As hospitality spots around Jinja City and all urban and rural places countrywide prepare to host guests of varied categories to celebrate Easter 2026, Bishop Fredrick Makka of Walukuba Elim Pentecostal Church frames Easter not as mood music to holiday excess but as a test of discipleship.
In a city and country where Good Friday prayer gives way to crowded bars at night, he presses the claim that the resurrection is present-tense proof, anxiety relief and daily capacity, not a past-tense story.
Ugandans celebrate prodigiously: baby showers and births, naming parties, baptism, classroom promotions, graduations from nursery to P1, birthdays, weddings and in common talk, “from party to party”.
Rev Makka says Easter widens the circle with heavy eating, heavy drinking, crowded guesthouses and night clubs.
He does not deny the culture, instead he re-plots its purpose saying “Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the greatest demonstration that He is exactly who He said he was.
“Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the greatest demonstration that He is exactly who He said He was”, the cleric warns.
He warns believers against walking through Easter like the Cleopas companion who, in the Emmaus story the one man somehow ignorant that Jesus had risen.
According to Bishop Makka, that ignorance is no longer excusable, it is a rebuke to double-minded disciples who want cathedral mornings and clubs or joints at night without cost.
For Makka, the empty tomb is verification: “The resurrection is heaven’s stamp of authenticity — the divine confirmation that His words are true, His mission is real, and His power is unmatched.”
That authenticity, he argues, must show up in the body’s here-and-now choices. He rejects the split life: “You cannot have one leg in Christ and another with the devil.
You are either cold or hot; if you are lukewarm, John the Revelator says you will be spit out.” The line lands hard while Jinja’s well planned streets fill with believers-by-day who become revellers-by-night.
Makka’s point is not purity policing; it is coherence. If Jesus conquered death, compromise is cowardice.
He names the culturally specific failure: eating and belching while neighbours starve. “Care for widows and orphans and the needy,” he urges, calling it “futile” to dump food within sight of hunger. In program terms, resurrection becomes a welfare ethic as well as a personal hope.
Bishop Makka concedes death’s emotional weight— “humanity’s deepest fear”—but insists Jesus “shattered that fear,” opening assurance of life beyond the grave.
The practical payoff: “The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in every believer. It strengthens us to overcome sin, fear, discouragement, and every challenge we face.” Against Jinja’s real pressures—end-month scarcity, hard roads, the lure of night money—that caption reframes agency.
He summarizes the public effect: Easter “brings hope to individuals, families, and communities” and declares that “light triumphs over darkness, hope triumphs over despair, life triumphs over death.”
Rev Makka’s benediction is concrete: renewed faith, homes at peace, relationships in unity, futures with a non-performative hope. The message ends where Sunday begins:
“Because Jesus lives, we can live with hope, face the future with courage, and trust that no situation is beyond God’s power — not even death itself. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Hallelujah!”
Bishop Makka’s Easter message is less a seasonal sentiment than a public test.
In a country that celebrates everything he is asking and praying that this celebration of Jesus resurrection should be able to shape the weekend’s ethics not just its décor. This means sober choices where bars swell, tables shared with widows and orphans, where food is abundant and a faith hot or cold rather than conveniently lukewarm.
From us at The Exposure Uganda (TEU)-We Expose, You Decide may your Easter be clear-eyed and unafraid. We expose the split life, the wasted food, the lukewarm middle, you decide whether the empty tomb means anything for you.
Renewed faith, peaceful homes, reconciled relationships and a hope that keeps its word-that is our wish. Christ is Risen, decide what rises you.
