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Easter 2011

  • 23 Apr 2011
    Living in the long, uncertain Saturday

    Good Friday is behind us, Easter Sunday ahead. In the meantime, says Simon Barrow, we must inhabit the long, uncertain Saturday. Indeed, we Christians may need considerable help from others to be able do this truthfully, such is the tendency to be pulled back a day or pushed forward one. For Saturday is an indelible and crucial part of the Easter story. Without Saturday, Friday has no end and Sunday has no beginning.

  • 23 Apr 2011
    Holy Saturday: The suspension of God

    Waiting is difficult enough when you know what you are waiting for. It is interminable when you do not. And it can be confusing and frustrating when you either do not really know whether you are waiting or not, or when you realise that what you are waiting for may very well turn out to be something quite different to what you imagine... when (and if) it comes.

  • 23 Apr 2011
    Good Friday: The execution of God

    Next to efforts to explain Christian trinitarian language for God, it is sermonising on the message of the cross and the meaning of the resurrection that I often find most painful at this time of year.

  • 23 Apr 2011
    What sense does it make to say 'Christ died for us'?

    How, we may ask on Good Friday, can wholeness, deliverance and healing possibly flow from a state execution resulting in the unjust violent death of a good person - one in whom his friends and followers felt they had met divine love at its most tangible and engaging? Simon Barrow explores the troubling mystery at the core of Christian belief, and looks at ways theology can address it intellectually, humanly and practically.

  • 22 Apr 2011
    Holy Thursday: The arrest of God

    Having just finished my own initial reflections on the meaning of Easter, as refracted through two connected mini-dramas marked on Holy Thursday, I came across this arresting short piece (if you'll pardon the pun, given its topic) by Nathan Schneider.

  • 21 Apr 2011
    The religious betrayal of God and its antidote

    Good Friday and Easter Sunday we have some comprehension of (or so we think). But what on earth is Holy Thursday all about? Simon Barrow explores two actions in the story which embody, practically and theologically, both the awful tragedy and the true hope of Christianity in a world circumscribed by the use and absue of power.