Benefice-Priest in Charge
Katrina Dykes
MESSAGE from KATRINA - april 2019
Lent seems shorter this year. It might be because the schools break up two weeks before Easter - it is so late this year Easter school services will be 10 days before the start of Holy Week!
Once upon a time more of life revolved around Easter. Now the festival passes with little regard, other than a steady supply of hot cross buns and Easter eggs. Many people will work Good Friday as an ordinary day and shops will open.
I wonder whether part of the issue with Easter is that people find it hard to know how to respond to the story. At Christmas, we skirt around the shame and poverty of Mary and Joseph’s situation to focus on the joy of new birth. But there is no escaping the pain and brutality of The Cross and the ‘Good’ bit of Good Friday is only confirmed in the Resurrection of Easter Sunday. I think that people really just don’t know what to make of that.
There are many who, when they have looked into the story, come to the conclusion that the only explanation that makes sense of the evidence is that Jesus really did rise from the dead. A bit like that Sherlock Holmes quote about once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
Whatever happened on that first Easter morning, it transformed the devastated and frightened disciples, turned their tears to joy. Later, after Pentecost, the message they passed on and the lives they lived changed the world.
Surely this should be the most compelling evidence for anyone today – the changed lives of those who encounter the risen Christ. Christians are not better people than anyone else. In fact they should be people who realise just how far they fall short of what it is to be a good human being. The discovery of a God wholoves us although we are not good, in fact even if we are really bad, is whatbrings about the transformation in a person’s life. God loves us all so very much that he became one of us, lived and died for us – and showed us that he has power to overcome death and to offer us a new kind of life.
John chapter 10 verse 18 Jesus says: “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.”
Love is what changes people. And there is no greater love than The One who laid down His life for His friends, and those friends then went on to lay down their lives for their friends… and their friends and their friends… and so the Kingdom of God grows and the world is changed.
Come and join us this Easter time. Whenever you have time you will be most welcome.
Rev'd Katrina Dykes
.
Once upon a time more of life revolved around Easter. Now the festival passes with little regard, other than a steady supply of hot cross buns and Easter eggs. Many people will work Good Friday as an ordinary day and shops will open.
I wonder whether part of the issue with Easter is that people find it hard to know how to respond to the story. At Christmas, we skirt around the shame and poverty of Mary and Joseph’s situation to focus on the joy of new birth. But there is no escaping the pain and brutality of The Cross and the ‘Good’ bit of Good Friday is only confirmed in the Resurrection of Easter Sunday. I think that people really just don’t know what to make of that.
There are many who, when they have looked into the story, come to the conclusion that the only explanation that makes sense of the evidence is that Jesus really did rise from the dead. A bit like that Sherlock Holmes quote about once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
Whatever happened on that first Easter morning, it transformed the devastated and frightened disciples, turned their tears to joy. Later, after Pentecost, the message they passed on and the lives they lived changed the world.
Surely this should be the most compelling evidence for anyone today – the changed lives of those who encounter the risen Christ. Christians are not better people than anyone else. In fact they should be people who realise just how far they fall short of what it is to be a good human being. The discovery of a God wholoves us although we are not good, in fact even if we are really bad, is whatbrings about the transformation in a person’s life. God loves us all so very much that he became one of us, lived and died for us – and showed us that he has power to overcome death and to offer us a new kind of life.
John chapter 10 verse 18 Jesus says: “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.”
Love is what changes people. And there is no greater love than The One who laid down His life for His friends, and those friends then went on to lay down their lives for their friends… and their friends and their friends… and so the Kingdom of God grows and the world is changed.
Come and join us this Easter time. Whenever you have time you will be most welcome.
Rev'd Katrina Dykes
.
