Our Minister Writes

Revd Neil Thorogood pens a regular letter to the congregation. Here is his April 2026 message.

Happy Easter everyone!. May the day of resurrection bring you joy! After the soul-searching of Lent, we arrive at the moment when death itself is overthrown by the power of God revealed in Christ stepping from his tomb. We find that God has driven a wedge of love deeply through the heart of all evil, all suffering, all despair. We are greeted by the goodness that longs to heal and uphold us. We find life filled with the surprise of God’s audacious rescue.

There are some little lines in the letter to the Ephesians that unpack something of Easter: “For once you were in darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light – for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” (5: 8-10).I wonder what you notice as you dwell upon these words?

The contrast between light and darkness is a familiar one across many New Testament books; old life and new life, far from God and close to God. But the ways in which the light is spoken of here are rather captivating, don’t you find?

It begins with the conviction that we are not simply ‘in’ the light. We ‘are’ light. What Jesus achieves through the whole journey of holy week, from last supper to Gethsemane to trial to Golgotha to garden changes us. The light is no longer surrounding us or guiding us. We have become, literally, light. And this happens as we are ‘in the Lord.’ It is the fulfilment of the words Jesus speaks in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.” (5: 14).

This bit of Ephesians goes on to emphasise that we sustain this vocation to be God’s light in the world’s darkness as we continue to learn and step God’s ways; living out all that is good, right and true.

Here’s the Easter vocation for us all. Here’s how the risen Lord stepping from Easter’s tomb commissions and calls us. Here’s what the Church is and what it means to be a Christian. We become light, learning to shine as we let the risen Lord lead us day by day.

Maybe more than ever in the lifetimes of many of us, the world needs us to be light. Let this be the story Easter invites us to become.

Yours in Christ, risen and alive,

Neil