Pastoral letter from the Superintendent

Dear friends,

As we approach Easter we find ourselves once again walking the great arc of the Christian story: from wilderness and waiting, through cross and silence, and into resurrection light. It is a season that invites us to speak of hope. But not the kind of hope we so often reach for, you know, the hope that things might improve, settle down, or return to something more familiar.

The hope at the heart of Easter is far deeper than that, and far stranger too.

Christian hope does not arise from circumstances aligning in our favour. It does not depend on the world making sense, or suffering being neatly resolved. It springs instead from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, from the utterly incomprehensible claim that God has entered fully into the brokenness of creation and has refused to abandon it.

St Paul puts it this way: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” Notice this isn’t simply about humanity, important as that is, but the world; all that has been wounded, fractured, and held captive by fear, injustice, and decay. This is a hope that stretches as wide as creation itself. A hope that dares to believe that nothing is beyond redemption, that nothing is finally lost, and that even death does not get the last word.

This is why Easter hope is not sentimental. It passes through Good Friday. It stands in the silence of Holy Saturday. And it trusts, sometimes with trembling hands, that resurrection is God’s faithful response to suffering, not its denial.

For us, as churches and communities in these challenging times, this is really important. Many are weary and many carry private griefs and public anxieties; then there are those doing faithful work that feels unseen or heavy. For sure Easter does not offer us easy answers but it does offer us a horizon. A promise that the tears we shed are not ignored, that the labour we offer is not wasted, and that God’s reconciling work is still unfolding among us and beyond us.

As we move through this Easter quarter, may we allow ourselves to live from that deeper hope. We are not being called to rush ahead, fix things or fret over not being able to do more than we already are. Rather we are called to trust that we are held within a story far larger than our own, a story in which Christ has already stepped into the depths and opened the way to life.

This season, then, invites us to pause, to loosen our grip on the need to fix everything, and instead to place our trust in the God who brings life out of death.

With my prayers for you, and with gratitude for all you carry and offer in this season,

Grace and peace,

Jayne

Revd Jayne Webb, Superintendent Minister