Easter Reality - April 23

Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 97, 99; PM Psalm 115 ; Micah 7:7-15; Acts 3:1-10 or 1 Cor. 15:(29)30-41; John 15:1-11   

There’s something so simple, and yet so profound, about today’s lectionary reading in Acts.

Peter and John are going to the temple—just a regular afternoon, just the daily prayers. And there, at the gate called Beautiful, is a man who has been carried to the same spot every day. He’s not expecting anything miraculous. He’s hoping for coins, for a few acts of kindness to get him through. But God has more in store.

Peter looks at him and says those famous words: “Silver and gold have I none, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”

And he does. He leaps. He walks into the temple for the very first time. A place he’s likely never entered. And the text says that all the people saw him walking and praising God.

A man who had spent his life on the outside—outside the temple, outside the flow of daily life, outside hope—is suddenly restored to wholeness. His body, yes. But also his place in the community. His identity. His joy. He is raised.

The resurrection of Jesus doesn’t just happen once. It happens again and again—in lives restored, dignity returned, relationships renewed, and hope reborn. In that way, resurrection is not just a historical event we remember. It’s a present-tense promise we live by. 

I can’t shake the man being restored to community, how isolated he must have been from the life of those who passed him by every day. And I can’t shake how isolated so much of the world feels from each other, isolated by our own actions, or the false promises of technology to connect us and yet leaving us more disconnected than ever. We are isolated because of ideas, or natural tendencies to care for our tribes, our allegiances to the promises we have believed. Easter undoes this all and restores us to life again. The question for each of us is how can we learn to see the Easter promise as our present reality?

May we carry that hope—not just for ourselves, but for one another. May we be the kind of church that, like Peter and John, walks through the world ready to say: “What I have, I give to you. In Jesus' name, rise.” And may it change the way we see God’s world.

John+

Question for Self-Reflection: How can you learn to see the Easter promise as our present reality?