Pentecost or Whit Sunday

50 days AFTER Easter Sunday


50 days after Easter is Pentecost (from the Greek for "the fiftieth"). On this day Christians remember the Holy Spirit first coming and filling Christians with God's power. Pentecost is also known as Whit Sunday so called because of the white clothes worn by those who were baptised that day.


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Ascension Day

40 days AFTER Easter Sunday



Looking forward from Easter day to the end of the Easter period there are the little remembered Rogation days (for prayer, and formerly also of fasting, aimed at persuading God to protect and give a good harvest). These lead up to Ascension Day 40 days after Easter Day - when we remember Jesus ascending into heaven. This concludes the Easter period itself.



richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Easter Sunday

The Christian festival reaches its climax on Easter Day with celebration marking Jesus conquering death. Counting inclusively, as was done at the time, from Friday makes Sunday the third day. So you can say Jesus rose on the third day. The resurrection was such a stunning event that Christians held celebrations on Sundays in addition to the Jewish Sabbath, and as the church grew away from Judaism, Sunday became the regular day of worship. (although many Christians argue there is absolutely no Biblical mandate for Christians making Sunday their Sabbath, and therefore Saturday should still be observed as the Sabbath).


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Holy Saturday

or Easter Eve -1 day before Easter Sunday

The last day of Lent. Holy Saturday is about emptiness, reflecting on the awfulness of a world without Jesus, and our need for him. It is meant to be a day of prayer.


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Good Friday

2 days before Easter Sunday

This is the day when Christians remember Jesus dying on the cross at Calvary for our sins. But there is confusion about how Jewish times and dates were worked out, resulting in some Christians being CONVINCED he was crucified on a WEDNESDAY (also the Wild Olive website) and others ADAMENT it was a FRIDAY. Either way, traditionally, Christians think about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins on the Friday.


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Palm Sunday

7days before Easter Sunday

The most important week in the traditional Church calendar is Holy Week. Through the week Christians recall the events that occurred in Jerusalem when Jesus entered the city, was crucified, died and then returned to life. The week starts with Palm Sunday when Christians remember Jesus entering Jerusalem and the crowds laying Palm leaves in front of him.



richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Mothers day

21 days before Easter Sunday

This is always on the fourth Sunday during Lent, and is now a day set aside to remember, thank and celebrate mothers. Origianlly, in England, it was a day for people to attend their "mother church", ie. the biggest church or cathedral in the area. The local parish church that people normally attended was known as the "daughter church".


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Ash Wednesday

46 days before Easter Sunday


On Ash Wednesday many traditional churches have an 'Ashing service' where Ash made from the previous year's palms are sprinkled with holy water and fumigated with incense and symbolically placed on the forehead in the sign of a cross, signifying penance. It is also a reminder of our own mortality: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and of a time when people repented with ashes and wearing sackcloth.


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

What is "The Passion"?

Easter, and the events in the life of Jesus leading up to Easter, have also been called "The Passion (of Christ)"; this is from Saint Luke's description in the Bible of the apperance of Jesus to his disciples after his resurrection: "he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3). The word "passion" was used in Latin and in old English translations of the book of Acts (originally written in Greek) whereas in modern English we would say "suffering".

richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Easter Calendar

All the other holy days of the seven weeks of Easter observances that the traditional churches still follow were made up during the fourth century AD. Some independent evangelical churches, like Richmond Park Church, choose not to stringently follow traditions that were made up by the fourth century church, but which are not spelled out in the Bible. There is nothing inherently wrong with these traditions, as they are all designed to point people in the direction of the example and life of Jesus, but neither is it compulsory to observe these created "holy days" to be a faithful Christian. However, after several decades of making a conscious effort to separate themselves from things which are merely "tradition", and not specifically Biblical, many evangelical churches are coming round to the idea that these traditional ceremonies are not without merit. Some are being re-introduced into independent churches and traditional churches, in a slightly revised fashion focusing on doing something pro-active to help others during Lent as a constructive way of not focusing on our selfs, eg the "Buy Less" "credit card".



richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Date of Easter

At a meeting of church leaders -called the Council of Nicaea- in 325 AD to try to coordinate practise it was decided that Easter was to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon that directly followed the Vernal (or Spring) Equinox. In most years this would coincide with Passover, but it would not always be so. The Eastern Churches still retained the earlier Passover practice for several centuries, and the British (Celtic) Church did not adopt the Roman calendar until Roman missionaries arrived in the sixth century.



richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

From Passover to Easter

You won't find any references about how to celebrate Easter in the Bible! The Bible only instructs us to observe communion in rememberance of Jesus death, and we don't know how the early Christians chose to commemorate the resurrection. We do know that by the second century AD some Christians were celebrating it Passover-style (mainly the Eastern church), and some celebrated on the Sunday after Passover as a distinctly seperate event (mainly the Roman church).



richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

What is Passover and what has it got to do with Easter?

1) The Lamb. Jesus chose to be the lamb without defect that was sacrificed for our sins, in the same way that the Israelites had had to kill a lamb per family for God to save their lives (1Corinthians 5:7).


2) The Four Cups. In the Passover there are four cups of wine to drink, two before the meal and two after the meal. These are to remember the events of Exodus 6:6-7: I will bring you out; I will free you; I will redeem you; and I will take you as my people. These are things Jesus also promised.


3) The First Fruits. The resurrection of Jesus happened as the priests were presenting an offering of the first sheaf of the newly ripened barley harvest. Jesus was the first fruits from the grave.


Some Christians, particularly Messianic Jews (ie. Jews who have become Christians), celebrate "Easter" by observing the actual Passover meal ("the Seder" or "Haggadah" or "Last Supper"), drawing out the references to Jesus in this Old Testament festival.



richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

What is Passover and what has it got to do with Easter?

The Jewish celebration of Passover, or "Pesach" in Hebrew, was started about 1200 years before Jesus. The origins and form of this festival are described in the Bible, in chapter 12 of the book of Exodus. It is from when Moses was asking the Pharaoh to let the Jews -who were at that time slaves- leave Egypt, and because Pharaoh kept refusing, God punished the Egyptians by killing all their first born sons. The Jewish families were kept safe by daubing lamb's blood on their door-posts - when God saw this blood he "passed over" those homes.

It is not a coincidence that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus happened at the same time as Passover. The festivals in the Old Testament (that Jewish people still observe today) were both celebrations of how God had helped the Israelites and pictures of what Jesus was going to do. Parallels between Passover and Jesus include:


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Why is it called Easter?

Why is it called "Easter"?


Long before Jesus, many pagan cultures already celebrated at this time of year to welcome the return of spring and the new plant life that grew and the animals that were born. The pagans worshipped gods of fertility and new life, such as the Druidic Ishtar, Egyptian Osiris, Babylonian Astarte (who sprung from an egg which fell from heaven), and the Saxon goddess of dawn with a hare's head (or hare companion) called Eostre, from which we get the name "Easter".


It is unhelpful that the anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus is commonly known as "Easter", a name derived from a pagan god. A more appropriate name might be the "Christian Passover". Many other modern languages derive their name for Easter from the Latin pascha, in turn taken from the Hebrew pesach or Passover, eg the French "Paques", the Spanish "Pascua" and the Italian "Pasqua". This acknowledges that the Christian feast is a successor to the Jewish Passover.



richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Origins of Easter

History records show that Jesus was crucified outside of the city of Jerusalem in around 33AD, just before the Jewish festival of Passover. He was executed after Jewish religious leaders accused him of being a would-be revolutionary who wanted to overturn Roman rule. But Christians believe that God planned for this to happen and that in the spiritual realm the death, and then resurrection, of Jesus was necessary to conquer sin and enable believers to live a life guided by God's forgiveness and Holy Spirit.



"Without the feeding of the five thousand or the walking on water, we'd still have Christianity. But without the resurrection, it would be just a minor cult in first-century Judaism." (Michael Symmons Roberts, "The Miracles of Jesus" )


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

History of Easter

These are things Jesus promises us today. In Old Testament days a lamb had to be killed as an offering to God to make up for people's sins. When Jesus was crucified he took the role of a sacrificial lamb, and the Bible says he was the last lamb that would need to be sacrificed. Christians believe that when Jesus died, he died for all our sins, and when he came back to life he showed he had conquered sin once and for all.


And that's what we celebrate on Easter Sunday!


Back in the fourth century AD the church devised a whole Easter calendar to remember all the different events in the lead up to the crucifixion and resurrection, things like Pancake Day to eat up all your good food before fasting during the weeks of Lent.



richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

History of Easter

Later, about 350 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, an important meeting of church leaders met to decide whether Easter should be celebrated the day after Passover, even if it fell on a week day, or whether Easter Day should always be on a Sunday. They didn't set a definite fixed yearly date for Easter, or stick to the old Jewish calendar. Instead they made-up their own formula to calculate the date to complicate matters further. Are you ready for this? Pay attention!

Easter Sunday is always the first Sunday after the full moon that directly follows the Spring Equinox.

Despite it's name, Christian "Easter" has much more to do with the Jewish Passover than pagan spring-time festivals. God instructed Jewish people to celebrate Passover to remember their escape from slavery in Egypt about 1200 years before Jesus. At that time God promised: I will get you out of the mess you've made; I will lead you to a freer life; I will treat you as my own children; and I will save you spiritually.


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

The History of Easter

The pagans celebrated the arrival of spring, encouraging their gods to bless the re-birth of plants and animals at this time of year.

We know that Jesus was killed at this time of year because the Bible and other historical records tell us he was crucified just before the Jewish festival called Passover.

The exact date of Passover shifts about a bit as it is calculated on the old Jewish calendar which was based on what the moon was doing, and this doesn't tie-in exactly with the modern calendar.


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK

Easter

This is also the origin of the Easter Bunny, and strangely, Easter Eggs (what? no chickens?!) - all life was thought to have originally come from an egg, and eggs were another favoured symbol of fertility. The "spirit" Easter Bunny/Hare was supposed to lay its eggs in the grass, and people would go searching for them - the fore-runner of modern day Easter egg hunts.


richmondparkchurch.org.uk an evangelical pentecostal church in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK