Through the weeks of Eastertide we have followed the growing understanding of what it meant for Jesus to remain with us after his resurrection. Starting from the confusion immediately following the empty tomb; to the recognition by the women who were closest to Jesus, and the rest of the disciples, that he was still present; […]
It’s natural to think that the Feast of Ascension is about what happened to Jesus at the end of his time on earth. But that isn’t really where the focus lies. The Feast of the Ascension isn’t so much about what happened to Jesus, rather it’s about what happened to the disciples. Mark, as usual,
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Our gospel readings for the first two weeks of Eastertime spoke of the various ways in which the early church recognized and understood the presence of Jesus in the world after his resurrection. Last week the focus shifted a little to reflect on the nature of the relationship that we have with the risen Jesus.
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We are used to thinking of shepherds as guides, herding their sheep, leading them to pasture. This image is powerfully portrayed in that most famous psalm – The Lord is My Shepherd (Ps 23). Insofar as we have any acquaintance with the activities of shepherds (and their dogs, which of course are the cute ones),
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This week we get to Luke’s account of events after the resurrection. It is similarly brief as was John’s that we heard last week, and completely different in content. Like John, Luke has two endings for his gospel story – the second is in the book we call the Acts of the Apostles. That one
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The end of John’s gospel is unusual in many ways. Firstly there are two clearly distinct endings (in Chapters 20 and 21) which must have been brought together from separate materials at some early point in the compilation of the gospel as it has come down to us. It is also notable that the accounts
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After the silence of Holy Saturday, the silence of the tomb, comes … the silence of … the Resurrection. No evangelist attempts to give an account of the Resurrection. There are no angelic choirs, no trumpet blasts, no voice from the clouds. There is quietness, and a new morning. Another day, a day tinged with sadness for
On Good Friday our first reading from Isaiah (Is 52:13—53:12) starts: “See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.” He is about to be tortured and killed, and he shall prosper! Our gospel reading is the full, excruciating, account from John of the process of Jesus being tortured and killed
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I’m always intrigued by the fact that John did not include any account of the Eucharist during the Last Supper. How could he miss it out? The Eucharist was clearly central in the life of the church from the earliest days. We hear about it very specifically in Paul’s first letter to his church in
With the Feast of Pentecost we come to the end of our Easter season. As we noted last week, Luke is the only gospel writer who organizes his material to give us accounts of the Ascension and Pentecost in that discrete form. These are wonderful and powerful ways of describing how the disciples felt during