ANY devotional study for Holy Week and Easter should dive deep into their timeless themes while bringing them alive for a contemporary audience. One of the many strengths of this resource is how well it delivers on that challenge. Indeed, Joanne Woolway Grenfell, Adam Atkinson, and Ali Mulroy’s theological, literary, and artistic gifts make for a highly valuable study guide, which deserves a wide and engaged readership.

At the heart of this short book is one of the abiding biblical questions: “Who do you say I am?” Jesus asks his disciples this question in the three Synoptic Gospels. The authors remind us that Jesus asks it of us, his hopeful, stumbling followers, too. By anchoring the question and their own meditative responses to it through John’s account of Holy Week and the resurrection, the writers remind us that our response to Jesus is urgent. John’s account of his death and resurrection is rich with beautiful phrases and imaginative flourishes. It provides a magnificent platform for these artistic, poetic, and theological responses.

Offering meditations for each key moment of Holy Week, as well as for the first three Sundays of Easter, this book will be great food for those who preach and lead services across this pivotal time. Mulroy, besides being a parish priest, is a portrait artist of note. Her art — which accompanies each meditation — provides a series of scenes from her patch in Bethnal Green. They are exceptionally good: capturing a contemporary dynamic milieu that chimes with the hubbub of the first Holy City, the Jerusalem that Jesus knew.

© ali mulroy 2024The illustration by Ali Mulroy for the second of two Maundy Thursday reflections in Who Do You Say I Am?

Adam Atkinson, the Bishop of Bradwell, provides poems and prayers for each meditation. The prayers — as many of us who write such things know to our cost — do stray at times into the preachy. Some could be trimmed. The poems, all sonnets, are stronger. Sonnets are, by tradition, love poems, and I enjoyed how he takes the form and, after Malcolm Guite, finds words to speak into the horror and hope of crucifixion. Woolway Grenfell, the Bishop of Stepney, anchors each day with a reflection on John’s Gospel as well as the art and poetry that her co-writers provide.

This is very much a city/urban book, as reflects the authors’ ministries. I do wonder how well it will resonate with more suburban and rural church communities. None the less, the compassion, wisdom, and insight of the authors, working in concert, is a genuine pleasure. I warmly commend it.


The Ven. Rachel Mann is the Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, in the diocese of Manchester, and a Visiting Fellow of Manchester Met University.

Who Do You Say I Am? Lent and Easter reflections for a holy city
Joanne Woolway Grenfell and Adam Atkinson
Ali Mulroy, illustrator
Canterbury Press £13.99
(978-1-78622-569-6)
Church Times Bookshop £12.59