On Ash Wednesday each year, Christians around the world begin forty days (plus six Sundays) of the season of Lent. This was the focus for the first half of issue 17/6 of With Love to the World. Then, after the pivotal events of Maundy Thursday—Good Friday—Holy Saturday—Easter Sunday, believers trace the fifty days of the season of Easter, until we arrive at Pentecost. These fifty days are the focus for the second half of issue 17/6.
Easter is usually thought of, in contemporary society, as a time for a four-day long weekend—time to travel, Easter camps, the last fling of short-term holidays before the winter cold sets in. And Easter is, indeed, a holiday—in the older sense of “holy day”, when something at the heart of faith is remembered.
But the calendar of the church allocates more than just the four-day long weekend to Easter. The season of Easter stretches over seven weeks, taking those of us in the southern hemisphere from the last balmy days of summer into the time when the icy winds arrive and the temperatures drop. And that extended season, this year, offers us a good opportunity to reflect on the question posed by the story told at the very end of Mark’s Gospel: how is it that Jesus has risen? where is it that we find signs of the risen one?
To equip us to consider such questions, the lectionary replaces, for this time, the stories from Hebrew Scriptures, and provides us with a diet of stories that tell of the church—stories taken from the Acts of the Apostles. One explanation for this is that it reminds us that the risen Jesus was at work amongst the first group of believers in Jerusalem, as they formed community together, and that Jesus was proclaimed and attested as people from that community travelled beyond Jewish territory, into the wider Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) world.
So when we are offered readings from Acts, we might consider two different, but related, sets of questions. The first questions are, What do these stories tell us about how we are to “be church” in our own time? What tips might we pick up about being an intentional community, speaking our experience of Jesus in a way that communicates, performing acts of loving care as a testimony to Jesus? These are good, and helpful, questions to consider.
The second set of questions is more along these lines: What do these stories tell us about how Jesus continued to be present, to be at work, amongst those who had first known him in Galilee? We might wonder how we can discern how Jesus is acting in the community in Jerusalem. Perhaps we see him at work in what Philip does in Samaria, or in the vision which Peter sees in Joppa? in the travels of Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, and other fellow workers in the Gospel, as they preach, nurture, challenge, and equip new followers of Jesus in many places? How does Jesus continue to be at work among us?
This Easter as we read Acts, let us give consideration to both sets of questions: what do we need to do? and, how is Jesus present among us?
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During the season of Easter, you are invited to join an online Bible Study sponsored by With Love to the World, each Thursday, at either 10:00am or 7:00pm.
An Informed Faith 