Explainer

Creed

Easter

Resurrection

13 February 2024

10 min read

Beyond pancakes and chocolate: a sensory guide to Lent and Easter

It’s a time to discover the whole range of human experience and emotion.

Lianne Howard-Dace

Lianne Howard-Dace is a writer and trainer, with a background in church and community fundraising.

A boy concentrates hard as he holds one candle to another to light it.

A boy little a candle during a Mass in Greece.

Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash.

In the dusk light, I could just see the order of service in my right hand and the candle in my left. As the clergy processed from the back of the Cathedral, the smell of frankincense proceeded them.

Light was passed from the fire pit at the back of the building, via the huge pillar of the Paschal candle at the front of the procession, to tapers taken to the end of each row of seats. Then, finally, it was passed from person to person, as each of us lit our candle from our neighbour’s. As a warm glow filled the huge room, I could now read the paper in front of me. Just in time to join in with the start of the singing.

It was the evening before Easter Sunday and I, along with 22 others, was going to be baptised that night. Having grown up in a non-religious family, I was not christened as a child. And so, aged 26, I made the choice for myself to draw a line in the sand of my life and commit to being a follower of Jesus.

I didn’t realise at the time, but the practice of being baptised at Easter goes right back to Jesus’ first followers in the early church. Of course, taking part in a ritual of rebirth on the day that Jesus came back from the dead makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. That service was the beginning of a new life for me in many ways, and also the beginning of a love for this kind of high-drama expression of church.

I love that there are so many different expressions of Christianity. Different ways of being together, of worshipping God and shaping the church gathering. Whilst I have tended to be part of churches that lean more towards contemporary music and less formality, I enjoy taking the odd excursion to other types of church. And for me, Easter is the perfect time to embrace more traditional – or “high church” - ways of worshipping.

The secular world has kept hold of a couple of the edible Lent and Easter traditions. Fair enough; I don’t need much convincing to eat pancakes or chocolate eggs either. But I’d say that topping and tailing this season with sweet treats, without the full spectrum of bitter, salty, sour and umami in between, is a missed opportunity.

Lent

Lent helps us to remember the 40 days and nights Jesus spent in the desert, when he was tested and tempted. It is a time to reflect, think about things in our lives which we want to change, perhaps even to ask God for forgiveness for. It is a time to dwell in God’s word through the Bible and to fast. That’s where the pancakes come in, to use up the sugary and fatty ingredients in the house so we aren’t tempted to eat them in Lent. Though nowadays you’re probably as likely to find people taking up a wholesome practice or habit in Lent, as you are to find them giving something up.

I’d argue that in the modern world we aren’t great at thinking about death and darkness. We try not to dwell on the things we might need forgiveness for. Instead, we supress them and pretend they don’t exist. We can move so far the other way that we fall into toxic-positivity; we deny the breadth of what it is to be a human in this world. That’s why the symbols and rituals of Lent and Easter can be so helpful. They give us containers in which to explore the whole range of human experience and emotion. They give us permission to enter into the depths of it all.

Ash Wednesday

So, after you’ve put the Jif lemon away from Shrove Tuesday, you might like to go to an Ash Wednesday service to mark the start of those 40 days of Lent. You’ll find this service in Roman Catholic churches as well many Anglican churches and some other protestant traditions. The culmination of the service will be the “imposition of ashes”, hence the name. The palm crosses from the previous year (more on that later) will have been burned and mixed with water to form an ashy paste.

Those present will be invited to come forward and have an ash cross marked on their forehead. As the priest does this, they will say to each person:

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I realise to some this may seem quite morbid, and possibly eccentric. But if you can suspend your inner cynic, you might find that there is something rather freeing about remembering that we are made from dust.

When the writers of Genesis, the opening book of the Bible, wrote those words centuries ago they didn’t know, as we do now, that the elements that make up each human were formed in supernovas. But they knew that we are intrinsically linked to God, one another, the earth and the universe. Remembering that I am dust puts things in perspective; I am only here for a short time and many of the things I expend energy worrying about are inconsequential. But it also hints at a miracle; I am a thinking, feeling being, made from pieces of billion-year-old stars.

Lent is time to ponder such mystery. As the season progresses, people may try to carve out more time than usual for spiritual practices like prayer and reading the Bible. If you give something up, you’ll likely find the discipline of sticking to it helps focus the mind. It brings you back to the things you want to contemplate. I think the hardest thing I ever gave up was coffee; I did a lot of thinking that Lent.

Palm Sunday

Churches tend to follow the story of Jesus’ last days on earth throughout their services in Lent. The last Sunday before Easter marks Jesus’ final arrival in Jerusalem before he was killed. We read in all four gospel accounts that Jesus, whose renown had spread by this time, entered the city to be greeted by huge cheering crowds. Many were said to be waving palms, which is why it’s become known as Palm Sunday. Many churches give out crosses made from palm fronds as a tangible symbol of the story.

Holy Saturday in fact represents where we spend much of our time in life. The in between. The messy middle.

Holy Week

From Palm Sunday we enter into Holy Week, which runs right up to Easter, as the story intensifies. Many churches will have additional services during this week, which vary depending on the tradition of church and local habits. As a night owl, I am a big fan of compline, the night prayer service used in many monasteries and new-monastic communities. A couple of years ago I lived in an Anglican parish where they had compline every night during Holy Week. The compline liturgy – its format and typical pattern of words – helps me reflect and wind down at the end of the day. My delight in being able to take part in the service every day that week was only increased by the fact that several people each evening brought their dogs with them.

Maundy Thursday

The Thursday of Holy Week - referred to as Maundy Thursday - marks the last supper and Jesus’ arrest. The word maundy comes from the same root as the word mandate, because at the last supper Jesus gives a new mandate, or commandment to his disciples. He says “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

One of the ways that Jesus expressed this love for his disciples at the last supper was to wash their feet. Constantly wearing sandals or bare feet in a sandy environment meant frequent foot washing was needed in first century Palestine. Usually those of lower standing would be the ones doing the washing, but Jesus flips this on its head. Despite being their rabbi – their teacher – Jesus is the one who ties a cloth round his waste to wash his followers’ feet in an act of service. Often this is re-enacted at a Maundy Thursday service, with the priest or leader washing the congregation’s feet. It is a way of trying to live out that new commandment, to love each other as Jesus has loved us.

A Maundy Thursday service often happens in the evening, when the last supper would’ve taken place. To acknowledge the sadness and indignity of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas and his unjust arrest, in many churches the congregation will strip the alter of all its decoration at the end of this service. There may then follow a silent vigil, where people are invited to stay into the night, keeping silent watch, as Jesus asked his disciples to keep watch as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. The alter will remain bare and empty until Sunday.

Good Friday

That starkness suits the mood as we move into Good Friday, the day that marks Jesus’ execution on the cross. Of course, we have the benefit of knowing the redemption and renewal which is to come when Jesus comes back from the dead, but I expect that Jesus’ devastated followers would not have called it good at the time.

On Good Friday we sit in the pain of knowing that Jesus was taken by the authorities and violently killed. We come face to face with all the worst that human experience can entail. Hurt, anguish, desolation, loss. We do this not in spite of or in ignorance of the resurrection and joy to come. We don’t do it to be morbid, or to wallow in pain for the sake of it. We do it because sadness and grief are valid parts of the human experience. And, because being a follower of the God who became human and entered into our suffering, is to remember that he died.

Services taking place on Good Friday will vary according to the traditions of each church, but they will be reflective and sombre in nature. Some will simply hold space for people to sit and reflect on the magnitude of the day’s meaning. Others will hold services which take in the fourteen scenes which tell the story of Jesus’ death, known as “stations of the cross”. Some churches have artworks depicting these on their walls at all times, others will put something up for the occasion. People may move around each scene – from Jesus being condemned to death, to being laid in the tomb – taking time to reflect, read the bible and pray at each. It is a way of recreating a pilgrimage to the cross and entering into the story of Jesus.

Holy Saturday

The comes Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. But it is not practiced with the same excitement as Christmas Eve. The anticipation of Lent is different to the anticipation of Advent. Whilst the joy of Jesus being resurrected from the dead is arguably even greater than the joy of his birth, we must – like too often in life – pass through grief to get there. Even though we have the advantage over Jesus’ disciples of already knowing that Jesus will rise from the dead, Holy Saturday in fact represents where we spend much of our time in life. The in between. The messy middle. Knowing that painful Good Friday experiences happen in the world, whilst looking to the hope of renewal which Jesus promises.

Some churches, like the Cathedral I was baptised in, will carry out their Easter vigil late on Holy Saturday. Others will save that celebration of the resurrection until first light, beginning Easter Sunday with a dawn service that follows a similar pattern with fire and candles. Some churches will even eat together after the formal part of their time together is finished. I remember having to get up at 5am one year to cook the 50 sausages which were my contribution to the cooked breakfast we shared, though I did doze in the kitchen whilst they were in the oven.

Easter Sunday

Of course, the vast majority of churches will have their usual service slot on a Sunday. However many of these rituals they have marked in the lead up, each community will take time on Easter Sunday to celebrate. Because the tomb is not the end. When some of his women followers went to cleanse his body, Jesus was not there. He rose again. It is this promise of death being defeated which we remember and celebrate at Easter. From the depths of darkness, we emerge into light.

My favourite part of the Easter Sunday service is when the leader proclaims “He is risen,” and everyone responds with “He is risen indeed. Alleluia!” at the top of their lungs. Through the mystery of his death and resurrection, Jesus gives us certain hope that all people and all of creation will be renewed and reconciled to God in the fullness of time. And that’s worth shouting about.

Article

Belief

Creed

Weirdness

24 June 2024

6 min read

Revival – really?

Are we moving beyond the secular scepticism of religion?

Abigail Frymann Rouch

Abigail is a journalist and editor specialising in religious affairs and the arts.

A cross held aloft is illumminated by a shaft of light that also reveals hands raised in priase.

Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash.

Whisper it if you will, but an increasing number of observers are wondering if we are creeping towards some kind of Christian revival. High-profile public figures such as former atheist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, novelist Paul Kingsnorth, comedian Russell Brand and storyteller Martin Shaw have converted. Articles and podcasts from secular writers and thinkers extolling Christianity’s influence on Western culture, the societal benefits of faith, or a renewed appreciation of the sacred, are becoming a more common sight than those tub-thumping for atheism.

Among these thinkers is historian Tom Holland, who has argued that Western values, including secularism, socialism, feminism and human rights have their roots in a “Christian seedbed”. Some secular female writers are finding in the sexual revolution much to regret: Mary Harrington, author of Feminism against Progress, and writer Louise Perry, who penned The Case Against The Sexual Revolution, are opposed to casual sex and in favour of marriage.

Then there’s the Canadian academic and YouTube hit Jordan Peterson, currently on a speaking tour titled, “We who wrestle with God” and offering Bible-based life lessons to his hungry, mainly male, hearers. Even the arch-atheist Richard Dawkins said in a radio interview this Easter that he considers himself a cultural Christian and “I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos.”

A term has been coined for someone close to Christianity but just outside it, such as Holland: “Christian-adjacent”. The broadcaster Justin Brierley has devoted a book to this apparent renewed interest, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. In it he argues the New Atheism that fed off the horror of the religious extremism behind 9/11 is “a largely spent force” that has splintered into factions. (Sunday Assembly, the gathering for non-religious people, has seen its income plummet from £267,161 in 2016 to just £28,120 in 2022. Its leaders were approached for comment.)

What does all this amount to? Are we moving beyond the secular scepticism of religion? Does anyone want to return to the judgemental, Anglo-centric Christianity of a previous age?

I wish to be somebody who goes, ‘But look, come with me, see this, see that. Does that speak to you?’ The whole of my writing is to help people get away from preconceptions.”

Iain McGilchrist

The author and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist says of a possible religious revival: “I feel that there is [one], and I feel that there will be. And I think it's important.” Already, he says, “It's much easier to talk about religion and one's religious beliefs … than it would have been 20 years ago [and] a lot of people say that.” Some young people who are not from a religious background have surprised him by finding their way to religion.

People he knows who have turned to Christianity in mid-life have moved “to the Catholic Church, but most of them to the Orthodox Church, because they see … genuine valid, uninterrupted tradition of the divine and the sacred, of worship of it, of the sense of wonder, the sense of relative humility, not triumphant exaltation, and the sense of a shared oneness that is encaptured in these ancient rituals.”

McGilchrist believes the route of fulfilment “is oneness with nature, with the Divine and with one another,” and that rediscovering a connection to the Sacred (he refers to the Sacred or Divine rather than religion) would address other pressing issues such as the “poisoning of the oceans”, due to “a proper understanding of our position in the cosmos, not as the exploiter, but as the caretaker.”

Of his own views, he says: “I genuinely am not sure how to understand what it means to be a Christian really, but I suspect that I am one.” He stresses that he doesn’t want anyone to be put off by their preconceptions of what that might mean. “I wish to be somebody who goes, ‘But look, come with me, see this, see that. Does that speak to you?’ The whole of my writing is to help people get away from preconceptions.”

“There is an intellectual revival, if you like, because the complacent secularism, which culminated in people like Richard Dawkins, is obviously broke.”

Andrew Brown

Mark Vernon, a psychotherapist, author and former Church of England priest, also perceives a shift in the conversation around religion, and a new sense of enquiry that did not exist 20 years ago. He believes “a mystical Christianity” would be needed to reach the many people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious”.

Author of Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps, Vernon enjoys the silence of a Buddhist meeting or being out in nature on pilgrimage to holy places, “feeling different energies, different pulses, different rhythms … Being in a place where you just feel there's a different thing going on here, that can be healing. I think a lot of mental health is due to just people being trapped in very narrow worldviews.”

Dr Vernon, whose faith journey has included atheism, follows what he calls a “commodious” Christianity – “my perspective on the universal story, which I think is ultimately beyond any one expression of it – and focuses on the “Christ [that] lives within me”, in contrast to “more socially driven” or “conversion-driven” Western Christianity.

For Abby Day, Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, any talk of religious revival is “wishful thinking” but like Vernon she believes that if anything were to speak to the “spiritual but not religious” it would be “within them, or maybe within nature” and “non-institutional”.

Professor Day is wary of the interest in Christianity from the populist right, as seen in the European elections and US Evangelicals’ support of Trump. They “claim Christianity, but what they're claiming is a national identity, and so we're seeing Christianity be weaponised” to deliver a conservative agenda, she says.

Day, author of Why Baby Boomers Turned from Religion, takes issue with some of Holland’s arguments, saying: “The Churches have not shown themselves to be exemplary models of equality or human rights.”

Veteran religious affairs journalist Andrew Brown, co-author of That Was The Church That Was: How the Church of England lost the English people, is less hostile. He says: “There is an intellectual revival, if you like, because the complacent secularism, which culminated in people like Richard Dawkins, is obviously broke.” But he adds: “Most of the stuff that's interesting and new is coming from people who are either Christians or Christian-adjacent.” But, he adds, “It takes a long time for the ideas of the intelligentsia to filter down … “If there is to be anything like [a revival], it has to start locally, and far below the radar of news.” So, for example, what impact has 14 years of austerity had that have led to millions of people attending food banks and warm spaces in churches? (According to 2023 data from Savanta and the National Churches Trust 5 per cent of UK adults visited a church last year to access a food bank (equivalent to around 3.4 million people) and 4 per cent (2.7 million) for a warm space.) “That has to be doing something, but I don’t know what,” he laughs, adding: “There really isn’t enough decent religion reporting because journalism is in crisis.”

That puts established religion in good company. But the Churches the Boomers rejected may have become humbler during their exile, and alternatives are available that offer different emphases. Vernon notes that the Orthodoxy that has attracted Kingsnorth and Shaw – Vernon’s “favourite convert of this revival” – is comfortable with other faiths and is more about participation through liturgy than converting to safeguard your immortal soul. And one attraction of the silence Vernon enjoys is that it doesn’t give glib answers, including to the profound questions around meaning, purpose and identity that beset nation, Church and individuals alike.

Putin’s violent ambitions could yet drive people to prayer. For now, at least, the more thinkers publicly take Christianity seriously and rediscover its wonder and mystery, the fairer hearing its stories, values, social benefits and cultural legacy will receive in the rowdy market-place of ideas, offering – at the very least – the cradle agnostic a more informed choice.