Easter is considered the most important festival of the Christian faith because it is the anniversary of a key foundation of Christianity, Jesus’s resurrection. Should you want to find out more about the origins of Easter, or Christianity, please contact the churches directly. Easter is a joyous celebration after the Lenten season of 40 days of reflection and fasting. Christian churches celebrate in different ways, so we invited our local Christian churches to send details of services and events which they are holding this week and over the weekend. We also invited the Churches to send an Easter message, if time allowed with their busy schedules this week.
Happy Easter!
GLEN INNES PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Resurrection Sunday Celebration. 10.30 am morning tea. 11.00 am Celebration. 12.15 pm Bring and share lunch.
An Easter Message
Alexamenos Worships God
Archeologists have found a graffiti, a drawing scratched on the wall of a building in Rome. It’s rough and child-like, but it’s a crucifixion; and the condemned person has the head of a donkey.
Mocking Jesus? Oh yes. And an early Christian. For, there’s also a man, arms raised. And “Alexemenos worships God.”
So archaeologists say that the person with arms raised to the crucified ass is, an unknown Christian, Alexamenos,1800 years ago.
From the very beginning, Christians believed not only that God became a human being, but that God was humiliatingly crucified; and that even in that horrible death, He came alive and is worthy of worship as God.
That’s Easter! Foolish, yes. But for followers of Jesus, Easter is the God-man dying in our place, so that we can be right with God, and His friends. And that Jesus came alive, and has defeated death for us so we are ready for heaven. Forgiveness, grace, and hope!
May you have a blessed Easter in the year of our Lord, A.D. 2025; and join us in this ‘foolish,’ truth, that is the most wonderful reality of history.
CAMERON MEMORIAL UNITING CHURCH, GLEN INNES
Tenebrae Thursday 17 April 7.30pm
Good Friday 8.00 am
Easter Sunday 10.00 am
An Easter Message
A Discipleship thought from Words for Worship
“Mary makes her way to the tomb, early on the first day of a brand-new week. John tells us of a new beginning, new creative possibilities in the midst of the old. He wants us to know that something new is taking place that will involve impossible combinations—dizzying realities we can’t make sense of on our own, especially while everything is still so dark. We find Mary alone and in tears. She looks into the tomb one more time. She sees two angels who ask her, ‘Why are you weeping?’ Her sadness and grief so blind that the presence of these two angels barely registers a response. Finally, she turns around and sees a man, whom she assumes is the gardener This man is, in fact, Jesus, but she does not recognise him until he calls her by name: ‘Mary.’ In a flash of recognition and with all kinds of Isaiah-resonance (Isaiah 43:1–4), Mary is transformed by the one who calls her name, this Jesus who embodies God’s redeeming, saving love and who has somehow found a way through death itself. Resurrection has changed everything! Here, in the garden on this very first day of a brand-new week, Mary’s tears are turned to joy, and her mourning turns to dancing. God has changed the story. The world is a new place. “
Blessing and Peace.
OASIS CHURCH, GLEN INNES
Passover Celebration 7pm Thursday evening
Sunrise service 6.15am Easter Sunday morning.
Sunday Morning Service 9.30am
An Easter Message
Jesus died and rose from the dead, he is alive.
ST PATRICK’S CATHOLIC PARISH, GLEN INNES
Holy Thursday – Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 7:00pm, followed by Night watch of the Faithful until 9:30pm
Good Friday – Stations of the Cross at 10am
Good Friday – Solemn Celebration of the Lord’s Passion and Death at 3:00pm
Holy Saturday – Easter Vigil 7pm
Easter Sunday – Mass at 8.30am
HOLY TRINITY ANGLICAN CHURCH, GLEN INNES
Good Friday 9am
Easter Sunday 7:30 and 9:30am
An Easter Message
Do you find it amazing that 2000 years after the fact, people still celebrate the events of Jesus’s life? History is filled with great and influential people, whose lives still shape our world. Yet we don’t celebrate them. So why Jesus?
It is because at Easter God gifts us an anchor point of hope and certainty in a world that is often disappointing, uncertain, and even painful. So much of life is beyond our ability to face in our own strength. However, Easter allows us to face life in the strength of Jesus.
At Easter, we celebrate Jesus: God who was made man and submits to all this world’s frustrations and griefs, even suffering death on a Roman cross. But equally, we celebrate Jesus who rose to new life. Jesus, who has overcome death and all else that is wrong in the world and who invites us to share in his victory.
Over 2000 years, countless people in all times and all corners of the world have drawn near to this crucified and risen Jesus and found both strength for this life, and sure hope for eternity. My prayer is that this Easter, you will be one of them.
