Christ appearing to his disciples at the table, Duccio (ca 1308-1311)Patrick Comerford
Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and this is still Easter week.
Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 24: 35-48 (NRSVA):
35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
36 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ 37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence.
44 Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.’
Today’s Reflections:
This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Luke 24: 35-48) is a Resurrection story that continues on immediately from yesterday’s reading about the encounter of two disciples on the road to Emmaus with the Risen Christ.
In today’s reading, as the those two report back to their friends in Jerusalem of their encounter, the Risen Christ appears and greets his disciples, ‘Peace be with you’ (verse 36). He goes on to ask them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? (verse 38).
I have to admit to being not just frightened but absolutely terrified for the future of the world with the direction Donald Trump has taken the conflict in the Gulf and the Middle East, despite his claims he has agrred to a ceasefire for two weeks.
Tomorrow is Great and Good Friday in the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church. So I have a second opportunity to celebrate Easter this year with the Greek Orthodox community in Stony Stratford this coming weekend. Easter is so important in the Greek calendar that our celebrations in England or Ireland pale into insignificance.
The common Easter greeting in Greece is Χριστός ἀνέστη! (Christós anésti!), Christ is Risen! And the automatic, reflex response, between friends and strangers alike, on the streets and in the shops, is Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! (Alithós anésti!), He is Risen Indeed!
And this is not just for Easter Day, or even a week or two after. Easter is celebrated for 50 days.
It is often forgotten here that Easter is not just for Easter Day. The Risen Christ is not put back into the tomb, nor is the stone rolled back across it after Easter Day or after the Easter holiday is over.
The Easter Season is a celebration of our new creation in the Risen Christ, and it is a full season of 50 days. It brings together the three dimensions of the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the sending of the Spirit.
These 50 days amount to one-seventh of the year, and they form our great ‘Sunday’ of the year. Just as Sunday is the first and the eighth day, so the ‘great Sunday’ of the 50 days of Easter begins with the day of the Resurrection and continues through eight Sundays, or an octave of Sundays, a ‘week of weeks’.
But the Easter promise of peace that we hear this morning is in sharp contrast to the Trump’s threat this Easter-tide that the people of Iran will ‘be living in Hell.’ His vulgar language shows no appreciation or understanding of the fact that the Persian civilisation is one of the oldest great classical cultures.
During the Babylonian exile, Persian thinking and philosophy interacted creatively with Jewish religious concepts, and contributed to many thoughts in Second Temple Judaism such as the resurrection of the dead, the sharp contrasts between angels and demons, reward and punishment and heaven and hell, and the concept of a final judgment, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
Hebrew adopted several Persian loanwords, such as our word paradise which comes from an old Persian word meaning an enclosed or walled garden or orchard.
In the first fourth century BCE, Xenophon adapted the Persian phrase into Greek as παράδεισος (paradeisos). Xenophon provides an early description of a Persian garden in his Οἰκονομικός (Oeconomicos), in which Socrates recalls the visit of the Spartan general Lysander to the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger and his ‘paradise at Sardis.’
Lysander is ‘astonished at the beauty of the trees within, all planted at equal intervals, the long straight rows of waving branches, the perfect regularity, the rectangular symmetry of the whole, and the many sweet scents which hung about them as they paced the park.’
Xenophon is writing about household management and agriculture in one of the earliest-known works on economics. It is also a treatise on leading an army and a state.
As another catastrophic conflict in the Middle East continues, it still holds the potential of developing into a global conflagration.
Often, the rush to war abroad can be a symptom of ineffective leadership at home, offering bravado abroad as an alternative to delivering on election promises at home.
The Prussian general Clausewitz famously declared: ‘War is the continuation of politics by other means.’ But, as Tony Benn told the House of Commons in 1991: ‘All war represents a failure of diplomacy.’
War represents the failure of diplomacy, the failure of politics and the failures of politicians. When inept leaders who cannot meet their responibilities and commitments resort to blaming some outsiders, people then believe the scapegoat is the real problem, and demand resolution through war. War is an aberration of politics rather than an extension of politics.
It was only in the Second Temple era Judaism that the Persian and Greek word paradise came to be associated with the Garden of Eden, and by extension its meaning was transferred to heaven.
In the New Testament, the word paradise is used only three times: by Christ on the cross, in response to the penitent thief, ‘Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23: 42-43); by Saint Paul in his visionary description of being ‘caught up into Paradise’ (II Corinthians 12: 3-4), and in the Book of Revelation in a reference to ‘the tree of life that is in the paradise of God’ (Revelation 2: 7; see Genesis 2: 9).
The Persian, Greek, classical and Biblical images, which bring together the concepts of a garden, the enclosed place of peace, Eden, a restored earth, the coming kingdom and beatific visions of heaven are in sharp contrast to the Valhalla of Norse mythology, which is ruled over by Odin, the god of war, and is reward for those who die in conflict and combat.
In time, I hope to see Trump and his collaborators facing charges of war crimes, crime and against humanity. Bombing the people of Iran in their hospitals, schools and homes is hardly going to bring solace, comfort or peace to the over-bombed and much-victimised people of Iran, certainly not going to bring them into paradise. Instead, there is a real danger of creating a Valhalla or even a hell on earth rather than bringing the people of Iran closer to a place of peace and comfort.
Meanwhile, some lines come to mind that are so familiar that they often seem trite:
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.
This verse is on a plaque on a wall in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and must be inscribed on millions of garden plaques, bird baths and sundials. The lines were penned by the English poet and hymnwriter Dorothy Gurney (1858-1932).
Dorothy Gurney was the daughter and wife of Anglican priests, her grandfather and her brother were both Anglican bishops, and ‘God’s Garden’ is her best-known poem. Quotations from her popular poem often miss the next and final verse that tells us why we are near to God in the garden:
For he broke it for us in a garden
Under the olive-trees
Where the angel of strength was the warden
And the soul of the world found ease.
Where is the soul of the world to find this peace in the face war in Iran and the Gulf?
Dorothy Gurney wrote her best-known hymn, O Perfect Love, in 1883 for her sister’s wedding:
O perfect Love, all human thoughts transcending,
lowly we kneel in prayer before thy throne,
that theirs may be the love which knows no ending
whom thou for evermore dost join in one …
Grant them the joy which brightens earthly sorrow;
grant them the peace which calms all earthly strife;
grant them the vision of the glorious morrow
that will reveal eternal love and life.
With imagination, Dorothy Gurney might have composed still another verse for ‘God’s Garden’, pointing out that when Mary Magdalene went to the empty tomb on the first Easter morning, she mistakenly supposed the Risen Christ to be the gardener (John 20: 15). As the Easter Gospel stories remind us, the constant words of the Risen Christ are ‘Peace be with you’ (Luke 24: 36; John 20: 19, 21, 26) and ‘Do not be afraid’ (Matthew 28: 10).
Saint Luke portrays the Risen Christ granting the disciples that ‘joy which brightens earthly sorrow,’ that ‘peace which calms all earthly strife,’ that ‘vision of the glorious morrow that will reveal eternal love and life.’
He eats with us, he dispels fear, he proclaims peace, and on the Easter morn he commissions us to be his witnesses (Luke 24: 47-48). We are to do the same.
Today the scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing, every time we eat with him, proclaim his word and invite the world into the kingdom. Today – like every one of the 50 days in this season of Easter – is the day of resurrection, of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom.
Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 9 April 2026, Thursday in Easter Week):
‘In the Garden’ provides the theme this week (5-11 April 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 44-45. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 9 April 2026, Thursday in Easter Week) invites us to pray:
Merciful God, we pray for schools and families who receive fresh vegetables from the garden. Protect the wellbeing of each person and help the church meet the practical needs of children and households.
The Collect:
Lord of all life and power,
who through the mighty resurrection of your Son
overcame the old order of sin and death
to make all things new in him:
grant that we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
may reign with him in glory;
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be praise and honour, glory and might,
now and in all eternity.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God of Life,
who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son
to the death of the cross,
and by his glorious resurrection
have delivered us from the power of our enemy:
grant us so to die daily to sin,
that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his risen life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God of glory,
by the raising of your Son
you have broken the chains of death and hell:
fill your Church with faith and hope;
for a new day has dawned
and the way to life stands open
in our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
