Easter Service 2022

This year’s Easter Service at St Barnabas Church was a return to an Alleyn’s tradition that we had missed over the last two years. The Middle School gathered for the first service on Thursday morning followed by Upper School and then Lower School in the afternoon.

It was wonderful to sing together and pray together as Lent term drew to a close. In her address Reverend Liz Lander shared a personal story from her school days where she was made to feel not good enough. The teacher who had stopped her and chastised her, asked why she was not like her mother or her sister. Why was she not like someone else, someone better? Her Easter message to the pupils was that they do not have to be better or more perfect to belong, as Jesus said, “Just as you are, you are worth dying for.”

Readings by Head of Middle School Mrs Mel Joel and pupils were interspersed with prayers and hymns by the Chamber Choir, Soul Choirs and Schola Cantorum.

In her address, Mrs Lunnon spoke about the evolution of the term ‘Spring’ and how she loved the energy of the active verb, that “somewhere there is a decision to turn towards light and life”. She touched on the suffering and sorrow of recent events in Ukraine and how out of this darkness come joy and love.

“Springtime is good. We are together and we achieve incredible things together and we do what we can to make the lives of other people better which is why we are walking for Ukraine tomorrow. Some gestures may be small, but they matter. They matter not just because they make a difference to others, but they make a difference to the kind of people we are because what we do speaks to who we are”.

Mrs Lunnon concluded with the optimistic poem ‘Sometimes’ by Sheena Pugh and wished everyone a happy Easter.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,

sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect an honest man; decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.