Seeker

Today is the 2nd Sunday of Easter. The gospel readings on the Sundays of the Easter season focus on the various ways Jesus' disciples encountered him after his death and resurrection. Today the focus is on an appearance to the disciples in an upper room where the disciples were hiding for fear behind locked doors. The gospel reading is John 20: 19 - 31 . I wrote about this  for the Big Bible Project a couple of years ago. Here is what I wrote: "The Bible reading is  John 20: 19 – 31 . It begins with the risen Jesus meeting his disciples in an upper room, breathing the Holy Spirit on them and commissioning them for mission. It ends with Thomas’s declaration of faith and a restatement of the purpose of John’s gospel – that you may believe in Jesus and find Life. I’m interrupting my series on ‘Women of the Gospels’ because I’ve been asked to post on this reading. No woman is mentioned. Does this mean no women were present? I think women probably were present. It’s wo...

Here's a  new poem for Easter by J.Barrie Shepherd found here . Easter Essentials Strip away the perfect lilies massed along, across the chancel steps, the bright reflecting sight and sound of brasses, and the white and gold of paraments and stoles. Set aside two thousand years, almost, of holy words and gestures, the jostling flotsam of an epic tidal surge of global custom and conviction, conquest too. Try to ignore this new spring sunlight, the steady warming of the soil, the waking birdsongs, green and early fragrant air. Reject all this and you are left with a report, some blood-stained bandages in a vacated garden cave, several startled temple guards, a gaggle of bewildered witnesses, and through all this a dawning hope, so strange yet sure it drives you to your trembling knees, groping for fresh syllables and sounds to shape this ever new, yet ancient cry. The Lord is risen...risen indeed! Ima...