Even if you don't believe it yourself, the Christian story retold over the days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday has formed ideas you probably hold dear: of people having a second chance at life, and of finding joy in stories of hope and restoration.
The Easter story seems to be a defeat but it ends in hope. It's a story that acknowledges Jesus' death on Good Friday and Jesus' resurrection on Easter Sunday. This hope has inspired Christians ever since. In Jesus' own story of renewed life, Christians have found the story of humanity being rewritten to bring hope. Over the days of Easter, we combine honesty about death, and hope that life can be restored.
Christians tell this story of honesty and hope in our weekly pattern of Christian life, and even in some of our buildings. Have you ever noticed that some church buildings are in the middle of cemeteries? And, if you visit a church, even on Easter Sunday, you'll find that many Christians share Communion, in which we "proclaim the Lord's death" (1 Corinthians 11:26). The bread represents Jesus' broken body, and the wine Jesus' blood poured out. Why not proclaim "life" instead of "death"?
This apparent paradox, of Christians giving attention to death and suffering while sharing a message of life and healing, deserves attention. Christians believe that recognition of the pain of death is profoundly connected to the true hope of life restored.
Our message is that the presence of death will be removed from the world as God takes up His place at our centre, that the power of death will be overcome by God's life-giving power, and that the pain of death will be healed by God's restoration of all things. We believe that the death of Jesus makes it possible for humanity to experience God's victory over our experience of death.
Our conviction is that, while modern life often hides death away, a more honest and fruitful way to approach life is to acknowledge death openly. This is evident not only in Christian thought but in many cultures around the world, including in te ao Māori. In the Māori world, those who have died are acknowledged, mourned, and reflected upon.
Some of us saw this acknowledgement in action a couple of weeks ago when leading karakia at the tangi of a revered kuia. From the marae, she was taken to be buried beside her husband at the urupā (cemetery) of St James, Māngere Bridge, which is the oldest surviving Māori church in Tāmaki Makaurau.
The urupā at St James has a particular poignancy. Until the invasion of the Waikato, it was Māori land, connected all the way out to Ihumātao. Unusually, the urupā itself is still under Māori title. The church began its life with a Māori lay minister, Tāmati Ngāpora, who was forced into exile in Taranaki as another consequence of the invasion. The land where the urupā is located speaks in one sense of the sting of death in the loss of life, land and mana for Māori. And yet, at the centre stands a church building, which, at Easter most of all, stands for hope, for new life, and for restoration of true identity.
This story of St James adds a sense of the particular story of Aotearoa to the common tradition of churches and graveyards. The story of individual loss and hope is connected to our shared story as a nation. It is a broken story and, paradoxically, the urupā is an example of the way in which the Church has a place at Easter, offering the hope of retelling that broken story.
On Good Friday, Christians recall that Jesus died to defeat the power and penalty of evil. And, on Easter Sunday, we recall that Jesus was raised back to life. That is the faith we celebrate in our churches. So, to hold our dead close is a profoundly material act of commitment to our faith: that, just as Jesus was raised from the dead, we believe that those we have buried will be raised to life.
And this brings us back to the reason why Christians, in our lives and communities, have found that hope shines brightest when we are given the freedom and permission to acknowledge the hurts – the death, if you will – of the world. We do it to deny that death has the final word. The grave is an interruption, not an ending.
This can be true of us as a nation, of a place such as St James, and of you as an individual. A broken story is not an ended story. Easter tells us that the story can be retold.
At Easter, above all, we celebrate that, just as Jesus' death was not the end of His story, so the universality of death in human experience is not the end of the human story.
Easter, to Christians, stands as the pinnacle of our hope. We believe that we can be honest about loss in the world, even harm in which we have been complicit, because we have found our hope outside ourselves in the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. We keep our dead close because we know that they will live again. We can tell our stories honestly because we know that God is writing a better story than we could ever write. We share life together in the light of our own flaws because we are experiencing our transformation by God's power into the humanity and the world God intended.
As Auckland Church Leaders, we welcome you to join us this Easter season at in-person or online services, happening wherever you reside.
-Reti Ah-Voa, Regional Leader, Northern Baptist Association
-Rev Paul and Pam Allen-Baines, Congregational Union of NZ
-Rt Rev Ross Bay, Anglican Bishop of Auckland
-Pastor Tak Bhana, Senior Pastor, Church Unlimited
-Captains David and Denise Daly, Northern Divisional Leaders, Salvation Army
-Pastors Luke and Melissa de Jong, Senior Pastors, LIFE
-Pastor Jonathan Dove, Senior Pastor, Gracecity Church
-Ven Dr Lyndon Drake, Anglican Archdeacon of Tāmaki Makaurau
-Darren and Sharon Gammie, National Secretary, Assemblies of God NZ
-Rev Jonny Grant, Vicar, St Paul's Church
-Pastors Steve and Rebecca Green, Senior Pastors, Elim Christian Centre
-Charles Hewlett, National Leader, Baptist Churches of NZ
-Dr Richard Fountain, the Christian Community Churches of NZ Auckland Enabler
-Rev Brett Jones, National Superintendent, Wesleyan Methodist Church of Aotearoa New Zealand
-Rev Dr Stuart Lange, National Director, NZ Christian Network
-Pastor Bob Larsen, President, North New Zealand Conference, Seventh-day Adventist Church
-Rev Kok Soon Lee, Auckland Chinese Churches Association
-Rev Dr Featunaí Liuaána, Senior Pastor, Congregational Christian Church of Samoa (EFKS)
-Most Rev Steve Lowe, Catholic Bishop of Auckland
-Pastors David and Lissie MacGregor, National Directors of the NZ Vineyard Churches
-Rev Andrew Marshall, National Director, Alliance Churches of New Zealand
-Rev Craig Millar, Moderator, Northern Presbytery
-Pastor Sam Monk, Senior Pastor, Equippers Church and ACTS Churches National Leader
-Pastors Peter and Bev Mortlock, Senior Pastors, City Impact Church
-Rt Rev Te Kitohi Pikaahu, Anglican Bishop of Te Tai Tokerau
-Pastors Dean and Fiona Rush, Senior Leaders, C3 Church Auckland
-Pastor Moses Singh, Senior Pastor, Indian Christian Life Centre
-Apostle Brian and Pastor Hannah Tamaki, Destiny Churches International
-Rev Uesifili Unasa, Auckland Synod Superintendent, Methodist Church of NZ
