Easter Sunday 2025

What follows is the text of our Easter Sunday service. A playlist with the songs used can be found below.

Performance | Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Reading | John 20:1-18

Easter greeting

Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

If you haven't been here over the past week, you may wonder what all this is at the front. We have our praises from Palm Sunday, the ten items with which we told the story of Maundy Thursday, the candles we extinguished and the one that has kept burning because the light continues to shine in the darkness, and the cross for Good Friday which is now sprung with new life. We also have flowers and chocolate eggs for the life and joy of this Easter Sunday.

Song | See What a Morning

Reflection 

Eddie has set up another egg hunt, and this year we have seven to find. [Egg hunt, invite finders to come to the front to open eggs and read the words out, then sit down.] Those of you who were here on Friday will hopefully recognise these as the seven words from the cross, which Eddie chose for us to hear again this morning.

Perhaps it feels strange to come back to the cross as we celebrate the resurrection, but while there is something really profound about entering into the story and walking through it at its own pace, taking each day on its own terms, it is also really important to see it all together, and these words are deeply significant to the Easter story, today as much as they were on Friday.

FORGIVENESS Jesus forgave those who killed him, living out the forgiveness he taught his disciples to practice and pray for right up until the point of death. And then he returned to those who had deserted and denied him, forgiving with the first breaths of his resurrected life. In the Easter story we see more clearly than ever before the compelling power of forgiveness, and we are given an example we can follow - perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said at the last supper that his blood would be poured out for the forgiveness of sins. 

SALVATION Jesus promised salvation to the criminal who died beside him, because paradise is not for good people but for God's people, and all we need to do to become God's people is ask. Salvation can have many meanings, but one that resonates most strongly with me is a fresh start, and I'm not sure there is a start any fresher than a resurrection. Life after death, joy after sorrow, hope after despair...this is the promise of Easter.

RELATIONSHIP Jesus saw the beloved disciple and his mother at the foot of the cross, and called them to take care of one another. And then he stood in the garden and he called Mary by name, because all Jesus is and does is grounded in relationship. Song of Songs almost has it right, but it turns out that love is even stronger than death and even less yielding than the grave. 

ABANDONMENT Jesus called out with the words of Psalm 22, asking why God had forsaken him, unable to recognise God's presence through the agony of his suffering. For the first time, this word is not amplified by the resurrection, but contradicted by it. Jesus was not abandoned to pain or death, and neither are we, for as the closing words of Psalm 22 declare, “he has done it!”

DISTRESS Jesus cried out that he was thirsty, because crucifixion meant every kind of pain and discomfort and indignity imaginable. Again we see that this word is undone by the resurrection, as Jesus returns to eat and drink with his friends, wounded yet also healed. The distress of the world did not vanish in the moment Jesus walked out of the tomb, but we too can be healed though we are wounded.

TRIUMPH Jesus declared “it is finished”, because the cross was not a failure but a victory, the ultimate demonstration of love. And then Jesus began again, because he was not finished, love was not finished. Every ending is a new beginning, for Jesus has walked through the grave, and with him all earth is awakening, resurrected and renewed.

REUNION Jesus used his last breath to commit his spirit into God's hands, drawing back to the Father, because nothing can separate us from the love of God. And then he came again to his friends, reunited with them too, promising to be with them always, even as he ascended to heaven. The resurrected Christ holds us together and draws us into God, a perfect community and a foretaste of heaven.

The seventh word is sometimes called the word of rest, which brings us back to our Lent series journeying through the days of creation. We ended last week with the sixth day, the day on which we were made in the image of God, but of course in the Genesis account there is a seventh day, the day on which God rested. Perhaps we might then see Holy Saturday, the day on which Christ was dead, as a day of rest. Although having said that, there are traditions which imagine Jesus as anything but restful, journeying into hell to save those who had died before him. I particularly like the idea that he went looking for his friend Judas.

But if we do understand Holy Saturday as a day of rest, then perhaps we might see Easter Sunday, the first day of the week, as the first day of a new creation. It was then a generative rest, a restorative pause before the energy and the creativity of light and goodness made anew. It was hiding a blessing all along. Sometimes when all seems dead, it is only because we cannot see what is growing beneath the soil. We have such times of rest in our lives too, and we also have the promise of resurrection, of light and goodness made anew, of fresh growth from ground that had seemed dead. So may your rest hide a blessing, and may you come to know the fullness of the promise of resurrection.

A prayer for Sunday from ‘A New Zealand Prayer Book’

God, you are our beginning and you will be our end;

we are made in your image and likeness.

We praise and thank you for this day.

This is the day on which you created light and saw that it was good.

This is the day in whose early morning light we discovered the tomb was empty,

and encountered Christ, the world’s true light.

This is the day you have made; we shall rejoice and be glad in it. Amen.

Song | Now the Green Blade Rises

Activities 

Easter is a festival, and festivals should have music and creativity and food, so it has become our tradition to break our Easter Sunday service for all of those things.

There are prayer stations based around the seven words from the cross if you want to dig deeper into those, you can make an Easter headband or an Easter garden or decorate an Easter stone. I will play some music in the background with lyric videos on screen if you want to sing along or follow the words. And please feel free to help yourself to refreshments, and sit and have a chat.

Song | Great is He

Communion

As we come to share in communion, let us hear a story from a little later on that first Resurrection Day.

Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him...As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us?”

On Maundy Thursday, we shared bread and wine as the disciples at the Last Supper. On Good Friday, we shared bread and wine as the disciples shaken by fear and grief. Today, let us share bread and wine as the disciples at the Emmaus meal.

Jesus we gather with you at this table. Be our guest and also our host. May we know you at this table in the breaking of bread and sharing of wine. Amen.

In practice the bread and wine will come to you, and all are welcome to share in it. There are gluten free crackers and the wine is nonalcoholic.

We take this bread recognising the presence of Christ with us.

[Bread is shared]

We drink this cup celebrating the covenant Christ has established.

[Wine is shared]

Thank you for meeting us in the breaking of bread

and the sharing of wine.

Open our hearts to recognise your voice,

that they might burn within us. Amen.

Song | Thine be the Glory

Blessing | Seen by Jan Richardson

Dismissal

May Christ breathe

resurrection hope into your life,

and may you breathe it

into the world,

this Easter and always. Amen.