Collect and Readings for The Second Sunday of Easter – Exodus 14.10-end, 15.20-21, Psalm 16, 1 Peter 1.3- 9, Acts 2.14a, 22-32, John 20.19-end
The Prayer for today
Almighty Father, you have given your only Son to die for our sins and to rise again for our justification: grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness that we may always serve you in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In these Easter readings we have a rather intriguing perspective, since we hear first from the post- Holy Spirit days and then go back to the events close to the Resurrection in the Gospel reading. It has the effect of sharpening our senses, making us more aware of the changes in this group of disciples. Peter is confident and speaks out in authority to the listening crowd. He seems to have got his act together and has obviously been reflecting deeply on the way Jesus has fulfilled the prophecies of Scripture in quite and extraordinary and largely unexpected way. He has been able to see how his Jewish heritage is wonderfully enriched and given fresh meaning, and he cannot wait to share these insights with his fellow Israelites, so that they, too, can experience the liberation of living the new life.
His enthusiasm and confidence continue in the reading from 1 Peter, where he encourages those having to endure very real and terrifying suffering for their faith. Only someone who had also suffered would be able to make such assertions with any credibility, and Peter speaks from the heart. He knows what it feels like to be scared of standing up for what you believe in; he knows what it feels like to fail miserably after good intentions, when you try to do things in your own strength. And he also knows that even the most timid of us can cope with anything when we are living the risen life in the power of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel shoots us back to a very anxious group of people, terrified of the Jewish authorities even though they are ( apart from Thomas at this stage) actually convinced that Jesus is alive. Although they know he is risen, they have not yet accessed the power of that risen life, and have at present the boldness of mashed potato.
What Jesus does is to assure them by his visible and tangible presence. There is a wonderful sense of normality in his greeting. When someone we love has died, and our life seems thrown up in the air and is falling slowly in pieces around us, what we crave is for things to be back to normal again. Jesus understands this, and provides his friends with the reassuring presence they need. Then he breathes into them, as Adam was breathed into at the creation. This breath is what gives the disciples the power of new life, and with it comes the conferring of authority, whose hidden side is responsibility. Like Jesus they are sent out, as the word ‘apostle’ proclaims, to tell the good news with confidence in the living spirit of Jesus.
Thomas was also scared. He was scared, like many of us, of being taken for a ride – of belief being only wishful fulfilment. Thomas was going to stick to honest recognition of where he stood until he had definite proof. When he is offered it, he finds he no longer needs it; the sight of Jesus is quite enough. Suddenly prophetic, Jesus acknowledges the faith of all those, including us, who do not have the benefit of visual and tactile sightings of Jesus, and yet are still able to believe in him and share his risen life.
Some things to reflect on:
• How do you think you might have felt if you had been there that evening when Jesus appeared in the room? Does Jesus appear among us today?
• Is there any way we can be sure that someone is speaking with God-given authority, rather than personal aggrandisement?
God bless
Rev’d Fiona Robinson
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Collect and Readings for Easter Sunday – Jeremiah 31.1-6, Psalm 118.1-2, 14-24, Colossians 3.1-4, Acts 10.34-43, John 20.1-18, Matthew 28.1-10
The Prayer for today
Lord of all life and power, who through the mighty resurrection of your Son overcame the old order of sin and death to make all things new in him: grant that we, being dead to sin and alive to you in Jesus Christ, may reign with him in glory; to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be praise and honour, glory and might, now and in all eternity. Amen.
Just as in the story of creation, God rests on the Sabbath, when his great, creative work is complete, so now there has been a Sabbath of rest following the completion of this great re-creative work of salvation. In Jesus’ last cry on the cross, ‘It is finished!’, there was the sense of accomplishment and completion, and now, in the dark of early morning on Sunday, the tomb is no place to stay and linger.
It is wonderfully human that all accounts of the resurrection are slightly different; just as in any lifechanging, dynamic event, people’s accounts of the details are fused with their attempts to interpret and grasp the significance of what has happened. What is clear beyond all doubt is that somehow they began to understand the extraordinary truth – that Jesus had died but was no longer dead, in the human sense of the word. He was totally alive, but not in the merely human way – like Lazarus, for instance – where it would only be a matter of time before death came again.
Jesus, having gone into death with the power of life, and with selfless love untarnished, could not be held there, but broke out into a new kind of life that was never going to end. Compared with this life, death is shadowy and powerless; it is temporary suffering and a journey of darkness which leads into unending daylight.
Peter and the other disciples can tell it from first-hand experience. They have actually seen Jesus fully alive, and have even eaten and drunk with him. Not that they were any different from the rest of us in finding it all impossible at first to imagine and believe; Jesus had been preparing them for this, but they still didn’t really expect it to happen. After all, full life like this, after that very definite and horrific death through crucifixion, is simply impossible. Isn’t it?
Like a catapult that has been stretched right back in one direction, the force of a sudden change of direction is very vigorous. Having been through the bewildered acceptance of Jesus’ death and having lived a couple of days with numbing absence, the truth shoots them into a passion for telling everyone the amazing news, once they are equipped with the Holy Spirit’s anointing. It is those who are witnesses to what God has done in their lives who tell the good news of the Gospel for real. And that is what convinces others of the truth which has power to transform their entire life, both in time and after death.
Some things to reflect on:
• Look at the different reactions of those who were at the tomb. What convinced them that the Resurrection was a real event?
• How is Jesus’ resurrection life different from before he died?
God bless
Rev’d Fiona Robinson
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Collect and Readings for The Fifth Sunday of Lent – Ezekiel 37.1-14, Psalm 130, Romans 8.6-11, John 11.1- 45
The Prayer for today
Most merciful God, who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ delivered and saved the world: grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross we may triumph in the power of his victory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Things don’t come much deader than dry scattered bones. It is a powerful image of the totally hopeless, without even whispered memory of life. Ezekiel the prophet speaks God’s unlikely hope to a dislocated and despairing people. In the hands of God there is no abandonment but promise of restoration, bone by bone, sinew by sinew, inbreathed by the Creator’s breath.
Psalm 130 echoes the dazed amazement at the way God proves again and again that with the Lord there is mercy and fulness of redemption. In Romans we find the same realisation worked out in a more cerebral way, celebrating the profound truth, born of real experience, that Spirit-filled life is a completely new and fulfilling life, in comparison with which other life seems like a kind of deadness.
And in this week’s Gospel reading we hear the whole narrative of Lazarus and his sisters, living through his dying and death, while the Lord of life is elsewhere. It is an evocative story, with Jesus portrayed at his most human, and many layers of meaning packed into the event. Why did Jesus delay? What about those conversations, first with Martha and then with Mary?
John is wanting to tell us deep truths about Jesus’ total humanity and divinity; if ever a story revealed the nature of Emmanuel – ‘God-with-us’- then this is it. The practical, less emotional Martha is better able to grasp the logic of what it means for the Lord of life to be present, whereas Mary is simply devastated and feels wounded by Jesus’ absence which doesn’t make sense to her.
We may recognise this terrible sense of loss and distance when in our own lives we feel God ought to be there yet he seems not to be; and Jesus himself knew it on the cross: ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ But it is this raw grief in all its honesty and candour which tears Jesus’ heart and shakes him with agonised weeping. With us, too, he is there at such times of raw pain, sharing our searing pain and grief and weeping with us. Jesus, as the Lord of life, is God’s voice speaking right into the darkness of death and drawing out life.
Some things to reflect on:
• How will the image of dry bones help the exiled people Ezekiel was called to speak to?
• Compare the responses of Martha and Mary and Thomas. What do we learn about the strengths and weaknesses of each?
God bless
Rev’d Fiona Robinson
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Collect and Readings for Palm Sunday – Isaiah 50.4-9a, Psalm 31.9-18, Psalm 118.1-2, 19-end, Philemon 2.5-11, Matthew 21.1-11, Matthew 26.14-27.end
The Prayer for today
Almighty and everlasting God, who in your tender love towards the human race sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross: grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Today we begin the heightened drama of the walk through a week known as holy. Since Christmas we have traced the life of Jesus through his birth, childhood, Baptism and preparation in the wilderness, and touched on the main areas of his ministry; and now we come to that final week of his earthly life. All the Gospel writers move into noticeably greater detailing their narratives, with these events taking up a sizeable proportion of each Gospel. The words and events are carefully and thoroughly recorded, in keeping with the intense significance of these days which focus all of life before them and all that has happened since.
Quite deliberately, the readings and liturgy take us on a roller- coaster of spiritual experience. We stand with the ecstatic crowds waving palm branches and celebrating the entry into Jerusalem, the holy city, by Jesus the Messiah. There is great hope and expectation that final things are drawing to accomplishment. We are poignantly aware that Jesus is both acknowledging the crowd’s excitement at his kingship and also trying to show them something of the true nature of kingship which has nothing to do with temporal power and wealth or narrow nationalism.
And then we are gripped by the detailed seriousness of all that led up to the crucifixion, like a profound family memory indelibly written on hearts and handed down with great care and reverence from generation to generation. We both cry out against what is happening and also know it to be necessary and inevitable. We both balk at the way people could treat Jesus, the Lord of life, and also know that we do it ourselves every day. We recognise the utter failure and futility of it all and also know it to be the strangest and most complete victory for the entire world.
Some things to reflect on:
• What particular details did you notice in this reading of the crucifixion?
• Why did Jesus choose not to call on all the angels to be at his disposal? (Matthew 26:53-54)
God bless
Rev’d Fiona Robinson
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