Easter 2026 | From The Grave

As the sun rose, we gathered around a fire to greet the Easter morning with prayer and bacon. And then at a more respectable time, we gathered again to paint the clay decorations we made last week, decorate the church with paper chains, sing a new round, share communion, and hear the story of Easter Sunday from The Book of Belonging. You can read our minister's reflection below.

There is a strange detail in the story of Easter Sunday, as Jesus' friends don't recognise him straightaway. It doesn’t seem so strange that Mary should mistake him for the gardener, in the dawn light and through her own tears, but the disciples he meets later on the road to Emmaus walk with him for what seems to be hours, and still they do not realise it is him until he sits down with them to break bread. Years ago there was a BBC series called The Passion which handled this by having actors that looked a little like the original actor play Jesus until the disciples recognised him, which was a little disorientating but strangely effective. We know from the way that he speaks that the resurrected Christ is the same person he was before, but it seems that he is also somehow different.

I wondered a lot about this, and then a few years ago I learnt something really interesting about butterflies. Scientists like to do all sorts of strange experiments, and one group of scientists trained caterpillars to respond to a particular noise or smell, and then they let them make their cocoons and they waited for them to emerge as butterflies, and then they tested them and found they still responded to the same noise or sound. That might not seem all that interesting, but when a caterpillar is inside its cocoon, it doesn't just grow wings. Its body breaks down into a kind of soup, and then it reforms itself as a butterfly. It's sort of like it dies and then comes back to life as something that looks very different, but which we know is also somehow the same because it keeps its memories.

I wonder if something a bit like that happened to Jesus. Death was like a cocoon and he came out of it like a butterfly, still the same person but also changed into something even more wonderful. There's more we can learn from this though, because I don't think the Easter story is just about what happened to Jesus, I think it’s also a promise about what can happen for us. It’s a promise that there is life beyond death, and there is joy after sorrow, and there is hope that survives despair. Sometimes things might happen to us that feel like we're stuck in a cocoon or things are falling apart, and that can be sad and it can be scary, but we can come through it like a beautiful butterfly.

And if that can happen for Jesus and it can happen for us, then it can happen for the whole of creation too. There are many things around us that feel oppressive or like they are falling apart, but Easter is a promise that violence is not final and the power machine is not absolute. The world can come to life again in new and beautiful ways, although it might need a little help from us. As we sat around the firepit at dawn, we wrote down the ways in which we want to see new life in the world, and then we threw them into the fire, not to destroy them but so that our hopes may become fuel for the resurrection of the world.

I’m not sure I’d get away with lighting a fire in here, so we’re going to share our hopes in a different way now. I want everyone to take a peg, and then I’m going to give a butterfly to each side, and I want you to pass the butterfly from peg to peg. As you do, I invite you to pray a few words of hope, either quietly or spoken out loud if you feel comfortable to do so, and then reflect on what you might do in practical ways to see that hope realised.

At this point we passed two butterflies around the congregation - you can see one of them in the picture that comes with this blog - and it was wonderful to hear the murmur of prayerful hope. Perhaps you might take some time to express and reflect on your own hopes.

We are going to sing In Christ Alone in a few moments. I love this hymn, but I have always winced a bit at the line "the wrath of God was satisfied". It seemed to speak of an angry and vengeful God, who could only be appeased by suffering and death. The church has often spoken of this kind of God too, but that is not the God I know or the God that scripture describes as “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”. I know I am not the only one who feels this way, and some people change that line in the song to "the love of God was satisfied".

I was thinking about those words again on Friday though, and the truth is that God had every right to be angry at the mess we had made of things, just as we have every right to be angry at the mess we are still making of things. So perhaps it is not the wrath of God that we need to rethink, but rather what it means for it to have been satisfied. God’s wrath was not satisfied by inflicting pain but by absorbing it and transforming it. God’s wrath was satisfied by choosing love instead. May it be so for us too.