The [disciples] are so caught into their narrative of despair and despondency that they have no capacity to be present to the stranger who appears alongside them. It feels as though they barely notice him. I wonder whether they were a little exasperated with him for interrupting their grief fest.

It is noteworthy that receiving divine peace is not a mandate to relax, or to “clock-off.” Quite the opposite, it is a call to engage, it is a commission to continue the work begun by Jesus.

The resurrection is witness to the power that remakes relationships, the power which means we need not simply mirror that which is done to us. That freedom to respond in love, and faith, and hope, is what we celebrate this day, is the gift we are given today.

Time and again we choose complicity rather than challenge. We choose silence rather than using our voices. We choose to turn away, to deny all that is in front of our eyes. We go with the crowd rather than with our conscience.

Jesus says “where have you laid him?”, show me this tomb, this place where you have buried your Lazarus, the thing you loved and have buried. And when we take Him to that tomb and we show Him what that death has done to us before he does anything else, Jesus stands in that place of grief and sadness and weeps.

(T)he man born blind is not only fully human, but he is the one who will receive the fulness of God’s power working in him.

The inability to discern what we crave seems to me to be equally true of our spiritual lives. We often don’t know what we need or what we are looking for.

To be born anew, from above, is to be given a new identity; to start over, like a new born baby, in dependence on God’s goodness and mercy.

The real story is not the temptations, but that Jesus finds ways to resist that drive towards validation and simply hangs on to, rests in, sits with, those words He has already heard “This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

I wonder did the divine glory shine more brightly on a high mountain, or perhaps in a dark garden.

In Christian understanding, to remember is to participate. We remember to bring into the present, for the sake of our future, the saving events of the past.

The where and how of belonging may be less important than the constant thread that keeps Christ at the centre of all that we are and all that we do.