Today has been a day of great hope and Joy.
This morning I heard the resounding traditional call in church:

‘He is risen!’
‘Hallelujah, he is risen indeed!’

To be part of a church excited bu the hope of a risen and living Jesus was just a joy.

The rest of the day with my immediate family and then with Aunty Sarah and Uncle Andrew, Rachael, JT and Emily added even more joy to the day.

Easter day is always a highlight of my year and spending it with my family has been excellent.

As I reflect on my day, however, it is lined with a slight tinge of sadness as my mind wonders ahead to next year. I guess this will be my last year sitting in the congregation on Easter Sunday at St Marks. As I look ahead I wonder how things will be different, what will ordination mean on days like today when I am separated from those I have known for many years?

I am now on a 6 month countdown where I look ahead with something of a challenging mix of Easter hope and fear as I contemplate the road ahead.

I’ve been enjoying the interpretation that the BBC’s The Passion has given.
It has turned out to be a great portrayal and drama and portrays the earthy and gritty Jesus which I have always hoped to meet.
Evangelism UK has done the hard work of collating comments in the press which I find fascinating:

* Daily Express – Page 15 – Hickey – Fresh from plaudits which are already pouring in for his portrayal of Jesus in BBC 1’s new drama The Passion which began last night, actor Joseph Mawle is preparing to star in a new play with a similarly Biblical theme at Islington’s Almeida Theatre.

* The Times – T 2 Page 19 – Greatest Story Told Again – Joseph Mawle, the hard of hearing actor from Soundproof, plays him as meek, mild and hangdog, as self-questioning as Hamlet. That had to be wrong. If He did not believe He was 100 per cent He was right how could He have persuaded everyone else? I longed for the panache of Dennis Potter, who took a grip of this story in his 1969 Play For Today: Son Of Man and made Jesus a political revolutionary. But the proof of the Passion will undoubtedly be its crucifixion scene.

* The Independent – Extra Page 22 – Last Weekend’s TV – Don’t Pass Over This Easter Treat – If you believe Christ is your redeemer I can’t so far see anything in The Passion that would have affronted that faith. And if you don’t, it’s account of the politics of a week that was crucial in world history proved surprisingly gripping.

* The Guardian – G2 Page 31 – The Easter story goes real-time in the BBC’s down and dirty new adaptation – and it’s brilliant. There’s a vitality and realness about the whole thing that you rarely find with this story. A passion, you could even say, in another sense of the word.

* The Guardian – G2 – Page 31 – picture – You could watch The Passion and totally forget that this story was central to a major world religion. And that’s good.

* Daily Telegraph – Page 30 – The Weekend On Television – A faithful retelling? – The programme provided exactly the kind of intelligent and engaging drama you’d expect from a series written by Frank Deasy and produced by Nigel Stafford-Clark.

* Daily Star – Mike Ward On Telly – I must confess the whole thing goes way over my head. Try as I might during last night’s opening episode, I couldn’t see beyond a load of identical-looking beardy blokes in bits of old sack.

* Daily Express – Page 51 – Television Express – Gritty take on Easter epic – A lavish enterprise with the production values of a feature film and a cast of known faces from the small screen who fit remarkably well into grimy biblical garb, it is clearly a serious attempt to set the Passion story in a convincing historical context, aiming at believers and not-believers alike.

It also seems that the BBC have decided to repeat the first 3 episodes on Sunday afternoon before screening the final part on Sunday evening.