Reflection #121 (5th April 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
We don’t know what happened. That reading from Daniel Budd, which Roy read for us earlier in the service, has become a fixture of our Easter services here at Essex Church because it feels like a necessary disclaimer for Unitarians. Our denomination emerged from the Christian tradition and we still celebrate – and wrestle with – its core festivals and stories. But some of us find Easter challenging.
As I mentioned earlier, last week at the GA, the annual meetings of Unitarians in the UK, a colleague commented that Unitarians sometimes want to rush to the happy ending of Easter Sunday without first facing the horrors of Good Friday. But I’m not sure that’s quite true.
In my experience, when Unitarians hear the Easter story, it’s the resurrection bit that many of us struggle with, or gloss over. The notion of someone literally, physically, coming back from the dead is, for many of us, too strange – counter to the laws of the universe as we know them – and it’s my impression that, these days, most of us Unitarians don’t give too much headspace to trying to make sense of the resurrection on a literal level.
But the story that leads up to Easter Sunday is all too real to us, I think, and has so many resonances with the world we are living in right now. We Unitarians find it all too believable that someone preaching love and justice, standing against empire, would get on the wrong side of the authorities, be persecuted, betrayed, and ultimately tortured and killed – his voice silenced – as a message to others. And that his followers would be devastated in the aftermath. They had gathered around this charismatic leader, pinned their hopes on him, seen him as their salvation in times of oppression, and then suffered this total catastrophe.
Easter is a story of the worst possible thing happening. And it asks us to face up and witness to the horrific things that are happening right now in our own times. Whether that’s the terrible violence and injustice that is being wrought by despots and their minions around the world – or the casual cruelty and deep division that is being whipped up to enable such tyrants and oppressors to get away with it – or the everyday suffering going on much closer to home, as ever more are pushed into poverty and precarity, by systems which depend on increasing inequality – as others are scapegoated, and become targets of the mob, as a distraction – I could go on listing all the other unnecessary harms we humans do to one another. And, of course, there are all the other sufferings that inevitably touch every life through natural causes – illness and decline – loss and grief – that’s our human condition.
Easter demands that we look honestly at reality, look at it with clear eyes, in its totality. That we acknowledge all the pain and suffering, whatever its source, rather than looking the other way, putting on a happy face, or being in denial. And perhaps even that we take a look at ourselves and what complicity we have in it. That’s the Good Friday bit of Easter. Facing up to the worst of life. All that’s wrong.
Then comes Holy Saturday. The morning after. Nothingness, emptiness, despair. The worst thing has happened – Jesus is dead – but his followers are still here. It’s a time of not-knowing. Everything they’d hoped for has been swept away. Now what? What are the survivors supposed to do in the face of devastation? That reading we just heard from Parker J Palmer speaks to this, for me, when he speaks of that state of ‘death-in-life’. He speaks of various ways in which we might respond to disaster: by falling into depression, throwing ourselves into overwork, self-medicating through substance abuse, becoming cynical or even nihilistic. In the face of all the horrors we might just trudge through our days like zombies, half-alive, dealing with what’s in front of us, overwhelmed by the state of things.
But Parker J Palmer suggests that there is another possibility: ‘resurrection-in-life’. Now, I don’t think he’s suggesting this is easy, not at all. But it’s the hope of Easter. After the worst thing happens, if we’re still here, we can choose to turn towards it. To say ‘yes’ to life, no matter how bad things seem, and make a way out of no way. Resurrection in this sense doesn’t mean picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off, and carrying on like nothing happened. Something was lost. We are changed. Perhaps we are permanently scarred by it, physically, or psychologically. Our life is now, most likely, not going to look quite like what we imagined, or hoped for.
In the Gospels, and as the story of the early church continues in the Acts of the Apostles, we see how things unfold. After Jesus’ followers discover the empty tomb, first there is confusion, and disbelief, but a way forward slowly emerges. There are reports of Jesus appearing to the disciples, for a while, but soon he ascends to heaven. And then it is down to them to continue what he started.
And now it is down to us. We gather in this community – as others from so many different religious traditions are doing, week-in, week-out – we gather in the face of all the world’s ills, the death-dealing, the injustice, the oppression – and we gather to give each other the courage that we need to live, and live fully, despite it all. We gather to uphold a vision of a better world – which our forebears might have called the Kingdom of God – and these days we might call it beloved community. When we feel overwhelmed and despairing at the state of it all, come back here, to be reminded of what is still possible, and reminded of the part we still have to play. To be strengthened for the task, instead of giving up, and doing the little we can do. This is how we practice resurrection. We keep on calling each other back to hope. And we do this together – returning our attention to what is good and true – to love.
I want to close this reflection with a short prayer-poem from Tess Baumberger.
‘Life Breaks Through’ by Tess Baumberger (adapted)
Life breaks through. Time and time again,
life breaks through what seems like death.
Even in the heart of winter, light breaks through,
and unseen growth occurs beneath the frozen ground.
Some plants need winter in order to flower in spring.
Life breaks through, even through stone.
Laurel trees have the strength to break through stone
to sustain their fragrant, vibrant lives.
Even seemingly frail lives can survive
in the harshest of circumstances.
Life is abundant and strong.
It thrives in unusual places, even in the desert.
Life shines through thresholds, even the threshold of death.
It blooms and grows and changes through the stream of time.
Life breaks through walls we build to keep it out
and escapes prisons meant to keep life in.
Life breaks through, shining through the world all around us,
Life breaks through in us as well, in the forms of faith, hope, love, and joy.
Life breaks through, again and again,
and so we celebrate Easter this day –
The triumph of life over death,
of goodness over wrongdoing,
And of love over hatred and intolerance.
Life breaks through. Amen.
Reflection by Jane Blackall