20th April 2025 

Staying with the Story

This edition of News & Notices is dated for Easter Sunday, and yet, when it comes out, we will still be at Maundy Thursday. A lot still needs to happen before we can celebrate the joy of the Resurrection.

Over the next three days, we will journey, with Jesus, to the depths of the sin and brokenness of the world, and to the depths of the steadfast love, faithfulness and mercy of God. This journey will take us, on Thursday night, from the bustle of Passover celebrations in an Upper Room, through Jesus' symbolic act of washing his disciples' feet, and into Gethsemane. Then, on Friday afternoon, we will sit at the foot of the cross, bringing our sorrow, our wonder, our worship before our crucified Saviour. And then, on Saturday, a gap. A whole day in which, 2000 years ago, the world held its breath. 

In Church tradition, the three days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday are marked as one extended act of worship. There is a strangeness, for example, to the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, no beginning and no ending. We go straight in with the psalm, and conclude with the Lord's Prayer. It feels odd, off-balance, somewhat out of kilter.

These are difficult days. The gospel narratives give no easy answers. There is no way out for Jesus in Gethsemane, and there is no way out for us. There is no joy of resurrection without the horror of the cross. There is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul puts it this way:

"I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead." (Philippians 3:10-11)

Paul understands that the cross and the resurrection are two sides of the same coin. If we want, like Christ, to experience the joy of resurrection, the only way for us, like Christ, is through the suffering, the submission, the death of the cross. We are called, like him, to lives that are "cruciform" - cross-shaped.

So I encourage you, if you can, not to jump too quickly to resurrection joy over this holy period. Join, if you can, some of our worship over the coming days. Sit quietly with the disciples in the upper room, with Jesus at the foot of the cross. Experience afresh the dislocation, the fear, the confusion, the sorrow. And then, on Sunday, we will truly celebrate the wonder, the amazement, the joy of the resurrection.