About Us

Letter from the Vicar

A Word from St Anne's

The month of April sees the renewal of life all around us, both plant and animal, as the days get warmer and the sun shines for longer. It seems entirely appropriate that Easter coincides with all this, and helps to make springtime such a glad season.

The Easter story is so familiar to us, in the Church, that I wonder if we sometimes forget just how mind-blowingly extraordinary an event that first Easter was .

The followers of Jesus – not just His disciples but the band of women who attended Him, and all those who had been converted during His Mission of the previous three years - were all cast down in despair, cowed and in hiding, after seeing the Man they thought was the Messiah killed on the cross and buried in a tomb. Then He came back to them, as a real person, who talked with them and ate with them. He had defeated death itself, and demonstrated beyond all doubt – even to Thomas! - that hope was eternal. He came back as a person as real as they were, but at the same time “other” and had to to return soon to another place, but would send a Holy Spirit to them as confirmation of the new reality He had demonstrated.

Suddenly, a group of despairing, despondent, defeated people became a band of joyful, fervent evangelists who set about preaching the Good News and set about converting people by the thousand to become followers of Jesus. The movement grew, and spread with amazing speed, throughout the Roman world, and beyond. There can be no other explanation for this, other than what they had witnessed was real. The world was turned upside down. Jesus had shown that death was not the end; not just for Him but for them, and for all of His followers, including us.

Roger Truscott