Sunday 26 April 2026
Kia ora koutou, and warm greetings and Talofa lava!
Easter season is the joyous 50-day period of Christianity between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday.
“For forty days after his death he (Jesus) appeared to them many times in ways that proved beyond doubt that he was alive. They saw him, and he talked with them about the Kingdom of God.” Acts 1:3 GN
Jesus offered the disciples a basis for a new confidence and any transformed life always begins with confidence in the resurrection. This was the first step that led to the resurrection of the disciple’s faith. When we look closely at the events that followed the resurrection of Jesus, we find a second very profound and wonderful thing that happened. Jesus who had left the disciples physically now returns to them spiritually – in and through the Holy Spirit.
What changed for the disciples is the fact that they were now filled with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead – just as Jesus had promised when he said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
We too need to keep these two things together – we need to trust in more than Jesus’s resurrection – we need his very life. At Pentecost this life was made available to the disciples for the first time.
The disciples were resurrected into a new quality of life. The resurrection gave them eternal life – life with God forever but being filled with the Spirit of Jesus gave them abundant life. (John 10:10) All things were possible now. Life without limits had begun.
Reverend Keith Hooker
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