Christians are often called an ‘Easter People,’ or a ‘Resurrection  People’ and I don’t think it’s too hard to understand why that should be. Easter, and the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ that we celebrate at Easter are the very foundation of our faith. If there was no Resurrection, why would we have any faith in Jesus? If there was no Resurrection, why should we believe in anything he said or did? In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus says,

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

But, if there was no Resurrection, why should we believe that his way is better than another way, that there is any more truth in his words than in any other words, or that the way of life he advocated is better than any other way of life? If there was no Resurrection, who and what was Jesus other than a good man who had the guts to call out those in power for their hypocrisy, and was done away with by those people to shut him up, a good man who called for change and was done away with by those with a vested interest in things staying as they were? In fact, if there was no Resurrection, apart from a few people who study first Century Jewish history, it’s doubtful if anyone would have even heard of Jesus, let alone acclaimed him as their Lord and Saviour.

So we are an Easter People, a Resurrection People, a people who believe that through the death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest dread of human beings, the knowledge of their own mortality and the fear of death, has been put to flight because, through his death and Resurrection, Jesus has conquered death. Our faith in Jesus assures us that, even though we will all die, that is not the end of life for us but rather the beginning of a new and eternal life with Jesus in God’s heavenly home. So, as well as making us an Easter People, our faith should make us the most joyful of all people. And on the whole, perhaps it does. But I think our faith also gives us a bit of a problem. The problem is, how do we deal with death when we’re faced with it? As Christians, should we think of death as ‘nothing at all’ as a very well-known, though often mis-quoted and mis-understood poem tells us we should, or should we grieve in the same way perhaps as those who have no faith might? If we don’t grieve, are we being callous or, if we do grieve, are we showing a lack of faith? And I have met Christians who have thought in these ways and really struggled with trying to understand how they should feel and act when they’ve been faced with death.

Obviously, as a priest I’m called upon to conduct funerals and to meet and speak to bereaved people on a fairly regular basis. In fact, in the past week, I’ve conducted three funerals and also spoken to two other bereaved families about the funerals of one of their departed loved ones. And so I know that this morning’s Gospel, or at least the first half of it, is a reading that’s very often used at funerals. So what can this morning’s Gospel tell us about how we should deal with death?

This morning’s Gospel is the start of what we call the ‘Farewell Discourse’ in St John’s Gospel. The Farewell Discourse is the last teaching and instruction Jesus gave to his disciples before his death and, in part, they’re words of comfort and reassurance for the disciples that Jesus spoke because he knew that what they’d soon have to go through would be a very difficult and traumatic time for them. So let’s look at this from the disciples point of view.

Jesus’ disciples had been with him, almost every day it seems, for three years. They’d built their whole world on and around Jesus and his teaching. They thought he was the Messiah, as the disciples said on the road to Emmaus shortly after Jesus’ Resurrection, that he was,

“… a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, … we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

But Jesus was very shortly going to go to his death, he would be leaving them and this time, they wouldn’t be able to follow him. The disciples’ were going to be devastated, heartbroken. I’ve spoken before about the ancient understanding of the heart, that it was the very core of a human being so, it was in their hearts that the disciples would have built this world based on and around Jesus and his teaching. So, when Jesus died, they would have, quite literally, been heartbroken because their world view would have been smashed to pieces.

Even though we don’t think of the heart in the same way that the disciples would have done, we do know what it means to be heartbroken don’t we? When someone we know and love dies, our world changes, it can’t help but change because someone who’s been part of our lives, and often a very big and important part of our lives, isn’t there anymore and we have to get used to life without them. So, to some extent at least, we can understand what the disciples were going to be faced with and what they were going to have to go through, and why Jesus wanted to comfort and reassure them.

But what are we to make of what Jesus’ words when he began to speak?

“Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.”

Does that mean we shouldn’t be troubled by death? Does it mean that because of our faith and our hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, we shouldn’t grieve or be upset when someone we know and love dies? No, that’s not what Jesus means here at all, and if he did then we could, quite honestly, accuse Jesus of being a hypocrite because didn’t he weep at the grave when his friend, Lazarus, died?

The word in this morning’s Gospel that we translate as ‘troubled’ is the same word used to describe Jesus’ own feeling when Lazarus died and also when he was betrayed by Judas. We translate it here as ‘troubled,’ but it really means to be stirred up or agitated. Later in the Farewell Discourse Jesus tells the disciples that their hearts will be full of sorrow, but it’s for their own good that he’s leaving them because if he doesn’t, he can’t send the ‘Helper’ the Holy Spirit to them. And he tells them that, while they will be sorrowful, they will see him again and know a heartfelt joy that will never be taken away from them. Given the ancient understanding of the heart, what Jesus seems to be saying to his disciples then, isn’t that they won’t or shouldn’t grieve when he dies, but that his death shouldn’t trouble, stir up, agitate or destroy their deeper, heartfelt understanding of things. He will die and they will be hurt and upset, they will be full of sorrow and grieve, but that shouldn’t trouble or break their faith. What Jesus is saying is that, whilst in an emotional sense they can be, and will be heartbroken, in that deeper sense of feeling and knowing in their hearts, don’t be. His death can and will upset them on one level but at a deeper level, don’t let that shake or break your faith in what you believe to be the way the truth and life because his death doesn’t change that and, in fact, his Resurrection will confirm their faith in those things and in him.

And we can apply these words to ourselves when we have to face up to and deal with death. One of the things I always say during a funeral sermon is that faith isn’t an anaesthetic to the pain of loss and bereavement. Faith doesn’t take that pain away. So we can be upset when someone we know and love dies. We can grieve their, and our, loss, regardless of our faith. And if anyone still isn’t convinced about that, think of it in this way.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus wept at Lazarus’ grave, so why should we think that our faith means that we can’t or shouldn’t be upset and grieve when someone we know and love dies; do we think that we have more or greater faith than Jesus?

I have met many good and faithful Christians who don’t deal with death very well. I have met some who’ve actually said, death means nothing at all. I’ve met some who have been heartbroken by death and questioned their faith, either because of the death itself or because it has upset them so much it’s caused them to question the depth or even reality of their own faith; as death has troubled them so much, they’ve questioned whether they really do believe in the resurrection to eternal life. But Jesus’ words in the Farewell Discourse, and his own example, tell us that we can be upset and grieve when a loved one dies, regardless of our faith or the depth of our faith. But what Jesus’ words and example also tell us is that death shouldn’t trouble us at heart in that deeper understanding of the heart that ancient people had. Death shouldn’t cause us to doubt or to lose faith because Jesus’ Resurrection, which is the foundation of our faith, is also the confirmation and vindication of our faith.

Jesus said,

“Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.”

Death does trouble us, though. But Jesus doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t trouble us in an emotional sense. He doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be upset and sad when someone we know and love dies. He doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t grieve. He doesn’t mean that death shouldn’t break our hearts in that sense. What he does mean is that we shouldn’t let death break our faith. We are an Easter People, a Resurrection People, a people who’ve been given a cause for joy that can never be taken away and we shouldn’t let anything take it away from us. Not even death.

Amen.

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Propers for the 5th Sunday of Easter, 7th May 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous deeds;
he has revealed to the nations his saving power, alleluia!

The Collect
Almighty God,
who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ,
have overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life:
grant that, as by your grace going before us,
you put into our minds good desires,
so by your continual help we may bring them to good effect;
through Jesus Christ our risen Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Acts 6:1-7
Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 18-19
1 Peter 2:4-9
John 14:1-12

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

One of the best known, and probably most well-loved images of Jesus is that of the Good Shepherd. It’s a lovely pastoral image of Jesus, usually carrying a lamb in his arms and being followed by a flock of sheep. It’s an image that shows Jesus as someone who looks after and cares for his own, even to the cost of laying down his life for them.

In this morning’s Gospel we hear Jesus telling us something of what the Good Shepherd does, and what it means to be that Good Shepherd. Jesus’ words here are the nearest thing there is to a parable in St John’s Gospel, and they do correspond very closely to the reality of shepherding in his time. Overnight, sheep of  a number of different flocks would have been kept in a sheepfold, usually a walled enclosure with an entrance or gate. There would have been a gatekeeper, and they were there to make sure the sheep were kept safe in the sheepfold overnight. They would only have allowed the shepherds to enter the sheepfold, either to bring their sheep in at night or to lead them out to pasture during the day, and the sheep of each flock would have only followed their own shepherd because they’d have recognised his voice. There was of course, always the possibility that someone might try to steal some sheep but, because of the presence of a gatekeeper, those who wanted to do that, would have had to break into the sheepfold by means other than the gate.

In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t actually refer to himself as the Good Shepherd, if we read on from the end of this morning’s Gospel, that comes in the very next verse. Instead Jesus says that he’s the gate of the sheepfold, so what does he mean by that? We’ll quite simply it means that it’s only through Jesus that the sheep are kept safe and only through him that they’ll be led to pasture, to the sustenance they need to live. It’s only through Jesus that the sheep will have a full and abundant life. And Jesus contrasts that image of himself as the gate of the sheepfold with one of those whom he calls thieves and brigands or bandits, those who don’t enter by the gate and who only come to steal and kill and destroy. But who are these people?

Just before this, in the Gospel, we read the story of Jesus healing the man born blind. In that story, the Pharisees claim that Jesus can’t be from God because he healed on the Sabbath and therefore, was a sinner. But the man whom Jesus had healed argued with them. He said that if Jesus weren’t from God he wouldn’t be able  to perform such miracles. And because of his faith in Jesus, the Pharisees put the man out of the synagogue. So, in the Gospel, this story about the sheepfold is set in the context of an argument about faith in Jesus and about who is the true shepherd of God’s flock.

Through Jesus, the man born blind has entered life, he’s been led to a better life on earth and, through faith in Jesus, to eternal life. He’s become a member of Jesus’ own flock and he now listens to Jesus’ voice.

But the Pharisees look to steal him away from the flock, they urge him to listen to their voice. So, in the context of the Gospel, they, the Pharisees, are the thieves and brigands who are trying to break in to steal and kill and destroy. But we can also read Jesus’ words in a wider context too.

We know that there had been many people whom we might call false Messiahs,  people who’d claimed that they were the one who would lead God’s people to freedom, but who, in reality, led the people into armed conflict and death. Perhaps Barabbas was one such person. We’re not told that he claimed to be the Messiah, but we are told that he was in prison for insurrection, for a violent uprising against the authorities. And Jesus warned us that such people would arise in the future too because when he was asked by his disciples about the signs that would herald his return, he said,

“See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ’, and they will lead many astray.” 

But we can also read Jesus’ warning as one, not just about false Messiahs, or about those who lead people astray by claiming to speak and act in his name, but about anyone who leads people astray by making false claims, those who say things that lead people away from God and away from his commandments, because he went on to say,

“And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.”

And this is perhaps the warning that’s most relevant to us because isn’t this just what we see around us so often in the world today?

If we think about the history of the past hundred years or so, haven’t we seen an increase in ideologies and doctrines that lead people away from God and towards atheism, away from love of neighbour and towards egotism? And haven’t these ideologies and doctrines promised a better life to their adherents but, in fact, caused death and destruction and misery for millions?

Think about Marxism, an inherently atheistic ideology that promised utopia for the working classes. But in reality, how many millions have suffered and died when this ideology has been put into practice? How many suffered and died in Communist revolutions? How many have suffered and died in purges perpetrated by Communist regimes on their own people? How many have suffered and died in what have amounted to proxy wars between the Capitalist West and the Communist East? What is going on in Ukraine at the moment?

Think too about Fascism, another inherently atheistic ideology that, quite literally, promised the world to it’s adherents. How many millions suffered and died on battlefields, in concentration camps, as slave labourers, in towns and cities destroyed in air raids, and on the seas? How many were murdered in cold blood simply because they didn’t agree with the false prophets of this ideology, in the world war that its adherents quite deliberately caused?

But think too about our own inherently self-centred society and ways. Isn’t our own society and our way of life based on the belief that the most important thing in life is our own selves. That what we want is the most important thing in life and that we should be allowed to have what we want regardless of what that means for anybody else. I have the right to do what I want to do, and you have no right to tell me I can’t. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do, and you have no right to make me. We call it individual rights. But the only way we can exercise individual rights to that extent is by trampling on the individual rights of others. How, for example, can an individual exercise their right to play music at full volume at 3 o’clock in the morning without denying their neighbour’s individual right to a peaceful night’s sleep?

Perhaps one of the most pernicious ways we see this happening is on social media which is full of people giving advice on how to enjoy a better life. But, if you look at what many of these people are actually saying, they’re telling people to use psychology to make other people do what they want them to do, to use psychological tricks to get what they want from other people. The wishes of the other person or the harm what they suggest doing might do to them doesn’t seem to enter the equation. And almost always, at the end of these things there’s an enjoiner to ‘follow me’ if you like what you’re reading.

We’re surrounded by false Messiahs and false prophets in the world today. We’re surrounded by what, in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus calls thieves and brigands, those who would break in to steal and kill and destroy. In other words, we’re surrounded by people who would lead us astray by leading us away from Christ, away from God’s commandments and away from that love of neighbour that we’re called to have and to show. It can be very tempting to listen to these people because they do promise us good things and a good life. But if we are God’s people, members of Jesus’ own flock, we shouldn’t listen to them. So how do we make sure that we hear the voice of Jesus above the voices of these false Messiahs and false prophets and thieves and brigands?

Well we can do that quite simply by thinking about what the consequences of our actions might be for other people. Before we do something that affects another person, we should ask ourselves whether we would like it if someone else did this to us. And if the answer is no, then we shouldn’t do it to anyone else. I’m sure none of us would willingly harm another human being but, do the views we hold cause harm to other people either by what we say or through the things and people our views and ideas lead us to support? If they do, then perhaps we need to re-think our views.

I hope none of us would stoop so low as to play tricks on people to get what we want from them, but if we are ever tempted to do that, we should first think about how we’d feel if someone did the same thing to us and then perhaps reconsider the course of action we’re planning to take.

People who urge us to be self-centred and to lie and trick and cheat to get what we want can be very persuasive and the rewards they promise for listening to their voices can be very tempting. But Jesus said his flock will hear only his voice and will not listen to other voices. So let’s be sheep of his flock. Other voices may promise us a lot, but Jesus promises us life which is full and abundant. And we don’t have to wait for heaven for that full and abundant life, it can be ours now. It can be ours now because listening to Jesus’ voice changes  what we think makes for a full and abundant life. It changes our idea of a full and abundant life from one that’s centred on ourselves and how much we can have for ourselves and to ourselves, to one in which fullness and abundance comes from the quality of our relationships with each other and with God. And if you don’t think that’s possible, just think about the time you’ve spent with people you love, with family and friends. At those times has it mattered one iota what you were doing or how much money you were spending or even where you were? Wasn’t the fullness and abundance of those times found simply in the company of the people you were with and the time you were sharing with them? And this is what Jesus means when he says,

“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, and in the age to come eternal life.” 

The voices of the false Messiahs and false prophets of the world, the thieves and brigands who would lead us astray and steal us away from Jesus can be very tempting and very persuasive, but whatever they promise they can’t offer us eternal life and so, in the end, they will kill and destroy us. So let’s not listen to them, but to the voice of Jesus and let’s be and remain sheep of his flock so that we can enjoy life in all its fulness and abundance both now and for all eternity.

Amen.

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Propers for the 4th Sunday of Easter, 30th April 2023

Entrance Antiphon
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord;
by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, alleluia.

The Collect
Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice,
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)      
Acts 2:14, 36-41
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:20-25
John 10:1-10

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

One of the things we often say we come to Church for is to meet the Lord in word and sacrament. I think it’s quite obvious what we mean by that. We meet the Lord in word through listening to the words of Scripture and through our dialogue with him in prayer. And we meet the Lord in sacrament, through our sharing in his presence with us and his life given for us and to us in the sacrament of Holy Communion. But do we, in fact, really believe that we do meet the Lord in these ways when we come to Church? And if we do, what is our response to meeting the Lord? Do we go home from church as changed people, people who’ve come to a deeper understanding of our faith and who are inspired to live out that faith in the week ahead, or do we go home as the same people we were when we left home a little earlier on Sunday morning? One thing I’ve mentioned in the past is our need to share our faith with others, but do we ever tell people that we’ve even been to church, let alone that we’ve met the Lord there and how that’s affected us, or do we simply not mention it at all to anyone else but rather keep it to ourselves, as though our coming to church on Sunday was some kind of secret that we’re only willing to share with those who also go to church?

If our responses are of the latter kind, can we really say that we have met the Lord in word and sacrament when we’ve been to church? Surely if we truly believed that we had met the Lord in church, we’d want to tell people about it rather than keeping it to ourselves? Surely, if we truly did meet the Lord in church it would be such a wonderful experience that we wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about it even if we wanted to. So why do so many Christians keep their faith, and their church attendance, a secret? And they do, when I was saying my goodbyes to people at work before I left to go to Mirfield as an ordinand, I was amazed by the number of people who took me to one said and told me that they go to church but don’t say anything about it because of the ‘stick’ they’d get from people for it. Well, perhaps that’s true, but surely the joy and the thrill of meeting the Lord would outweigh any ‘stick’ we might get from people on account of our faith, and we couldn’t help but tell people about it?

This morning, I’d like us to think about our own experience of coming to church and our response to our meeting the Lord in word and sacrament here and compare these things to the experience and response of the two disciples we read about in this morning’s Gospel. They also met the Lord in word as they listened to him and spoke with him on the Emmaus road. And we could say that they met the Lord in sacrament too, because they recognised him, they recognised his presence with them, in the breaking of bread.

The response of those two disciples to meeting the Lord in word and sacrament was very different to the response many of today’s disciples have to coming to church. Their response was that their hearts burned within them as they heard the Lord’s words, as he explained the Scriptures to them on the road. Their eyes were opened as he broke bread at table with them. And they were so overcome with joy, so thrilled by the experience, that they set out straight away to travel the seven miles back to Jerusalem. We have to remember that this was a journey of perhaps two hours by foot, at night, in a land and time where bandits lay in wait to ambush unwary travellers and where wild animals such as wolves, bears, and even leopards and lions, nocturnal predators, still roamed the land. And yet they were so overcome with joy and excitement by their meeting with the Lord that they were prepared to risk those dangers to go and tell the other disciples, a group of people who were hiding out from the authorities at the time let’s not forget, to tell them about their experience.

So, when we come to church to meet the Lord in word and sacrament, do our hearts burn within us as we hear the word of the Lord? Are our eyes opened so that we really see and understand in a better and clearer way what we’re hearing and seeing when we meet the Lord in word and sacrament? Do we really recognise the Lord’s presence among us when the bread is broken, and we receive Holy Communion?

One of the problems we have in understanding the true power and meaning of the Lord’s words is the distance of time and culture that separates us from those words, from Jesus and his contemporaries. That is a problem but one of the things we can do to help overcome, or at least lessen this problem is to learn more about the faith and culture of First Century Jews. That can help us to understand what Jesus’ words would have meant to those who first heard them and just how powerful, not to mention provocative and potentially dangerous they were.

Have you ever wondered, for example, why Jesus’ attitude towards the Sabbath laws provoked such a strong reaction in the authorities, why it seemed to be this more than anything else that stirred up their anger and plots against him? In St Matthew’s Gospel we read about an argument Jesus had with some Pharisees about him allowing his disciples to pluck grain on the Sabbath, something that the law forbade. Jesus countered their complaint with some arguments from Scripture, including one that reminded them that the priests profane the Sabbath to carry out their duties on the Sabbath. He then goes on to say that there is “something greater than the temple…here.” Implying that he is greater than the temple. But for the Jews the temple wasn’t only the centre of their worship as a people, it symbolised their whole view of the universe and it was, to them, the very dwelling place of God on earth. So for Jesus to say that he is greater than the temple was to imply that he is greater than their understanding of the universe, more important than God’s dwelling place on earth. He then went on to say that he, the Son of Man, was “Lord of the Sabbath.” But the Sabbath was created and hallowed by God himself so who could be Lord of the Sabbath except God? When we put these words back into their First Century context we can understand how powerful, provocative and dangerous they were. We can understand why these arguments about the Sabbath stirred up such anger against Jesus and why they led to plots against him, because we can understand these words as claims by Jesus that he was equal with God, or perhaps even is God.

Another thing we can do to grasp the power of the Lord’s words is to try and put ourselves in the shoes of those people he was speaking to and about. One very good story to do this with is the story in St John’s Gospel about the woman taken in adultery. I’m sure we’ve all been in the position of having people baying for our blood, at least metaphorically speaking, so we should have no difficulty in putting ourselves in the position of the woman in that story. How often have we had people accusing us and wanting some action taken against us, knowing that those doing the accusing and wanting to punish us are no better than us and are guilty of all sorts of things they ought to be called to account for themselves? At times like this, how often have we wished that someone, anyone, would speak up on our behalf and get the mob off our backs? But how often have we been part of the mob, tut tutting at what someone else has done, and saying this or that ought to be done about it, and perhaps about them, whilst ignoring the fact that we, and the rest of the mob are far from perfect, or innocent, ourselves? And how often have we had to back down and walk away, shamefaced, when someone has had the courage to stand up to us and point that out? As Christians, we ought to have no trouble putting ourselves in the Lord’s shoes, not condoning wrongdoing, but standing up to and speaking out against the hypocrisy of those who would condemn others whilst being sinners themselves. But how often have we had the courage to do that? If we can put ourselves in the shoes of these people in this way, we can make the Lord’s words come alive and we can meet him in and through his words in a very powerful and meaningful way.

Our distance in time and culture from Jesus and his contemporaries can also be a problem for us when it comes to understanding how we meet the Lord in sacrament too. What we have to try and do here is to understand that what Jesus meant by remembrance when he told his disciples to do this in remembrance of me, isn’t what we mean by remembrance.

The Lord’s last supper was a Passover meal and so to understand what Jesus meant, we have to understand remembrance in the context of a Jewish ceremonial religious meal. To this very day, at their celebration of Passover, devout Jews recount the story of the first Passover. But they don’t think of this as simply remembering and retelling the story, they do it with the understanding that, through the ceremonial retelling, they become part of the story. They remember and recount the story so that the events of the first Passover become a living reality for them in the present. And this is the way we’re called to remember the Lord’s last supper with his disciples.

Jesus was a Jew and so when he spoke of this ceremonial remembrance, he didn’t mean a simple recollection, a mental recalling of what he’d done, so the sacrament of Holy Communion is not a simple memorial of what Jesus did that night or what his Passion and death means for us. As we remember and recount the story, the events of that night become a living reality for us in the present. Some people argue that as Jesus’ sacrifice was made once, and only once, for all, it can’t and doesn’t need to be repeated. But that itself is a misunderstanding of what’s believed to happen through this ceremonial remembrance. No one is saying that the sacrament of Holy Communion is a repeat of Jesus’ sacrifice, but rather that, just as for the Jews, the ceremonial remembrance and recounting of the Passover story makes the first Passover becomes a living reality in the present, so in the sacrament of Holy Communion, Jesus own sacrifice, the sacrifice he made once and for all almost 2,000 years ago becomes a living reality for us in the present. That’s not an easy concept for us to understand but if we can get our heads around it, it does make it so much easier for us to understand too, that we do indeed meet the Lord in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

There can be no doubt that we do need to share our faith with others, and I think we’ll be more inclined to do that if we’re able to share our experience of faith, and the best way we can do that is by meeting the Lord regularly in word and sacrament ourselves. We need to meet the Lord in word and sacrament so that we can grow in faith and understanding and so be more able to share our faith with others. We need to meet the Lord in word and sacrament so that we can be inspired to live out our faith so that others can see the difference being a Christian makes to us and in our lives. And, just like those two disciples who met the Lord on the Emmaus road, we need to let the joy and excitement of meeting the Lord in word and sacrament help us to overcome any fear or reticence we might have about sharing our faith, and about sharing our experience of meeting the Lord in word and sacrament, with others.

Amen. 

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Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, 23rd April 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Let all the earth cry out to God with joy; praise the glory of his name;
proclaim his glorious praise, alleluia!

The Collect
Almighty Father,
who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples with the sight of the risen Lord:
give us such knowledge of his presence with us,
that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life,
and serve you continually in righteousness and truth;
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.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)       
Acts 2:14, 22-33
Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-11
1 Peter 1:17-21
Luke 24:13-35

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         
Acts 2:14, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35