Description
The follow-up to the author’s highly successful The Things He Carried, this book takes the post-resurrection sayings of Jesus as starting-points and uses the same reflection format. The meaning and significance of the resurrection how it was first communicated and how it is communicated to us today, are explored by piecing together these sayings of Jesus.
Many a popular Good Friday devotion is based upon Jesus’ seven last words from the cross. But there isn’t the same emphasis on the words Jesus spoke on Easter Day – words, as it were, from an empty tomb. Following the resurrection, we would expect the triumphant ‘I have risen from the dead!’ Yet Jesus’ statements are so different, so apparently unremarkable, that they are often overlooked.
Each Gospel gives a different account of the veryfirst words of the risen Lord. This book reveals how these words, and the events that followed, speak to us as powerfully as the words from the cross. They illuminate our understanding of the resurrection, helping us to penetrate its meaning and significance. They also speak of God’s purpose for us today as we try to discover vwhat it means to be an Easter people.
The Christian faith stands or falls on tyhe resurrection of Jesus; without it, says St Paul, we are to be most pitied. In this revelatory book of surprising reflections, Stephen Cottre4ll’s retelling of the Easter story encourages us to slow down and hear it properly – perhaps for the very first time.
Stephen Cottrell is Bishop of Reading and was Canon Residentiary at Peterborough Cathedral. Alongside his contributions to the Emmaus: Way of Faith series, he also wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2004, I THIRST, and the best-selling Lent book THE THINGS HE CARRIED.