You are welcome to join us as we reflect and celebrate together:

Maundy Thursday Communion – 7pm

Good Friday Reflection – 10am

Easter Sunday Altogether Worship Celebration – 10:30am

Have you ever wondered what Easter is about? The Christian faith is founded upon the events of Easter. Four days — Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.

Maundy Thursday is when Jesus sat down with his disciples and shared a final meal before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. The event is charged with emotion and tension. 

But even before they eat Jesus kneels before each of his disciples and takes the role of perhaps the lowest of the female slaves… he washes their dusty, dirty feet. An act of service, love, and humility.

The meal – possibly the traditional Passover festival meal – included Jesus sharing bread and wine. He said that these elements symbolised the body and the blood of Jesus. To be one of the participants in this meal was therefore a reminder that the group’s unity, purpose, and being was founded in the life of Jesus himself, and not any other moral, political, or ethical agenda.

The disciples of Jesus were in some ways a motley crew. Among them there’s Peter, the impulsive, outspoken leader; James and John, the ambitious brothers; Matthew, who had collaborated with the Imperial forces; Simon the Zealot, the revolutionary nationalist; Judas Iscariot, who was to betray Jesus; Thomas, the rational skeptic; and Philip, the pragmatist. 

The act of humble service by Jesus, intentionally and graciously inclusive of this diverse company of disciples, and then the sharing of the meal reminds us that any group of Jesus followers will be a flawed group, faced with the challenge to follow the example of Jesus, to consciously welcome, intentionally include, thoughtfully encourage, and work together to live out the values of God that we see in Jesus – love, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, humility, compassion…

Maundy Thursday closes with the betrayal, arrest, and trial of Jesus alongside his agonised prayers in the garden of Gethsemane.

Good Friday is centred on the crucifixion of Jesus. (It is perhaps a curious naming – Good Friday. After all what is so good about a good man being crucified?). There was a hierarchy of modes of execution in the ancient world, and crucifixion was regarded as the most degrading, shameful, and painfully excruciating.

Why was Jesus crucified? It’s a great question. 

On the one hand Jesus was charged of various ‘sins’ apparently worthy of execution according to his accusers — blasphemy, claiming to be God; threatening the Temple; breaking Sabbath laws; and inciting rebellion. We might broadly group these as religious crimes.

On the other hand, when the Romans carried out the crucifixion they posted Jesus’ ‘crime’ on a board above his head, which read, ‘The King of the Jews.’ This was a political crime as only the Roman Emperor held the authority to appoint kings in the Empire.

And then the Apostle Paul, writing about twenty years later to the church in Corinth, says, ‘Christ died for (or because of) our sins.’ Having become a disciple of Jesus, in his letters to churches, the Apostle Paul denotes various meanings that he discerns in the death of Jesus:

• The death of Jesus was an act of violence against an innocent man caused by human rejection of him, and a rebellion against God’s purposes. 
• The death of Jesus was divinely purposed. 
• The death of Jesus was a form of atonement to free sinful people from the ever-tightening, controlling, vortex of sin.
• The death of Jesus was an act of victory against earthly and cosmic powers – exposing the ‘myth of redemptive violence’ (as René Girard described it).
• The death of Jesus involved a sacred and merciful act of the reconciliation of creation.

The Gospels of Matthew and Mark each record the sober assessment of the death of Jesus by those who witnessed his final breath, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God.’ The Gospel of Luke records how the centurion responsible for the crucifixion says, ‘Surely this man was innocent,’ a sentiment echoed by the Governor Pilate who could find no reason to condemn Jesus.

The crucifixion of Jesus exposes the violence of humanity and – in the confession of the innocence of Jesus – starkly reveals and condemns the inherent violence and sinfulness of humanity’s systems and structures. Good Friday lays bare the fundamental necessity for each of us to humbly accept our need to change – surely something only God can accomplish in us and for us.

Holy Saturday is a day of silence. The Gospels say nothing about this day. It is a day of waiting. Perhaps even a day of hopelessness…hopes that Jesus could save humanity apparently dashed by his execution. Holy Saturday is a day of somber reflection… “Who am I? What have I done? Am I guilty along with those who unjustly condemned Jesus?” Holy Saturday calls each of us to be profoundly and humbly self-aware and to acknowledge our own sinfulness and our need of a Saviour and a radical shift in lifestyle and perspective.

EASTER SUNDAY is the remarkable and astonishing day of resurrection. A woman kneels weeping before an empty tomb and encounters Jesus, raised from the dead. Her testimony and subsequent encounters by others of the resurrected  of Jesus creatively inspired a new, life-giving, inclusive community. 

Resurrection matters – really matters. Resurrection matters because it marks a form of victory over death. The act of resurrection reminds us that there is a power at work in the universe more powerful that the power of those who through violence, threat, intimidation, and lies – in a malevolent and malignant alliance with death – deceive and corrode humanity’s instinctive and innate desire for community, belonging, relationship, and connection to God, one another, and creation itself.

Resurrection is about life over death – whether we think of death at the end of life, or the shadow of death cast over us even as we live. If death is about separation and disconnection and ending, then resurrection as we celebrate on Easter Sunday is about renewal, hope, creation, beginning, transformation, community, and connection.

Easter – four days to change the world.