Sunrise

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.........” (John 20.1)

We got up at 5.30 am and it was certainly dark as we walked down to the hospital chapel on Easter Sunday morning with the temperature having dropped to a ‘chill’ 20 degrees in contrast to the rest of Holy Week when it had been around the 33 degrees mark.

The week had begun at Kuluva Parish Church on Palm Sunday (see last blog) a truly cross-cultural experience as the children and young people waved their palm branches enthusiastically and responded with spontaneous applause to the Christmas messages from St Denys. They didn’t seem to think it remotely odd that we should be talking about Christmas on Palm Sunday. After all, a king whose first bed was a manger and who had to flee to Egypt to escape the anger and paranoia of Herod fits well with a king who rides a donkey and whose throne was a cross.

But half way through Holy Week, Alice, the new Chaplain at Kuluva Hospital, asked if I knew anything about Easter Day Sunrise Services. She had attended one when at University in Mukono which had made a lasting impression, but since that had been in 1990 she couldn’t remember much about it.

My mind drifted back to parish life in South Yorkshire and the almost 20 years of Easter Sunrise Services we had shared with the churches of Rotherham. There we had climbed a hill overlooking the town’s shrinking industrial landscape to pray and to celebrate the resurrection, often in sub-zero temperatures and freezing rain.

Kuluva was a different context, but it was the same celebration, and indeed I had compiled some material during preparations for a Muzungu Sunrise Service in Arua the previous year. That had been a bit of a disaster, but when I showed the material to Alice she thought it would provide a good framework for what she wanted to do.

And so it was that by 6.00 am we had begun the walk to Kuluva Hill, the growing company singing Lugbara songs accompanied by drums and guitars. For much of the night it had been raining with thunder in the distance, but now it was dry, although we were wrapped up warm against the new, lower temperatures.

Arriving at a collection of grass thatched houses just below the hill, the home of Shadrach and Josephine and their family, we read John’s account of the resurrection before continuing up the hill singing 'Thine be the glory'.

There, at the top of the hill, overlooking the hospital and with a backdrop of sunrise over the distant hills through now dispersing clouds, Alice set up a little table for an al fresco Eucharist. A gusting wind stirred things up a bit – pause for thought – and the sixty or seventy of us shared in Lugbara/English/Celtic/Anglican and Free Worship and prayed for the hospital, for unity, for peace and that the transforming power of the resurrection would make a difference in all of our lives.

We descended the hill, again singing as we went: Above all powers; How deep the Father’s love for us; Jesus Prince and Saviour, as well as a collection of Lugbara songs Anne and I didn’t know the words to. So what!? We were overwhelmed by the privilege of taking part in this special service and experiencing something of the miracle of the cross and resurrection as we shared in cross-cultural fellowship.

This, we felt, is what we are really here to learn.

Christmas Delayed

Mid-March, and great anticipation as we visit the Post Office in Arua to see if there is anything in our PO Box. Often there are letters, or our Guardian Weekly, but at times there’s a slip of paper, a real source of excitement because it means the Post Office have received a parcel or packet for us.

And so it was this day in the middle of March. It always takes some time for the PO officials to rummage their way through the piles of parcels and large envelopes, sometimes having to go through them several times. But always, eventually, they come up with the goods, today a large brown envelope – not the DVDs or chocolates we’ve been waiting for, but exciting none the less, and more so because we have no idea what it is.

We always wait until we get home to open these treasures – it heightens the level of anticipation. So having arrived home, we made a cup of coffee and proceeded to investigate the contents of the envelope. From the envelope that had travelled so many thousands of miles from the UK, we pulled a large sheaf of coloured card and paper, and emblazoned on the front were the words “Happy Christmas”.

The parcel was a collection of Christmas cards ‘To the children at the Church of Kuluva from the children at St Denys Junior Church.’ The Ugandan Postal Service had truly excelled themselves – only two-and-a-half months late!

What should we do with these cards? Leave them until next Christmas? Just hand them over to the Pastor to make a decision? Forget about them? None of these options seemed right. But with the cards there was a poem ‘Jesus and the Donkey’. As far as I could recall, the only place the Bible actually mentions a donkey and Jesus in the same verses is on Palm Sunday: ‘Jesus sent two disciples....”Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt........the disciples went and did as Jesus instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them.......”’

Of course, that was it! Why not bring Christmas into Palm Sunday and Easter? Why not wish the Children at Kuluva a Happy Christmas, invite them to welcome Jesus on Palm Sunday as King, just as the crowds of Jerusalem welcomed him, not to forget him as quickly as they did, but so that he could be born anew in their hearts to be their king for life?

So here we are on the day before Palm Sunday, and that’s what we’ll be doing tomorrow. Another bridge built across the miles from our home church in Leicester to our home church in Kuluva and a bridge across the Church Seasons to celebrate the greatest bridge of all from God to each one of us.