Pewsheet

 Between Good Friday and Pentecost- 53 days. 53 days of uncertainty for the disciples. They probably released a bit of the tension they must have felt when they encountered the risen Christ on the third day, wherever that was, but there were still 40 days until the day we celebrate today. Christs ascension, and there yet 10 more days until the holy spirit descends onto the apostles at Pentecost.

Dear friends

I am sure that I was not the only viewer of last weeks’ Gardeners World to be saddened by Monty Don's obvious distress as he told us that his beloved dog and friend of 14 years, Nigel, had died earlier in the week. (I had bought Mary Monty’s book: Nigel: My family and other dogs, Two Roads Books, 2016, about a tenner I think), for Christmas.

It’s Bank Holiday weekend and the sun is shining (well, it was when I wrote this). A street party to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day, a walk in the park, trip to the beach, or a family meal might have been planned under different circumstances. But for now we are still being urged to stay at home and await the next government briefing. So our homes have become much more familiar places to us. Some of us of course are homebound for other reasons and for longer durations and there is far more awareness now of what that feels like.

It’s Bank Holiday weekend and the sun is shining (well, it was when I wrote this). A street party to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day, a walk in the park, trip to the beach, or a family meal might have been planned under different circumstances. But for now we are still being urged to stay at home and await the next government briefing. So our homes have become much more familiar places to us. Some of us of course are homebound for other reasons and for longer durations and there is far more awareness now of what that feels like.

Readings for Sunday 3 May

Psalm 23 Acts 2: 42-47 John 10: 1-10

“Why do clergy wear a dog-collar,” children sometimes ask. I’ll admit that I tell them it’s because “Jesus is the Good Shepherd and so they act like a sheepdog, keeping the flock together for him”. It’s less complicated than telling them that shepherds of the Bible didn’t have sheepdogs. (I tell adults it’s because, whatever clergy do, we’re always “in the doghouse!”)

The Reader writes:

The gospel for today, (Easter 3), opens with two dejected and disoriented disciples walking the 7 or so miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus; they are not really concentrating, their focus is wrong. They are turned toward the west, toward darkness, away from the light and the resurrection.

Lin writes:-

Sunday after Easter 2016.

May what I say and what you hear be to the glory of the risen Lord in the Holy Trinity of God. Amen.

LUKE 24: 36-49

Here we read how Jesus came to his own when they were gathered in the upper room.  This passage has certain great truths of the Christian faith.

The reality of the resurrection: The risen Lord was no phantom or hallucination. He was real, the Jesus who had died was in truth the Christ who rose again. Christianity is not founded on the dreams of disordered minds, or the visions of fevered eyes, but on one who in actual historical fact faced and fought and conquered death, and rose again.