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The Reverend Philip Banks writes:

Easter 2008

I expect that you have read that Easter arriving so early is a ‘once in a lifetime’ event – only happening about every 90-100 years. So we can count ourselves lucky! For the first time it also means that Easter will fall during St Peter’s School term time – school holidays happening later on, in April – so that we can celebrate Easter with all the children in school at the right time (normally we ‘do’ the Easter story well before Holy Week!).

As school holidays fall later, hopefully this means that fewer people will be away, and that we can all celebrate the dramatic services of Holy Week and Easter together in church. For these acts of worship are indeed the most dramatic and moving services of the whole Christian year:

On Palm Sunday, 16^th March, we will recall the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, riding a donkey. Again we will begin at 9.45am with ‘Rufus’ the donkey in the town centre with a procession up to church. A few days later, we will join in the Seder Supper at Christ Church, recalling the Last Supper. For the first time for many years, this will be followed at St Peter’s with an all-night vigil, as we recall Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. We ask for volunteers to sign up for particular hours, so that there are always at least two people in church at any time. On Good Friday, after the Children’s Activity Club, we have the hour’s devotional service at St Nicholas Chapel, as we recall ‘the place of the skull, Golgotha, and Jesus’ crucifixion.

Our ‘Darkness to Light’ Easter Eve service is on the Saturday, 22^nd March. This is a service full of anticipation and atmosphere, where we bring the Easter Candle into a darkened church, symbolising light of Christ in the cold darkness of the empty tomb. Judith Sweetman will be singing the Easter ‘Exultet’ for the first time, and as always, the service is followed by cheese and wine. Then our Easter Day services are as usual at 8am, 9am and 10am, with the 3pm service on the site of the former church at Marks Hall.

I do pray that you will be able to join with us in the journey through the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord. It is the most important season of the church’s year and the foundation of our faith in the God of Love who promised us light, life and peace in all our darkness and fear, both in this life and in the life beyond life, where ‘death is no more’. This Easter, may you know something of God’s healing and energising touch in your life a nd in the lives of those whom you know and love. The opening lines of this well loved Easter hymn by J Crum, tune ‘Noel Nouvelet’ (one of my favourites), gentle but poignant, sum up our hopes and our faith in the risen Jesus:

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,

wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;

love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green

This comes with my love and prayers,

Fr Philip Banks