Introduction to the Season
- Season overview
- Sunday 12th April
- Sunday 26th April
- Sunday 19th April
- Sunday 3rd May
- Sunday 10th May
- Sunday 17th May
- Sunday 24th May
See what a morning, gloriously bright
With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;
Folded the grave-clothes
Tomb filled with light,
As the angels announce Christ is risen!
See God’s salvation plan, wrought in love,
Borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,
Fulfilled in Christ, the Man, for He lives,
Christ is risen from the dead!
Every generation of Christians has to work out afresh what resurrection means. The Chinese Christian teacher Watchman Nee (1903–1972) lived much of his life in circumstances not so different in spirit from those faced by the first disciples. His ministry unfolded during a time of political upheaval in China, and he eventually spent many years in prison because of his Christian faith. Like the first disciples themselves, he had to discover what it meant to live by the power of the resurrection when life itself felt precarious. Reflecting on that experience, he wrote:
“The greatest negative in the universe is the cross, for with it God wiped out everything that was not of Himself. The greatest positive in the universe is the resurrection, the threshold of the new creation. Everything that had its beginning before resurrection must be wiped out. Resurrection is God’s new starting-point.”
Threshold. Threshold is a powerful image. A threshold is the place where one space gives way to another. You cross it when you step from the familiar into something new. The resurrection of Jesus is exactly such a moment. The disciples encountered the risen Christ, but they then had to learn what life looked like on the other side of that event. Resurrection was not simply a truth to believe but an environment they had to inhabit — a new world into which they had to grow.
Season overview
Click the link above the season’s guidance notes. The quick summary of the weeks is below:
- 12th April From resurrection flows hope. Easter begins with the sheer fact of Christ raised, and the church learning to breathe in that new air. 1 Peter opens with a “living hope” born from the resurrection — not optimism, but a new birth into God’s future.
- 19th April From hope flows holiness. Hope cannot remain a feeling. It must take shape in a life that looks different — a life that carries the weight of belonging to God. Holiness is hope stretched into practice.
- 26th April From holiness flows witness. A holy life cannot be hidden. It becomes visible, sometimes painfully so. The early church found that holiness placed them under scrutiny; 1 Peter prepares us for the same.
- 3rd May From witness flows suffering. Faithful witness often provokes resistance. The letter refuses to treat suffering as failure; instead, it becomes participation in Christ’s own path.
- 10th May From suffering flows community. Pressure reveals our need for one another. 1 Peter shows a pattern of shared shepherding, humble care, and mutual dependence — the only kind of community that weather troubled times.
- 17th May From community flows strength. As the season draws toward Ascension, the readings show a people held together by God’s sustaining hand. Strength is not self‑generated; it is given, established, restored.
- 24th May From strength flows sending. Pentecost completes the movement. The Spirit breathes life into the gathered community and carries them outward into the world. The threshold crossed at Easter becomes a doorway through which the church is sent.
Throughout the centuries, Easter has never been a single day but a fifty‑day sabbath, stretching from sunrise on Easter morning to the Spirit falling upon the disciples at nine o’clock on Pentecost morning. Last year we tried something new by giving those fifty days a clearer shape in our life together through ABIDE resources called The Road to Pentecost. This year we revisit that intention with a new ABIDE season called The Easter Threshold, helping us inhabit these weeks more deliberately as we walk through them together. As ever, the idea behind this ABIDE season is that exploration happens at our own pace in our own way. Some people will encounter the season mainly through Sunday worship, others through using the ABIDE booklets at home, and others again through the Wednesday or Friday groups meeting at the Vicarage. Together they form a shared attempt to give the Easter season the attention it deserves — learning, week by week, what it means to live on the far side of the resurrection.
The groups meet at the Vicarage on:
Friday mornings at 10.30am, from 17 April to 22 May
Wednesday evenings at 7.00pm, from 15 April to 20 May