Imagine you hold in your hands one of the nails used to crucify Christ. Do you accept responsibility for your part in his death, or do you blame another?
The Nail makes you part of the Passion. Moving, first-person accounts from eye-witnesses and active participants place you right in heart of events leading to the crucifixion and beyond.
Each account can be used as a personal reflection, a focus for group discussion, sermon base or even performed as a monologue. As each witness tells their story they give their excuse for passing responsibility for the crucifixion nails to another who then takes up the story.
With the relevant Bible text included, each account concludes with a prayer of confession that lays bare our own hearts as well as those of the Bible witnesses. The final chapter raises the all-important, life-changing question for ’The Nail’ characters and for us: ’will you let Jesus forgive you?
Helpful guidelines give you practical suggestions for using ’The Nail’ as a new and thought-provoking group study or inclusion in a Good Friday liturgy.
Innehållsförteckning
Introduction xi
Part One: Friday Afternoon
1 Peter 3
2 The Roman centurion 11
3 Pontius Pilate 19
4 Caiaphas 27
5 Judas 35
6 Mary Magdalene 43
Part Two: Friday Evening
7 Pilate’s wife 53
Part Three: Towards Easter
8 Will you let Jesus forgive you? 63
Suggestions for using this book as
a study course in Lent 69
Om författaren
Stephen Cottrell is the Bishop of Chelmsford and was formerly the Bishop of Reading. He has worked in parishes in London and Chichester, as Canon Pastor of Peterborough Cathedral, as Missioner in the Wakefield diocese and as part of Springboard, the Archbishop’s evangelism team. He is the author of The Things He Carried (2008), a book of Lent and Holy Week meditations and a follow-up of reflections for Easter Day, The Things He Said (2009)