John 21.20–24 : Wednesday after Easter

On Easter Day, our landscape began in ash. In the days since, colour has slowly returned—not all at once, and not in a single shade. Today’s gospel invites us to notice how resurrection colour deepens through diversity rather than uniformity.

Peter turns and asks Jesus about the future of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” It is a human question, born of comparison and anxiety: What about him? Jesus refuses to play that game. “What is that to you? Follow me.” Resurrection life, it seems, is not colour-by-numbers. Each disciple is given a different hue, a distinct calling, a particular way of bearing light.

John’s Gospel preserves this tension. Peter enters the tomb first; the beloved disciple sees and believes first. Both matter. Neither cancels the other. Early Christian communities may well have wrestled with questions of primacy and authority, each tempted to claim a brighter or truer colour for itself. Penance here lies in recognising how easily difference hardens into rivalry.

John Dominic Crossan and Sarah Crossan help us see how this narrowing happened in the Church’s imagination. Western Christianity came to favour solitary resurrection images: one figure rising alone. Eastern Christianity retained a richer palette: Christ descending into Hades, grasping Adam and Eve, hauling all humanity into life. One image is intimate and personal; the other vast and communal. Both are true—but incomplete on their own.

In our post-Easter practice, this is the moment when multiple colours begin to appear on the page. Earth tones from soil and stone sit alongside greens from leaf and grass, blues from water and sky. Resurrection is not monochrome. It requires contrast, shading, and layering. What looks muted beside one colour may blaze beside another.

Peace emerges when we allow these colours to coexist. Peter is not asked to become John. John is not asked to follow Peter’s path. Reconciliation comes not through sameness, but through honouring difference without fear. The beloved disciple’s testimony does not diminish Peter’s calling; it enlarges the story.

The Easter Church, like the Easter landscape, is meant to be richly coloured. Some encounters with the risen Christ are quiet and personal, like Mary in the garden. Others are cosmic and communal, like Christ breaking the gates of death. Holding both requires humility—the penance of letting go of superiority—and hope for a future where truth is shared, not competed for.

As we add colour to our landscapes today, we practise reconciliation by welcoming shades not our own. Resurrection, the gospel suggests, is most radiant when no single colour claims to be the light, but all are gathered into it.

Journalling Painting

• What colour from your landscape, physical, spiritual and emotional will you add to your Easter response painting today?