From Rev'd Louise

Monthly reflection

April 2025 Holy Week and Easter

As I write this, we are just beginning the Church’s season of Lent, and by the time you read this we will be fast approaching Holy Week, the final week before Easter Day. I have been a Christian for many decades now, yet Holy Week and Easter still have the capacity to fill me with awe and wonder and worship.

I grew up in a nominally Christian household, but as a child, I mostly thought of Easter in terms of chocolate Easter eggs, made more attractive by the fact that we had usually given up chocolate during Lent! As a teenager, I began to explore and question, making a lifelong commitment to Christ when I was at university. I quickly came to realise that for Christians Easter is the most important time in the year. Christmas, the birth of the baby Jesus, is only important because of who Jesus grew up to be, and what he achieved by his death on the Cross and his resurrection.

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, when the Church remembers what is often called Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. Cheering crowds greeted Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey; crowds who hoped that he was going to lead a successful revolt against the occupying Roman forces. They rapidly became disillusioned when it became clear that this was not Jesus’ intention, joining the Jewish religion leaders’ calls for Jesus’ crucifixion, on trumped-up charges of calling himself ‘king of the Jews;’ blasphemy to the religious leaders, and political insurrection to the Romans. Early on Good Friday, Jesus was crucified, dying later that day.

Over the years, I have asked myself often, ‘Where would I have been in that crowd in Jerusalem? How would I have responded?’ A church I belonged to many, many years ago used to put up a large wooden cross during Holy Week. I remember realising one year, as I gazed at that cross big enough to crucify someone on, that the attitudes (the sins) that led to Jesus’ crucifixion, are my attitudes, my sins.

On Holy Saturday (the day between Good Friday and Easter Day), I always feel strongly as if I am waiting; waiting in the emptiness, as Jesus’ first disciples must have done, as they reeled from the shock of his arrest and death. The gospels tell us that Jesus’ resurrection, his rising from the dead, was discovered at dawn on Easter Day, as his followers went to retrieve his body to give it a decent burial. For decades, greeting the Easter dawn with worship, with the Christian cry of ‘He is risen!’ has been one of the most special moments of the year for me.

A question I have been asked many times over the years is, ‘Why do you believe in Jesus’ resurrection? Why do you believe the unbelievable?’ The answer, for me, has always been simply that it seems far more likely than the alternative. The nature of the gospel accounts, the evident change in the disciples, the change in the way death was talked about, all contribute to convincing me that something very momentous had happened. Something that changed lives then, and has continued to change lives ever since. Including mine. And I ‘feel’ it to be true. But the very nature of faith means that I cannot prove it.

So my prayer for us all this year, is that whatever our beliefs, Easter will provide opportunities for reflection, and mean something more to us than simply chocolate eggs – nice though they are!

If you would like to sign up to receive a weekly reflection, or to receive the regular newsletters from churches and Christian groups across Hope Valley, please go to https://mailchi.mp/2c07821b33f6/sign-up-for-ponder-and-pray or https://mailchi.mp/cbb9a512a36e/hope-valley-christians-newsletter or email me on [email protected] and I can sign you up.

March 2025 Darkness

I am one of those people who really appreciate the mornings and evenings gradually getting lighter at this time of year. Before Christmas I regularly find myself counting the weeks, and then the days, until we are past the shortest day. And as we move towards Spring, I find myself saying to myself, ‘Soon it will be light at …..’

Yet, unless I am driving, I actually rather enjoy the dark. At one of the places we used to live, a deeply treasured activity was to walk our dog to the next village, and then turn off my headtorch and walk the mile or so back home along the river bank in the dark, with just enough starlight to make the slightly lighter path show up, so that I didn’t fall in the river! And most of my favourite places are places far from artificial lights; places where the nights are dark enough to really see the stars; places where I can gaze upwards for ages, with more and more stars becoming visible as my eyes adjust, places where the Milky Way really shows up as a broad, lighter stripe across the night sky.

When the biblical writers searched for ways to describe the indescribable, when they tried to find ways to say what God is like, what Jesus is like, one of the images they chose was light. St John, for example, wrote: ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all’ [1 John 1: 5]. That imagery of light being associated with goodness and hope, and darkness being associated with badness or difficulty has become rooted in Christian culture and tradition.

Fortunately there are also many places in the Bible that remind us that the common biblical imagery of light and darkness is just that; just imagery. And imagery is good when it works for us, good when it helps us understand more about God, but best ignored if we don’t find it helpful. I can imagine the writer of Psalm 139, for example, sitting in the quietness of night time, gazing at the myriad of stars, reflecting on the God who created all, and writing, ‘Even darkness is no darkness with you; darkness and light to you are both alike.’ [Psalm 139: 12] The psalmist understood that we can seek and know God’s presence in the stillness of night, just as readily as in the brightness of day. Indeed, the gospels tell us of many occasions when Jesus went out to meet with God in prayer during the night.

So my prayer for us all is that as the seasons turn, as the nights grow shorter, but also warmer, we find moments to wait for God in the dark stillness and beauty of the night.

February 2025 All change

I wonder how your new year started? For our three churches in Hope, Castleton and Bradwell, 2025 began with us cancelling church services on the first Sunday due to snowy weather that prevented many in our congregations from getting out. As I spent the first Sunday of 2025 very differently from what I had planned, I found myself reflecting on how we tend to respond to change more generally.

We have probably all known risk-takers or adventurers who seem to thrive on change, but for most of us change feels difficult. Statistics have shown that major changes in our lives, such as losing a job, or bereavement, are some of the biggest causes of stress we ever face, even if it is ‘good’ change, such as marriage, or the birth of a child.

Christians and Christian churches live in a place of continual tension; tension between our worship of an unchanging God, and God’s call to us to be continually changing in order to become more like him. Christians believe that God is perfect love and goodness, and a fundamental part of Christian faith is the belief that Christians are called to work towards a world which shows God’s values. The Gospels, in the New Testament, speak of Jesus’ followers as both ‘disciples,’ meaning ‘learners,’ and ‘apostles,’ meaning ‘those who are sent.’ So Christian faith calls us to allow God to change us, as we learn ever more about what God is like and what God wants for his world. And then to allow God’s values to send us out into the world, challenging us to use what we have learned, to transform injustice and suffering that we see around us.

That all sounds very theoretical, but how can it help us with everyday life? When we are faced with an unexpected change of plan, or a decision that is difficult? I find the letters of St Paul helpful. In his first letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 5), he urges them to ‘hold fast to what is good.’ So when faced with change, I try to identify what is good, in God’s eyes, about the old and the new. And in his second letter to the Corinthians (2 Corin 4), Paul writes about being ‘renewed inwardly,’ as we look at Christ’s life and death. Christianity speaks of ‘repentance,’ often in the sense of being sorry for the wrong we have done, but actually ‘to repent’ means ‘to turn around.’ Repentance is about which way we are looking. So again, when faced with change, I try to ask myself, ‘Am I looking towards what God wants, or what I want?’ ‘Will this make it easier, or harder, for us and others, to see and know God’s love for all?’

This month, my prayer for us all, is that we will each learn to become a little less uncomfortable with change, that we will all grow in our ability to discern when God is calling us to change, and grow too in our trust that when God does call us to change, it is always for the good of us, and for all.