Easter
Readings for this week April 3 – 7
Click here for a pdf of this week’s readings
Day 1 – The Beauty of the Cross
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Isaiah 53:1-6
When Jesus said “This is my body, broken for you” to his disciples at their final meal together, it was perhaps somewhat of an understatement. Almost no part of his body would have been free of the trauma of torture. His flesh would have been a mess of bruised and lacerated skin, sliced muscle, snapped tendons and ligaments, and leaking blood. The pain would have been unbearable. Nails were driven through nerves, insects would land on open wounds and eyes. And while being beaten and whipped was not a necessary part of the procedure, the extra punishment and torture inflicted by the soldiers would have caused excruciating pain even if you weren’t nailed to a cross afterwards, providing ample opportunity for wounds to tear and reopen. Yet he bore the pain, bore the punishment and the wounds so that, as 1 Peter 2:24 says, “we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
All this Jesus went through for us. All this he faced – and faced down – in order to reconcile creation with its Creator. There is beauty in the crucifixion – not beauty from the blood and pain and suffering, but rather the beauty of love, of faithfulness, of the extremity of God’s desire to have us back at immeasurable cost. The servant who suffers for the sake of others, the one who offers himself in love so that the destructive power of sin can be eradicated, the estranged can be reconciled, and creation can begin the journey to restoration – this is the beauty displayed on the cross.
Questions to Consider
What does the cross mean for you? What does it show you about God’s love and concern for us?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for all that you are. Thank you for Easter and for your son. My words are inadequate – may my response be my life, given back to you in gratitude for your son. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 2 – The Broken King
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Isaiah 53:7-12
Our king was broken for us. This should tell us something about the ubiquity of brokenness: even Jesus, God incarnate, God with us, experienced the full extent of what it means to be broken and abandoned and rejected. He was not immune from such pain, he was not safe from the agonising dangers that abound in this world. If we will not own up to and face our own brokenness, then we deny the full power of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us all on that hill outside Jerusalem. He was broken in order to heal and repair all brokenness – our brokenness will not be healed if we fail or refuse to acknowledge that there is necessary work for God to do.
Likewise, our brokenness – Creation’s brokenness – was reconciled and healed through the brokenness of another. Our brokenness has a part to play in healing and reconciling others; it can be used as a conduit through which the grace and mercy of God can flow to others. If Jesus is the one who shows us the way, the one we are to emulate and copy, the one in whose image we are being shaped, then the broken body hanging from the cross of Calvary is part of that shaping, is part of the image we are to mirror to the world. We cannot speak to the brokenness of others – we give them no reason to heed us or believe we have anything worthwhile to offer – without our own brokenness as a signpost, symbol, badge, witness and offering.
Questions to Consider
How has God used your brokenness to bring comfort and hope to others? How has your brokenness spoken of God’s love to others?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, help me offer myself and my life – all of it – to others as a gift that may give comfort and hope, and that may open a pathway to your love and redemption. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 3 – God is Dead
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Matthew 27:57-61
What are we to make of the silent tomb? Death is part of Jesus’ followers’ Easter experience and our Easter experience too. And not just at Easter, although Easter Saturday is a reminder that there are times when it seems that God is absent; when it seems like nothing has changed, or can ever change; when things are most hopeless. And that time is often brought home to us in death and in suffering, whether the thought, or reality, of our own or someone else’s. Sometimes we do find ourselves in the midst of Easter Saturday, in the midst of death, and though we may not wish to, it is a day that must be walked on the way to Resurrection Sunday.
And it is a day walked endlessly by so many in this world. A heartbroken mother cradles the limp, lifeless body of her young child, dead due to a lack of medicine. The tumour grows in a man’s chest, pressing on vital organs, restricting movement, extinguishing life. Skipping out the door in the morning, returning home in a coffin three days later after an accident not her fault. The staring eyes and swollen bellies of the starving as drought causes yet another crop to fail. An infant cowers cold, hungry and abandoned in the dark, sobbing quietly even though the beatings have stopped, for the moment at least. A loving, compassionate, completely innocent man tortured, crucified and killed in order to save us – what does this tell us about a world in which God’s absence seems so palpable, so final? What does it mean when God is dead and all is hopeless?
Questions to Consider
When you think of the time that Jesus spent in the grave, what do you think of? Why?
Prayer
Loving Father, sometimes it seems as though you are far from me. Yet even in the darkness of death I know you are there, even if I cannot see or feel you. Give me strength to make it through my Easter Saturdays. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 4 – Moving Towards Hope
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – John 20:1-9
With the resurrection, things change. After the absence and emptiness of Holy Saturday it can take time for us to see it, for it to become real for us. But this is the moment it all begins to turn around for the disciples, Peter and John especially. They have been living, even if only for one day, in a world of pain and hopelessness, all their dreams and hopes – and the person at the centre of their lives – dead and gone. The women’s story was unbelievable. Literally. The dead do not rise and they were certainly not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead – after all they hadn’t been expecting him to die in the first place! It was over. They were done. But even the faintest possibility of the idea of Jesus back from the dead was enough for John and Peter to go running to find out for themselves. They found a small glimmer of uncertain, anxious hope: maybe, just maybe…
They found an empty tomb, some grave clothes….and no Jesus. Still no certainty about the women’s story, but nevertheless there was still the possibility that Jesus was alive again. Where before there was only devastation and loss, now there is a small flicker of hope. Sometimes it seems like there is no hope, that what we yearn for is impossible. Sometimes our hope wavers; sometimes when we want just a little sign or a little encouraging proof that what we hope for is still possible, we receive nothing, other than the vague, unsatisfied, unsatisfying feeling of hope itself. But our God is the God of the impossible, the God of the type of hope that can never be discounted.
Question to Consider
How is hope shown daily in your life with others?
Prayer
God of glory, thank you for the hope that you offer us, even in times of greatest darkness. Help me be a hope-filled person at all times. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 5 – Transformed Bearers of Hope
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – John 20:11-29
Hope would have been very hard for the disciples to hold onto during that Holy Saturday, when the dream of everything Jesus had shown them, taught them and instilled in them was in tatters. They had been left behind, cut adrift from all they thought they had known. Their lives were upended and they found themselves wondering “What happens now? What are we supposed to do now?” They would have been plagued with doubt over what their lives held for them from this point on. Several years learning at the feet of the man they were beginning to think might be Israel’s promised Messiah had sent their lives along a wonderfully hopeful trajectory. Now everything lay in shredded tatters in a tomb.
But, miraculously, then comes hope, permanent hope, eternal hope, through Jesus, the incarnation of God, whose life, death and resurrection give us reason to hope. Here we see this hope being reborn. Jesus appeared to his followers, sometimes when they were alone, sometimes in various groupings, and revealed to them the truth of his resurrection, showing them that hope – that he – is alive. Not only is the world transformed but each of their lives is also transformed – they each now have a story of hope to tell the world. We ourselves are not the ultimate source of hope; that is God, through the work of Jesus on the cross and the resurrection to new life that followed. But we are to be the bearers of that hope, the tellers of a story that brings hope to people who have forgotten – or never known – what it looks like: the risen Christ.
Questions to Consider
When have you had times in your life when hope was hard to find? How did God meet you there? How have you been a beacon of hope to others?
Prayer
Almighty Father, may I be the face of hope to others who have no hope, a channel of your life-giving love into their lives in all that I do. Amen.