Monday April 5 Easter Monday
Click here for simplified daily office prayers
Psalm 93
A psalm of praise to God who is forever and who makes the world secure. “The waters lifted up their voice” means that although the raging sea (the original chaos) is threatening to drown everything, God’s voice is stronger. Appropriate for a Sunday when we celebrate God’s victory in the resurrection.
The raging sea can be circumstances in our lives, in our inner life, or in the life of the world.
Psalm 98
The people, the nations, and the whole of creation delight in God’s victory and rejoice when God comes to put all creation right. This psalm is used at Easter, and is often used on Sundays, mini-anniversaries of Easter. There is some lovely imagery of the sea deliberately making a noise with its waves and rivers doing the same by clapping their hands.
Jonah 2: 1-9
During Easter week each day we read a passage from the Hebrew Bible which celebrate God’s victory over destruction.
In this passage, Jonah is drowning, and God rescues him by a whale or a great fish. This story was interpreted by early Christians as a foretelling of God rescuing Jesus, and us, out of the grave and the early Christians could imagine these words expressing Jesus’ experience in death, as well as our own experience.
In Greek, the word “fish” is also the first letters of the phrase “Jesus Christ, son of God” and so the image of a fish rescuing Jonah was adopted by early Christians as an image of Jesus rescuing us.
John 14: 1-14
As typical in John, Jesus uses a series of poetic images and extended conversations to respond to the needs of subsequent generations of followers. These later followers, in John’s time as in ours, have several concerns arising from the fact that we no longer have direct physical contact with Jesus.
We are not to be concerned that Jesus is no longer physically present because Jesus will be with us in the form of Holy Spirit. We are not to feel second-rate Christians because we don’t get to speak to Jesus—the experience of death and resurrection in Jesus is the experience of God. If we think we are uninspired without the direct connection with Jesus, Jesus can still act through us with power—that’s the experience of Holy Spirit.
This week’s collect:
Lord of life and power,
through the mighty resurrection of your Son,
you have overcome the old order of sin and death
and have made all things new in him.
May we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
reign with him in glory,
who with you and the Holy Spirit is alive,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Click here to share a comment on the web site.