Happy Easter! “May you be one, as I and the Father are one” ~ Matt Way

A couple of years ago, I experienced one of the strangest Easters I’ve ever known, which, as it happens, also turned out to be one of the most profoundly powerful.

It was strange because this Easter came completely out of time. It was part of a retreat led by an author and mentor of mine, Dr Alexander Shaia, designed especially for those in church leadership who are usually too caught up in the demands of Holy Week to enter it fully themselves. So, that year, we marked Easter in October. Strange indeed.

It was powerful because, over the course of the retreat, Dr Shaia shared his research and reflections on the Easter of ancient Christianity. And in doing so, he opened up another way of approaching Easter- not just as a moment to celebrate and remember, but as something to enter into.

This Easter, I’d love to share a little of what I discovered with you. And I want to begin with a question:

How many times do we celebrate Easter each year? Go on! What do you think?

Maybe your mind went straight to “once.” Which, as you might expect, I’m about to tell you isn’t quite right, but is nonetheless, a very reasonable answer. Maybe you stretched a little further? Twice? A handful of times? Fourteen? (I’m not sure how you’d get there, but I’d be genuinely curious to hear your working.)

But, technically speaking, the answer is: every Sunday. Fifty-two times a year. Because every Sunday, we gather around the good news of the resurrection. That’s why Christians meet on a Sunday at all. Jesus and his first followers were Jewish, and so their holy day was Saturday- the Sabbath. But in the wake of the resurrection, something shifted. They began to gather on the first day of the week, marking not just the end of something, but the beginning of something new. They began to bear witness to the death and rebirth of new life: resurrection.

So yes, at its heart, every Sunday is a celebration of resurrection. But if that’s the case, if we are already celebrating resurrection every week, then why do we set apart Easter weekend each year? And what is it for?

Well, to share the insight of that strange and profound Easter I experienced: I’m coming to see that, deep in our tradition, Easter is not only about celebrating that Jesus was raised from the dead, but about being drawn into what that resurrection is doing.

In the Easter liturgy handed down to us, it is John’s Gospel that we are given to pray, year by year. And at the beating heart of his story is a prayer that unlocks the whole. At the pinnacle of his gospel, John tells us that Jesus prays “may they be one, as we are one.”

This Easter text stands to reveal to us that Easter is not only a celebration of more life, even life after death, but of a different kind of life altogether. A life in which what is divided is being drawn back together. A life in which, somehow, we are being made whole. A life in which we begin to recognise that we are one.

From the very beginning, though, living this out wasn’t straightforward.

The earliest followers of Christ found themselves scattered across cultures and communities, carrying this fragile hope of reconnection, and yet not always seeing things in the same way. Their life together was often shaped by pressure and uncertainty. And so the church was never a neat or uniform thing. Nor has it been since. It has always been diverse, stretched, and at times, deeply divided.

But through every split and schism, Jesus’ prayer remains, ringing with both encouragement and challenge “may they be one, as we are one.” And in every disagreement and falling apart, the central hope of the gospel still speaks: there is more life yet. As Paul writes, for all our differences, we share a common life in Christ. That Christ is all, and is in all.

Over time, the church developed rhythms and practices to help live this out, and in doing so named something profound: that this kind of unity is not something we achieve by effort, agreement, or organisation. It is something we are drawn into through the universal pattern of the cross: where love overflows and gives itself away, where we lay down what we cling to, where we pass through the death of letting go, and through it all are given a newness of life- a unified life in all of its fullness.

And so the church chose to gather around the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection once a year. And we choose to move together through the events of Holy Week; through love, loss, and waiting; so as to be led into a shared new life in Christ.

Not a unity built on sameness or agreement, but one that runs deeper. A unity that runs right to the very ground of our being and makes way for forgiveness, for welcoming the one not like us, for sharing a table. This is the kind of unity in which we lay down our need to be right, or to win. For what would that even mean?

See, Easter is so much more than a chance to celebrate resurrection- there are plenty of Sundays to marvel at just that. Easter is a chance to enter in to a very particular kind of resurrection life: a life that is joining us back together, that is making us one.

This Easter, as we gather at the Maundy table, as we enter the grief of Good Friday, and as we wait through the silence of Holy Saturday; may you find yourself drawn into this life.

May you know the love that gives itself away, and the courage to lay down that to which you cling.

May you find yourself drawn back into one another, and into a deeper life together in Christ.

May you know Easter.

Amen.