Daily Worship Writer - Albert Bogle on Flinching
April 05, 2026
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We thank Laura Digan for taking us through Holy Week week and we welcome Albert Bogle who begins our New Year theme for Easter After The Cross beginning Sunday 5 April.
As our theme begins we will be exploring our first possible response to the cross: flinching. To embrace Easter involves facing the cross. The resurrection does not ‘undo’ the cross — Jesus still bears the wounds afterwards. Each week of this theme we will read a section of ‘The Walk to Emmaus’ that the two disciples make in Luke 24: 13-35. We begin with Cleopas and his unnamed friend, leaving Jerusalem disheartened after the death and burial of Jesus. It has been a traumatic and tumultuous week and they are now literally walking away from it all.
Albert writes, "This week I’ve allowed the thinking of Martin Luther, the 16th century German theologian to help me write these reflections. Luther argued that God is most truly found 'hidden in sufferings' rather than in things that seem traditionally powerful and omnipotent. In the sometimes counterintuitive domain of grace: out of death comes life, from suffering comes power, and from shame and failure comes glory and victory. In the cross we encounter a love that knows no bounds and no limits. Even enormous suffering can’t break this love. I’ve also drawn on Jürgen Moltmann the 20th the century theologian who explored what it means for God to suffer. In the death of Christ he argued God literally experiences the pain of the death of his son. Moltmann explores suffering in the heart of God. While Luther argued that God is revealed in suffering, Moltmann argued that God is affected by it. He moved the cross from being a mask God wears to being an event that happens within the very life of the Trinity. I try to explore this idea in some of the prayers and reflections this week."
You can read all of Albert's prayers in Daily Worship and make sure to check out our Connect Bible Study for this week.
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