Easter 2024

Churches Together in Long Buckby - Holy Week 2024

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  • Thursday 28 March, Maundy Thursday. United service at St Lawrence’s at 7pm.
  • Friday 29 March, Good Friday, Churches Together prayer walk starting at 11:00 at Bakers Lane, and concluding at midday at the URC for refreshments.
 

Our Easter Services on Sunday 31 March

  • 08:30am communion service followed by breakfast
  • 10:45am All age worship
 

An Easter Message

Dear Friends,

Do you ever think that what people don’t say is often at least as significant as what they do say? That’s true I think in the Gospels too. In the stories of the death of Jesus the writers don’t say that his followers were sad, yes, but that despite that sadness they thought it was going to be OK because they knew what was going to happen next, and because they understood it was all part of God’s plan for humankind. We are told that Jesus had tried telling them, but clearly they hadn’t understood.

Not at all. They were broken, they were frightened, they were defeated, it was all over as far as they were concerned. Jesus was dead, he wasn’t the ‘promised one’, he hadn’t changed anything, he had given them hope, only for it to be snatched away in the horror of an excruciating death. As one of them said as they talked to a stranger as they walked home three days later: ‘we had hoped he was the one who was going to save us’.

We know what happened next. But they didn’t, just as we don’t know what will happen next in our own story of life. And sometimes it’s difficult, isn’t it, to imagine a better future, to have hope that things will be different, to be open to being surprised. Pain, suffering, despair, broken relationships, poverty, mental distress, powerlessness, hopelessness and failure and so much more can too easily be all consuming; we can’t imagine life being different, because so much of our daily existence has to be spent dealing with all this ‘stuff’. The good news is that ‘stuff’ did not triumph then, and it need not triumph now.

The story of Easter is one of defeat being turned into victory. It’s a story of rescue. It is a story of how love triumphs even at the point at which it seems totally futile. It’s a promise that things can be different, that however strong the ways of the world seem to be, they do not ultimately have the final say. Jesus’s resurrection turns all that on its head.

So in this Easter season, let’s be prepared to be surprised by what can change in our life. Let’s again walk with Jesus and his disciples, reliving some of the pain and sadness that they experienced, thinking not only of their suffering and grief but of our own lost hopes and dreams and failures, and then let’s give thanks in a new way when the darkness of Good Friday gives way to the joy of Easter Sunday – a new dawn, a new hope not just for humankind in general but for each one of us, in whatever situation we find ourselves.

Every blessing,
Peter