lasting impact on the world today. Most of the images that are published online and in the press around Easter are at worst kitschy, often hackneyed - in the sense that the type of depiction has been used so often that it is hardly touching anymore.

Nevertheless, individual images manage to touch us more deeply - because they show the old truth of redemption from a new perspective. Three Easter pictures have particularly appealed to me in the last few days because they have shown or emphasised new aspects for me.

– The sacrificial anode (see article from 25 March) The comparison with the sacrificial anode that sacrifices itself in steel ships to protect the substance has become an image for me of Christ becoming a sacrifice for us. He offers us the opportunity to channel our inner and physical pain and tensions towards him - instead of letting them destroy our substance.

- Man as a cross: In the staged performance of the St John Passion there was a scene in which Christ walks away from Pilate to Golgotha. He carries his cross. But it is not made of wood. He is carrying a human being on his back, on his cross. This made it very vividly clear: we are the cross that Christ carried.

- Christ as hostage. The collage of Peter AschoffI am touched by the image that reminds me of the hostage-takings from Schleyer to Iran. The hands in the picture holding the shield are the hands of his own son; this picture gave me a new sense of what it cost the father to give his son as a hostage for humanity. Not to ransom him, but to let him die. For us.