Sunday Stretch: Vol. 30

Start off your week with a grounded take on Bible, prayer, the world, and your life ...

Hi Readers,

How are you feeling on this first Sunday after Easter?

I have to tell you, I am so grateful to be where I am today - and not in the place where I was 9 years ago, serving my first call in Glenview, Ill., just outside Chicago.

I don’t say that because I don’t miss the dear people of St. Philip Lutheran Church, or because I don’t have such incredibly special memories of our time together.

Rather, I say it because of my own personal growth - and the ways that God has continued to reveal to me a Gospel that is centered on the Cross, and decidedly not on human glory.

9 years ago, I approached the first Sunday after Easter with a manic entrepreneurial zeal. I looked toward my little Lutheran Church, where I’d replaced a pastor who’d been removed for sexual and financial misconduct - a church battered by some of the worst that organized religion can do - and I felt a desperate sense of mission. We had to get our finances in order. Heck, I needed to get paid or we couldn’t afford our rent!

The Chicago-area megachurch, Willow Creek, home to founding pastor Bill Hybels, was hovering just around the corner, where they were building a new campus less than a mile from my church.

Many of us started to see “Willow” with a mix of impending, shadowy doom - and somehow also a model that we should be following.

We put in screens and slideshows. I preached in sermon series. We started a plethora of programs, the best we could.

Ultimately, though, we weren’t “Willow.” We were St. Philip. And God had called me not to corporate church but to relational growth, on a trajectory that was flat but sure.

All that to say - I remember those first few first Sundays after Easter as a Pastor. Around the same time when I was having babies and dealing also with pregnancy loss, I was running myself (and probably my churches) kind of ragged. We’d just done six weeks of Lent and Lenten suppers, which had been preceded by Christmas Eve and Easter. We all probably needed a break that first week after Easter.

But, following the instructions of too many church-growth hucksters, I thought we had to “capitalize on the momentum of Easter,” even if St. Philip maybe had two visitors for Easter who weren’t relatives of regular churchgoers. We had to build the campaign - special music - growth - money!

Ugh. The best intentions. I know so many of us have had them.

Still, this first week after Easter, on Easter Monday on a rare balmy spring day in Minneapolis, I jogged down to the lake. Huffing and puffing, I was surprised at the sense of relief and calm that came over me as I looked out at the lapping water near the shore, where the ice and snow that blanketed the rest of the lake had mercifully melted away.

I was so happy just to be back here again. To breathe in and out. Maybe that’s all God asks of us in this post-Easter season.

Jesus is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!

Let’s get to the texts.

Here’s a photo from one of those first Easters at St. Philip. We even had an Easter egg hunt!

Bible Stories

Acts 2:14    But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.

Acts 2:22    “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know—  ²³ this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.  ²⁴ But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.  ²⁵ For David says concerning him,

‘I saw the Lord always before me,

for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken;

²⁶ therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

moreover my flesh will live in hope.

²⁷ For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One experience corruption.

²⁸ You have made known to me the ways of life;

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’

Acts 2:29    “Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.  ³⁰ Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne.  ³¹ Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying,

‘He was not abandoned to Hades,

nor did his flesh experience corruption.’

³² This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.

There is so much joy in this passage. And it’s a testament to forgiveness and really - to new life and resurrection - that Peter can stand here and preach so boldly even after we know that he denied even knowing Jesus in the wake of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.

I also notice here that Peter is speaking, notably, to “the 11.” Judas Iscariot is no longer a member of the group.

Change is tough. Our lives and our relationships change over the years. This doesn’t mean that God won’t find redemption even for Judas in the end, but it does mean that Judas’ purpose and time as one of Jesus’ disciples was over. The group had to rebuild and go on in the wake of such a devastating betrayal and loss of trust. Go on they did, as witnesses to the the resurrection.

Questions to Ponder

Why do you think Peter chose this moment to make the connection from David to Jesus?