The joy of Easter continues. Our environment, still filled with flowers, fabric, and fragrance, urges us to “keep the feast,” to sustain our joy and wonder at God’s great gift to us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. During the Fifty Days of the Easter Season, we will stand for all the portions of the Service at which we would normally kneel. We do this as a reminder that because we have knelt in the shadow of the Cross and have been forgiven our sins by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can now stand before God as His children.

This Sunday’s image of the life the risen Christ shares with us is the image of friendship. We are called to serve others as Jesus came to serve; but for John’s gospel, image of servanthood is too hierarchical, too distant, to capture the essence of life with Christ. Friendship captures the love, the joy, the deep mutuality of the relationship into which Christ invites us. The Greeks believed that true friends are willing to die for each other. This is the mutual love of Christian community commanded by Christ and enabled by the Spirit.