Easter Day Year B
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year B
Description
Easter Day
Isaiah 25.6-9
1 Corinthians 15.1-11
John 20.1-18
This Gospel reading is not, as one writer has suggested, ‘a sanitized story about a trip to a garden and a lovely surprise’. If Easter is in any sense the happy ending after a sad story, that is the least important thing about it. It is not primarily an ending, but a beginning. It is the start of God’s new creation.
Line up John 20 alongside John’s prologue (1.1–18). The themes come full circle: light and darkness, new life ‘in’ the Word, the right of Jesus’ followers to become children of God (in v. 17, for the first time, Jesus calls God ‘your Father ... and your God’). The later scene with Thomas echoes 1.18: the Son has unveiled the invisible God. John 1 echoes Genesis 1; in John 20, God’s new day has dawned. Twice John reminds us that it is the first day of the week...
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year B by N T Wright