Easter: Welcome the Day

I love the start to Easter Day. Hurrying off to a sunrise (or thereabouts!) service, with our friends from other denominations is both fitting and exhiliarating. It feels as if we are among a very few people about - and that we just might experience something of the surprise and bewiderment of the empty tomb. This poem celebrates those occasions.

Easter Morning, we have risen early:

the untimely start ends in making haste

to the ruined ancient abbey set in fenland,

which, hopefully, this year, the sun might grace!

Here we will celebrate with sisters, brothers

of all our village churches, met as one,

that startling start to the first Easter morning

with women wondering at an empty tomb.

Our ‘Christ is Risen! Yes! He’s risen’,

echo round the walls of earlier days

of communities, which held the resurrection

the heart of all their being and their ways.

So we are linked with startled, wondering women,

with monks and nuns, who in their time adored

the one who broke the chains of death and sorrow,

our living, loving Christ, Eternal Lord.

To find other poems, meditations and hymns for LENT, HOLY WEEK and EASTER, Click Here

Part of the group of worshippers, Easter day 2013, against the backdrop of the partially restored Denny Abbey (8 miles north of Cambridge UK - the location of this poem)