Stainglass window
Christmas 2011
3rd Dec Advent Party
12th Dec @ 2pm
Carol Service at Oak tree Court
16th Dec @ 2.30pm
Carol Service at Stratford Court
17th Dec @11am
Carol Singing outside Co-Op
18th Dec Nativity and Christingle Service and Carol Service
24th Dec @ 11pm (Service starts at 11.30pm
United Service at URC Etwall Rd
25th Dec @10am
Christmas Day Service
Easter
The Easter period is considered by many to be a happy time in the year. A time when schools have a holiday, trade and industry take two days off to make a long weekend. Easter eggs and hot cross buns are eaten in abundance (making up for giving up chocolate during Lent), and the ladies enjoy or participating in Easter Bonnet Parades. The white lily is brought to decorate the home as it is the symbol of the resurrection of Christ and is often used to decorate church alters.
Whilst these traditions indicate a time of joy, there is a change of emotions experienced between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.
Palm Sunday commemorates Christ's triumphant arrival in Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowd. The next day the great crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting "Hosanna!"
Later in that week many of the people in that cheering crowd would be among those shouting that Jesus should be executed. So why did Jesus have to die?
The Roman authorities wanted Jesus dead. He was a political and social trouble-maker. But what made the death of Jesus more significant than the countless other crucifixions carried out by the Romans and witnessed outside the city walls by the people of Jerusalem?
Christians believe that Jesus was far more than a political radical. For them the death of Jesus was part of a divine plan to rescue humanity.
The death and resurrection of this one man is at the heart of the Christian faith. For Christians it is though Jesus's death that people's broken relationship with God is restored. This is known as the Atonement.
What is the Atonement? The word Atonement is used in Christian understanding to describe what is achieved by the death of Jesus.
In the Revised Standard Version of the Bible the word reconciliation replaces the word atonement. Atonement (at-one-ment) is the reconciliation of men and women to God through the death of Jesus.
But why was reconciliation needed? Christian theology suggests that although God's creation was perfect, the Devil tempted the first man, Adam and sin was brought into the World. Everybody carried the original sin with them which separates them from God, just as Adam and Eve were separated from God when they were cast out of the Garden of Eden.
It's a basic Christian theology that God and mankind need to be reconciled and in the New Testament we are given images to describe this atonement. The most common is the image of sacrifice. For example John the Baptist describes Jesus as "the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29)
So to think that hope was lost, that darkness ruled and that evil triumphed was the down side of Easter 'celebrations', the recognition that Jesus our Saviour has risen from the dead has to be the up-side.
Christ is Risen
Alleluia