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This week is Good Shepherd Sunday, a day to reflect on what it means to be called to hear Christ’s words and follow him. John 10:22-30 reminds us that we belong to God and, if we belong to God, we also belong to one another, called be part of a community that cares for each other. As God’s flock, we are promised abundant life. Life which is experienced and enjoyed only when we share it with others. This week, as we celebrate the work of Christian Aid, striving to bring abundant life in poor communities across the globe, we commit ourselves to living lives of generosity and love, trusting in Christ’s promises of abundance and faithfulness.
The Easter holidays are over, everyone has returned to work or school and all is back to normal. Yet our readings insist that life post-resurrection cannot just go back to normal. Something has changed and we need to change too. In John 21:1-19 the risen Jesus is just the same as he always was: calling to the fishermen, filling their empty nets with an abundance of fish, breaking bread with them, just as he had before his death. He is the same but he is inviting them to change, to begin again but this time to follow his lead. The last time he broke bread with his disciples they betrayed and abandoned him, last time Peter warmed himself at a fire he denied Christ. Now they, and we, have a chance to try again, to risk ourselves for love of God and God’s people. That this will have its challenges is clear from Acts 9:1-20: here the risen Christ offers Saul a new beginning but it is Ananias who struggles to put into practise all that he has learnt about love: must he really embrace an enemy? Must he care for and support those who have threatened him? Must we? Change is hard but so is not changing. Easter, once more, gives us the chance to embrace it.
Christ is always returning to us, continually offering us the gift of the spirit, repeatedly inviting us to begin again. The fact that we are failures makes us perfect for the job too. Knowing how rubbish we are at being Christian, at doing God’s will, puts us in the perfect position to forgive the faults and failings of others and invite them to begin again alongside us.
Last Sunday we rejoiced at the resurrection, the disciples, however, didn’t. A week later our gospel, John 20:19-31, finds them hiding away in a locked room afraid of what the future holds for them. Thomas often gets a bad press for doubting but the other disciples are not doing much better: Jesus has already come to them offering peace, sending them out as the Father sent him but a week later, when Jesus returns, they still haven’t moved. Perhaps Thomas did not believe them the first time because despite encountering the risen Lord, they hadn’t changed. However, the fact that they doubt, that they fail to act, is what makes them perfect for the job; because the job is forgiveness, and who better to know the joy of forgiveness, the significance of a new beginning, than someone who has been in need of forgiveness not just once but again and again. By the time we come to the story in Acts 5:27-32, the disciples have changed, they have started to live as if new life were truly possible.
Christ is always returning to us, continually offering us the gift of the spirit, repeatedly inviting us to begin again. The fact that we are failures makes us perfect for the job too. Knowing how rubbish we are at being Christian, at doing God’s will, puts us in the perfect position to forgive the faults and failings of others and invite them to begin again alongside us.
We begin the day with a family workshop, baking hot cross buns, symbol of Christ’s death, and building the Easter garden, symbol of Christ’s resurrection. At Noon we follow the Stations of the Cross, telling the story with poems and prayer. This is followed by the Liturgy of the Cross in which we kneel at the foot of the cross and bring our own struggles, hopes and fears to Christ. We listen to God’s promise of a servant who will suffer for our sake in Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and then to the Passion of our Lord, as told in John18:1-19:42 beginning in the garden where Jesus prays and ending in the garden in which his body was laid in the tomb.