5 April 2026 Easter Day – Year A

The Faith Action Programme would like to thank Rev Dr George Whyte, Canon at St Giles' Cathedral, for his thoughts on Easter Sunday.

Introduction

It hardly needs saying that Easter is the high point of the Christian Year celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter worship deserves a high standard of preparation and planning.

When looking ahead to Easter try to think about how to make this a real occasion. Here are some thoughts which might inform your preparation:

• How can we set the scene for Easter through Holy Week? - can we make these days into one piece for those of the faithful who immerse themselves in the narrative of those eight days?

• How will this Easter be different from the last one? – an obvious answer is that the Gospel narrative will have changed if we follow the Lectionary.

• Can the space where worship is to take place be made to look different and special with visual cues to suggest new life? This can involve people in planning flowers (daffodils are readily available) as well as things like cloth for the table and perhaps the pews.

• Do you have a website or social media that can contribute to the build-up and increase the sense of expectation?

• If you use PowerPoint, can you find ways to signal that this is a big day? – there are always online resources.

• Can you augment the music for Easter – if there is a choir can you increase its ranks? The same question applies if you have a band. But remember that quality of input often matters more than the numbers.

• Should the Easter service climax in the celebration of Holy Communion? It is a powerful statement that the living Christ is our host at the table and a foretaste of the fulfilment of His Kingdom. There is more to the Lord's Supper than memorial.

Other thoughts in anticipation of the day are:

• Irregular attenders often make the effort to be there at Easter. Depending on your location they may well be joined by visitors from elsewhere - so more people and a more diverse congregation.

• Conversely, Easter often falls in the middle of school holidays and that takes away some regulars including key participants in worship and children's work.

• So, on this special occasion marking the heart of the Good News when there may well be people in the congregation who haven't been seen in a while, or who may never have been there at all, preparation and forethought are particularly important.

You need to see Easter coming. Ahead of time, talk with those who share in the leading of worship. Read scripture and commentary ahead so that, as the events of Holy Week sweep you towards the great day, you can find a distinctive flavour for the 2026 Easter service. But remember you can't say everything in the time allowed. You need to dig at one spot in the story, finding one angle which allows a fresh perspective.

Acts 10:34-43

Acts is Luke's account of the early church which originally sat immediately beside his version of the Gospel story. He is perhaps the only gentile author in the New Testament.

The two-volume set was aimed at the first Christians who are now moving from second to third generation community and needed a firm foundation for their mission. This passage is telling them about their roots. Peter proclaims the resurrection and how he has been persuaded that the good news is for a wider group than the Jewish people. His sermon is a succinct summary of the Gospel. Can his brevity encourage us towards using fewer words?

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

The commentaries will point out that the dialogue form of this psalm and the references to the Temple gate, suggest that what we have was originally a liturgical piece, where procession and Temple guardians sing back and forth – Psalm 24 :7 onwards is similar and perhaps more familiar.

We do not know for what occasions it was originally used. Jewish tradition linked it to the feast of Tabernacles – the autumn harvest festival.

Psalms 114-118 are sung at Passover and, of course, the Gospel story says that after celebrating the meal Jesus and His disciples sang before leaving the upper room.

It is emotionally attractive to imagine those young men singing, as it were, in our metrical version "Oh, set ye open unto me the gates of righteousness…" (see CH4 78).

The text of the Psalm is well known from various references in the New Testament where the early church read the text as messianic – see Hebrews 13:6, Mark 12:10-11, Acts 4:11, 1 Peter 2:7, Mark 11:9.

And what better than verse 24 for Easter Day – "This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."!

Colossians 3:1-4

In the NRSV this section is entitled "New Life in Christ" and it is easy to see why those who compiled the Lectionary chose this passage.

Colossae sat on the great road that ran between Ephesus to the West and the Euphrates and made its fortune out of trading in purple woollen cloth. This cloth was called colossinus and the citizens were named after the main export.

It is believed that the church members were nearly all former pagans, but beside them lived a vibrant Jewish community planted there by the emperor to keep the peace.

The letter was probably received by the Colossians in the early to mid 50s AD.

All is not well in this small congregation. In this trading city they seem to have been sidetracked by a strain of thought which separated out the material and the spiritual. The material was considered essentially evil while the spiritual was good. So bad behaviour, "sin" was not so much a wilful bad choice, i.e. disobedience, but the entanglement of the spirit with the material. To accompany this way of understanding things there was an elaborate scheme of thought which mapped a path through which a redeemed soul might rise on its way to freedom. Speculation was rife regarding which angelic or demonic powers had to be passed on the spirit's ascent. Thus, there was the pursuit of spiritual experience through rituals, fasting and so on which would draw the individual away from the nasty, material world. Such spiritual questing seems to have had little impact on how the high-flying spiritual person behaved in their daily life.

It is to this practical outworking of the resurrection life that this passage turns. There is now a "new self" where the old distinctions no longer matter. How challenging for them to hear, "In that renewalthere is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!"

In the Christian life they are all the same – but compared to their neighbours their life should be very different.

Matthew 28:1-10

In turning to the Gospel reading for this year it is worth looking not only at what it contains but also how it differs from the other renderings of the Easter story.

I am always interested in asking why the author tells the story in the way they do – note that each of the evangelists has their own version of Easter. Much of what is said about Jesus of Nazareth before His crucifixion is present in more than one Gospel but when it comes to Easter they all differ. This, of course, reflects the material they had to hand and the experience of the believers in the months and years which followed the events they describe. What was there in Matthew's context, perhaps fifty years after the first Easter, which made the details he relates so important to him and those for whom he wrote? The Temple has been destroyed and Judaism is reforming into the rabbinical form that we know today. What tensions there must have been between those who had embraced Jesus as the Messiah and those with whom they once worshipped, whose religious foundations have been badly damaged.

I like these words from the Oxford Bible Commentary: ‘The resurrection is the necessary end to Jesus' story. Without it His words are vacant and His opponents exonerated. With it, Jesus is vindicated, His cause and authority confirmed and His, and so Matthew's, opponents disgraced.'

Matthew has an angel and an earthquake, guards that shook and become like dead men. Heaven and earth are moved. The women disciples and the guards are at the tomb and both are told what to say. The women are to tell the truth. In the subsequent verse the guards are bribed to lie. The women set moving the wave of witness to the resurrection which has reached us. The guards are the first in a long line to undermine the Easter story with superficial explanations.

I always try to remember that the heart of these stories is their meaning not their historical accuracy. Delving for truth is far more important than arguing about what happened.

Sermon ideas

When I last tackled this passage in 2023 I remembered the Henry Scott Holland poem which is often read at funerals in which he asks, "What is death?" and then answers his own question by saying it is a "negligible accident."

Would the women making their way to the tomb on that first Easter morning have regarded the death of Jesus as a "negligible accident"? They have lost friend and teacher and Messiah. The experience they are about to have answered the better question – "What is life?" – as they are told to bear the good news to the errant disciples and, in turn, have their own experience of the risen Jesus who commissions them as His messengers.

Another promising tack is to note that that the angel instructs the women to tell Jesus' disciples that the risen Christ will meet His old friends where they had first been called to discipleship. He is not among the dead but among the living and encounters with Him can be expected in the most obvious of places – home and work and community. Look for Him there instead of the graveyard.

Or there are the repeated words "Do not be afraid" which are spoken first by the angel and then the risen Christ – they surely point to a promising place to dig in sermon preparation. Of what were they not to be afraid? The angelic vision so alien and unexpected? The empty grave – where had the body gone? The Jesus whom they had seen crucified now standing on the path? Is the resurrection life one where we are constantly encouraged to not be afraid of the new and dazzling, the unexpected twist and perhaps above all the very fact that we can – despite our imperfections and lack of trust – experience Jesus Christ in the everyday. We need fear nothing!

Prayers

Easter prayer resources are widely available.

Call to Worship

There are the classic calls to worship such as:

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Minister: This is the day which the Lord has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

or

The Lord is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us;
therefore, let us celebrate the feast! Alleluia! (for when the service includes communion)

Even, and perhaps especially, if this is not how a "normal" Sunday service begins this liturgical change signals that this is a different day.

Call to Prayer

You might precede the opening prayer with a quote from Acts 13:

St Peter said:
We are here to give you the good news,
that God has fulfilled the promise by raising Jesus from the dead.

Confession

Confession sits naturally in the Easter service – the news of resurrection is first sent to disciples who had let down their master and friend. As the congregation may contain "irregulars" a prayer such as this may work:

Loving God,
Your care stretches over our boundaries,
Your interest in the individual defies our generalisations,
Your belief in humanity shames our cynicism.
So on this Easter day, we seek life renewed and relationships restored.

In this house of prayer we offer our thanks for love unconstrained,
we hold up the pressing needs of a troubled world
and we stretch for the future You intend.
We confess our part in the fracturing of community and the diminution of others.

We have sometimes been too certain to wonder,
too convinced by our own opinions to see the other point of view,
too fixated on possessions we are bound to – things rather than people,
too afraid to look at the world's troubles,
we have not lifted a hand to help.
We ask forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

On this day of new beginnings
we turn towards a future which is not shadowed by guilt and regret,
a future where day by day we can practice the reconciling and life-restoring love
which was first shown to us.
We ask these things in the name of our risen Lord. Amen

Collect

In my usual place of worship we end the opening prayer with the Collect for the Day – there is one for each Sunday at the back of Common Order. Other Collects are available!

The aim of these short prayers is to engage the congregation and to draw together what we wish to say.

This is the Easter Collect:

Lord of life and power,
through the mighty resurrection of Your Son,
You have overcome death and opened the gate of everlasting life.

Grant that we, being dead to sin and alive to You in Jesus Christ,
may reign with Him in glory, who with You and the Holy Spirit is alive,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Thanksgiving and Intercession

If your service includes Holy Communion then the Thanksgiving Prayer will be embedded in the sacramental words. If not then, as always, you need to think of the setting in which you give thanks. What might be uppermost in the minds of the people gathered around you? It is springtime and winter is (almost) over. How does the time of the year speak to the farmer or the teacher or the person who works in tourism. You need to be general enough to include most and yet rooted enough to sound aware.

Here is an example of an Easter prayer of Thanksgiving and Intercession which would follow the offering and precede the closing hymn:-

Loving God,
we give thanks that Jesus walks with us on this our stretch of the road.
He calls us forward to where He is.
He bids us care for those we meet.
He gives us time to ask our questions.
He shares with us the bread of every day.

So we present at His table
the signs of our gratitude and
our renewed commitment to living as He would have us live.
Take what we bring,
who we are
and who we shall be
for the works of the Kingdom.

As in the Gospel story we fall into step with the grieving disciples
so we stand with all those for whom these days are shadowed by loss.
Some mourn the loss of a loved one
who has been and will always be an integral part of their life.
We ask for them the comfort that Christ would bring.
We ask for them all an Easter faith.

As in the Gospel we meet people who are confounded
by the cruelty and the wastefulness of the world,
we pray for all those who are abused by systems beyond their control,
who find themselves in societies skewed by oppressive regimes,
who are demeaned and diminished by relationships turned hard and cruel.
We ask for them the Easter liberation into new life.

As in the Gospel we hear individuals who have lost everything
offer hospitality to the stranger on the road.
We pray for all those who are forced from the land they call home,
who are wanderers and seekers in hostile places.
We ask for them the Easter welcome of the risen Lord.

As in the Gospel we see how the risen Christ revealed Himself
in the blessing and breaking of bread.
We pray for ourselves and for those we love
that we too might be nourished by the bread which lasts
and the wine which never hurts,
we ask for an Easter celebration of life which is boundless and filled with hope.

As in the Gospel we remember how the first Christians gathered and faced a new future,
we pray for all those entrusted with the leadership of our congregation.
We ask for them, the energy and the inspiration of Easter's good news.

As we remember those who have gone before us
and bequeathed to us a rich inheritance of good example and plentiful resource,
we give thanks for the saints and ask that we might be worthy to stand with them in glory.
These things we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord
and we say together the prayer He taught us:

Our Father, …

Benediction

Easter benedictions also abound in books and online resources.
Here is one adapted from Common Order:

Christ was raised from the dead.
Set out, then, to join Him on the road.
And the blessing of God almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit
be with you (us) and those whom you (we) love.
This day and always.
Amen.

Musical suggestions

The Church has for centuries invested heavily in writing music for Easter. There is a wide selection of hymns, songs and anthems for choirs.

If church services should routinely start and end with "big" hymns this must be doubly true of Easter Sunday.

It is worth noting that the Easter season runs for several Sundays so on the day itself it is good to use those hymns which have "today" in them so that the more general hymns celebrating the resurrection can be used in the weeks that follow. CH4 offers a whole section entitled Christ Risen – Resurrection and Exaltation. How you make a choice from these will depend on the setting.

I personally go home disappointed if the service does not open with "Jesus Christ is risen today" which although only deployable once a year seems remarkably easy to sing and to play (it is in the key of C Major).

• GWA 124 – "How great the chasm that lay between us"

• GWA 125 – "See, what a morning, gloriously bright"

• GWA 123 – "Listen to the words of the Risen Christ"

• CH4 410 – "Jesus Christ is risen today"

• CH4 409 – "Jesus is risen, alleluia"

• CH4 413 – "The day of resurrection!"

• CH4 419 – "Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son" – is a very fine closing hymn
• A suggested playlist of songs from CH4 throughout Easter can be found on the Church of Scotland website

God Welcomes All (GWA) is the new supplement to Church Hymnary Fourth Edition. This exciting new collection features over 200 hymns and songs in a wide range of styles by writers from Scotland and around the world.

The full music and words-only versions are now available; and digital resources, including the expansion of the existing Church of Scotland music website, will be published in due course, with streaming functions and further information on each song; backing tracks; and lyric videos. God Welcomes All is available to order from https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781786225573/god-welcomes-all

Our online music resource is on the Church of Scotland website; you can listen to samples of every song in the Church Hymnary 4th edition (CH4) and download a selection of recordings for use in worship. You will also find playlists for this week and liturgical seasons and themes on the Weekly Worship and Inspire Me tabs.

You can find further musical suggestions for this week in a range of styles on the Songs for Sunday blog from Trinity College Glasgow.

Reflecting on our worship practice

Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, the way we worship has changed and we need to reflect on the changing or newly established patterns that emerged and continue to emerge as a result of the disruption.

We can facilitate worship for all by exploring imaginative approaches to inclusion, participation and our use of technologies in ways that suit our contexts. This is not an exhaustive list, but some things we could consider are:

• Framing various parts of the worship service in accessible language to help worshippers understand the character and purpose of each part. This is essential for creating worship for all (intergenerational worship) that reflects your community of faith.
• Holding spaces for reflection and encouraging prayer to be articulated in verbal and non-verbal ways, individually and in online breakout rooms.
• In online formats the effective use of the chat function and microphone settings encourages active participation in prayer, e.g. saying the Lord's Prayer together unmuted, in a moment of ‘holy chaos'.
• While singing in our congregations is still restricted, we can worship corporately by using antiphonal psalm readings, creeds and participative prayers.
• Using music and the arts as part of the worship encourages the use of imagination in place of sung or spoken words.
• Use of silence, sensory and kinaesthetic practices allow for experience and expression beyond regular audio and visual mediums.

The following questions might help you develop a habit of reflecting on how we create and deliver content and its effectiveness and impact, and then applying what we learn to develop our practice.

• How inclusive was the worship?
  Could the worship delivery and content be described as worship for all/ intergenerational?
  Was it sensitive to different "Spiritual Styles"?
• How was the balance between passive and active participation?
• How were people empowered to connect with or encounter God?
  What helped this?
  What hindered this?
• How cohesive was the worship?
  Did it function well as a whole?
  How effective was each of the individual elements in fulfilling its purpose?
• How balanced was the worship?
  What themes/topics/doctrines/areas of Christian life were included?
• How did the worship connect with your context/contemporary issues?
  Was it relevant in the everyday lives of those attending and in the wider parish/ community?
  How well did the worship connect with local and national issues?
  How well did the worship connect with world events/issues?
• What have I learned that can help me next time I plan and deliver worship?

Useful links

You can listen to samples of every song in the Church Hymnary 4th edition (CH4) and download a selection of recordings for use in worship in our online hymnary.

You are free to download, project, print and circulate multiple copies of any of this material for use in worship services, bible studies, parish magazines, etc., but reproduction for commercial purposes is not permitted.

Please note that the views expressed in these materials are those of the individual writer and not necessarily the official view of the Church of Scotland, which can be laid down only by the General Assembly.