LENT 2026 at Severn

Getting ready for Easter, spending time with Jesus


Easter is the church’s celebration of Jesus defeating death after offering his life, dying on a cross just before a special Jewish Sabbath, and rising again shortly afterwards.

To us, and billions of other believers, this means a lot - maybe more every year we see the effects of Jesus’ work in our lives and in people around us.

God’s love can fill us, changing us, our views, our relationships and our society. As we follow Jesus, giving and lovingly sacrificing ourselves, we can find that hopelessness, mistrust, disease, toxic stress and dead relationships turn into hope, fresh faith, and all kinds of renewed health and life. It’s amazing, and we are still learning how it all works.

Before Jesus started his life-changing work to show this to people, he spent weeks in the desert, relying and feeding only on words from his Father.

Lent is a season of preparation for Easter where we can choose to do something similar. Some people give up food or something else significant, and find that this shapes their experiences with God and life. We've had a couple of podcast chats about this.

We’re also making a new podcast series this year called “The Desert Trials” - reflective encounters with Jesus in the desert during his time of trial.

What were his discussions with the devil all about? How can we relate to them, what can we learn from how Jesus responded, and what difference could a desert encounter with Jesus make for us as we approach Easter? Follow us now to get new episodes every week.

The Desert Trials - episode guide

  • Introduction and context - what did the desert and this story mean to the people who first heard it?

  • Episodes 1 and 2: The bread trial - Satan tempts a hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread, but what kind of trial is this? How does the enemy want Jesus to react, and how can Jesus’ response strengthen us? (To go along with episode 2, we’ve grabbed some Bible quotes you can download on the topic “Who does God say I am?”)

  • Episodes 3 and 4: The temple trial (out on March 4th and 11th)

  • Episodes 5 and 6: The world trial (out on March 18th and 25th)

Listen in a podcast app
 

Further reflection - why did Jesus die?

In this podcast, Claire Lynch and Bern Leckie discuss how Jesus’ death can be seen in different ways through the Bible and the culture of Jesus’ time. The conversation ends with a look at Psalm 22 and what Jesus meant when he said “My God, my God, why have you foresaken me?” Reading or listening and praying along with Psalm 22 is suggested as a way to reflect on this.

You can also watch and read the scripts for Claire’s talks about this here:

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‘How does Jesus save?’ part 1, by Claire Lynch, 17 March 2024
‘How does Jesus save?’ part 1, by Claire Lynch, 17 March 2024

Good news - Jesus’ life, death and resurrection helps us to restore good relationships with God - but how does this work? Claire Lynch looks at different ways of explaining this which emphasise different parts of the Bible and might serve as helpful pictures or analogies. But it’s also possible that too much stress or reliance on one picture will distort our view of God and his character. Can we gain something from these pictures while also keeping our eyes on Jesus to understand what God is really like?

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‘How does Jesus save?’ part 2, by Claire Lynch, 24 March 2024
‘How does Jesus save?’ part 2, by Claire Lynch, 24 March 2024

Continuing from part 1. Jesus died on the cross and rose again, but why? Can the way this makes a difference to people be summed up in one simple, shareable idea? Claire Lynch continues her talk about the different ways this is described in the Bible, and why focusing on only one of them can distort our views of God and each other. The ideas of sacrifice and covenant are rich in meaning and hard to grasp in full, but can growing our understanding of them help to grow our sense of God’s love for us and what God wants to do with us?