Events

Sunday 5th April
10am Queens Road Unitarian Free Church, Urmston
11.30am Dunham Road Unitarian Chapel, Altrincham
11.30am on Zoom ID 841 9082 8195 no password required

Led by ministry student Peter Flower 

A service of celebration for Easter Sunday exploring not just Easter, but spring time, celebrating a time of renewal, rebirth, a chance to reconsider and refresh, looking at some of the common threads that run through the celebrations and finding a great message of hope in the great mystery of the resurrection.​

All are most welcome. Come as you are, exactly as you are, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition...

The following is an extract from the service...

If I’m honest, I’ve always found the Easter story, the story of the resurrection intriguing, fascinating and perplexing. I know that for many Christians that absolute certainty in the resurrection is vital to their  faith, it’s a core belief in many denominations, it’s in the Nicene creed and it’s through the death and resurrection of Jesus that they find their strength and salvation, and I support the right for anyone to practice their faith in the way that’s right for them, but for me,  it’s a story that still leaves me with a lot of questions I can’t answer and lots of questions that probably gave the teachers and the vicar a headache when I went to an Anglican Sunday school. I’ve sometimes wished that I could go back to that time and place, to be there when that stone was rolled away and see for myself what had really happened, to seek that ultimate truth, but maybe I’m not supposed to know. I’ve come to the conclusion that in the same way some people find the power in that absolute certainty of the resurrection, I find the power in the mystery, the not knowing, the uncertainty. I think that’s why I like Mark’s telling of the story. At least in the earlier versions it ends on that cliff hanger. We don’t get all the answers, it invites us to make of it what we will, to imagine, to fill in the gaps. It leaves us with a mystery, and for me it’s that mystery that keeps my faith fresh and vibrant, and open to change, open for me to question it and it to question me and sometimes surprise me. It’s that glimpse that the impossible might just be possible after all.   

This is a time when celebrations meld together and for millennia people have found comfort and joy in all the little miracles we see at springtime. We’re surrounded by new life, rebirth, things that have seemed dead for months are back with us in the land of the living. I’ve enjoyed walking along the lane where I live and seeing the lambs in the fields and felt guilty when I’ve seen the mint sauce in the cupboard. The bluebells are appearing on the verges, and some have found their way into my garden with no help from me. I know it happens every year, but it always amazes me how quickly the trees seem to go from looking bare and barren to being vibrant and full of life.  In a sense, I suppose it’s natures resurrection. I can see why, when Pope Gregory was sending missionaries over to Britain in the early days of Christianity, he quite pragmatically allowed those missionaries to keep many of the pagan traditions and festivals and find a way to meld them with Christian beliefs and festivals, they decided that the Pagan festival of spring fit so well with the Easter story, with its very similar themes, and it’s sense of something a bit mystical, a bit magical, perhaps a little beyond our understanding. 

There’s something I find deeply spiritual about this time of year. I feel a sense of reconnection as everything around me springs back into life, and I feel part of the wider world. I’ve not been in a tomb over winter, but I do always feel a little like I’ve re-emerged, come back to life, and it’s always a time when I feel grateful and blessed. I think I have something in common with the Celtic Christians who saw nature as a gift from God, and creation as sacred. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and perhaps that time of absence really does make us reflect on what we have, and what we have to lose.