OUR LECTIONARY REFLECTIONS for April encompass Palm Sunday and three weeks of readings for Easter. I found these scriptures deeply moving as they presented Jesus of Nazareth through different eyes and in different contexts.
One spring many years ago, our small Mennonite church near Chicago centered our worship services from Easter to Pentecost on stories of Jesus’ resurrection. It was my first experience of “Eastertide,” and I never forgot it. Each week we focused on a different resurrection account in the New Testament—one from each gospel (two from Luke) and 1 Corinthians 15. Comparing different perspectives, our services highlighted the many witnesses to a singular, unexpected event that can help convince us today that this crucified prophet has been resurrected and exalted as Messiah and Lord (see Philippians 2:9-11).
Two more thoughts: First, in the passages below we unfortunately miss the terrifying events after Palm Sunday, during which Jesus confronts the Powers—both high-priestly and Roman—that want to get rid of this “King of the Jews.” Jesus was crucified as a political threat. To accept the risen Jesus as Lord is to take on the (often political) struggle between good and evil in our current contexts.
Second, our faith is not just spiritual. Jesus’ bodily resurrection speaks of the value God places on physical bodies. Though Jesus was black-haired and brown-skinned, God loves all shades and shapes of bodies. Through Jesus’ resurrection, we catch a glimpse of the age to come. It may indeed be, as C.S. Lewis characterizes the new Narnia, deeper and more solid than our present age.
April 5
A Risky Donkey Ride
Isaiah 50:4-9; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 21:1-11
ABOUT 40 YEARS after the original “Palm Sunday” in Jerusalem, the Jewish historian Josephus wrote a history called The Wars of the Jews. In it, he described the welcome received by the Roman Emperor Vespasian when he returned to Rome after destroying Jerusalem and its temple.
The Romans were so fired up that many exited the city to meet him: “The whole multitude ... came into the road and waited for him there.” With great joy, “they styled him their Benefactor and Savior.”
In contrast, Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem parodies the ancient tradition of a victorious king welcomed home to his city after a battle. Rather than riding a white horse, the Middle Eastern Jesus borrows a donkey (Matthew 21:2). Although a large crowd of outsiders created a path for him with cloaks and branches, Jerusalem’s citizens have one startled response: “Who is this?” (verses 8, 10). But even his followers do not call him a king; he is “the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee” (verse 11).
Rather than a victorious welcome such as Vespasian received, Jesus knows he is raising the stakes in a land as sharply divided as our own. He must nonviolently challenge the corruption that lies at the core of its leadership—Caiaphas and other chief priests who negotiate with Rome for their own interests. Jesus of Nazareth knows his dramatic action will likely result in his execution, but to honor God, he must take the risk.
Only after these Jerusalem events can the “daughter of Zion” go back to her scriptures and find texts such as Zechariah 9:9 where “your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey” (Matthew 21:5). Or the song of victory in Psalm 118: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord ... bind the festal procession with branches!” (verses 26-27).
Later believers can sing a hymn to their Messiah Jesus (in Philippians 2:6-11), who had “humbled himself to the point of death” and then became exalted above every other human as Lord.
April 12
Intimate Encounter
Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18
UNLESS YOU HAVE walked with Jesus during this tumultuous week of a memorial supper, a night’s struggle with fierce temptation, an arrest, two trials, and an excruciating execution, you cannot appreciate the wonder of this Johannine resurrection. Women feature prominently in all resurrection accounts in the gospels, but this touching encounter of Mary Magdalene with Jesus is my favorite.
I have often wondered what clothes the risen Jesus would have worn coming out of the tomb. His graveclothes were carefully left behind. What did he put on?
Between the lines, I read a solution. Before anyone had arrived, Jesus must have found the gardener’s shed, with an old tunic among the tools. No wonder Mary thought he was the gardener (verse 15)!
Hearing her teacher call her name, Mary doesn’t care about worn clothes. In this moment, Jesus’ prophecy from John 10 is fulfilled: The Good Shepherd “calls his own sheep by name” and “the sheep hear his voice” (verse 3). He finally must tell Mary not to “cling” to him.
This intimate encounter makes me wonder if many sources behind the fourth gospel came from women. They figure prominently throughout this narrative, and Jesus frequently takes on “women’s work” of feeding people or washing their feet. Long ago I read that teenage girls were often shepherds in that culture.
However, only men could preach publicly. Elsewhere, we find Peter doing something he never would have imagined—preaching the resurrection to the household of a gentile Roman centurion! What miracle did it take for the Jewish Peter to open his sermon (Acts 10:34) in the presence of a leader of the occupying army with “God shows no partiality”!
What’s your favorite resurrection story? What kind of resurrection God do you worship?
April 19
Valuing the Body
Acts 2:14, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
ALTHOUGH BIBLICAL WRITERS never speak of bodily resurrection before 200 B.C.E., we find hints of a longing for life everlasting in poetry such as Psalm 16, attributed to David. “You do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful one see the pit” (verse 10). Jews of Jesus’ day assumed a general bodily resurrection only at the end of time (see Daniel 12:1-3).
Seven weeks after Passover, Peter’s Pentecost sermon must have shocked his audience when he used that very psalm to announce that a descendant of David—the one they had crucified, no less—had risen from his tomb! But Peter cannot present the physical evidence, for Acts 1:9 records Jesus’ ascension to heaven. We must turn to John 20 for that demonstration.
Many Christians today do not seem to believe in bodily resurrection. At funerals, I often hear condolences about the soul or spirit of the deceased “going to heaven” or already with Jesus. But John 20 tells a different story.
The risen Jesus asked Mary Magdalene not to hold fast to him, implying she had rushed to her embodied “Rabbouni” with arms wide open (John 20:16). Later the same day, Jesus visits a group of disciples in a locked house. He proves his identity by showing them his hands and side torn by Roman weapons (verses 19-20). A week later, with Thomas now present, Jesus points to his scars and asks Thomas to touch them (verse 27). To me, this looks like bodily resurrection! Our Creator God must highly value our physical bodies of all shapes, colors, and genders.
April 26
Reading Backward?
Acts 2:14, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35
THAT SPRING, JERUSALEM didn’t need social media to get the word out. In twos and threes and roomfuls, people were absorbing an impossible fact: The prophet Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and buried, was now alive—walking, talking, and bearing scars of mortal wounds on his body.
The city itself buzzed with the news! Cleopas and (probably) his wife were walking home to Emmaus, trying to figure out what was true and what was fake news (Luke 24:13). They were overtaken by a stranger who knew his scriptures front to back. Oddly, he used these scriptures to explain last weekend’s events (verses 30-31). But it was not until he was invited for supper that the pieces fell into place. The rabbi took the bread, blessed it, and broke it—and in that familiar act they saw his wounded hands.
All four readings for this Sunday invite reflection on how the past and present can only be understood as an intertwined whole. The disciples and scripture writers were beginning to weave together the person of Jesus, now raised from the dead, with the longed-for Messiah of the Hebrew Bible.
Psalm 116 reads like someone recovering from a serious illness, but it could have been Jesus’ first prayer after wakening from death. Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2 is peppered with quotations from the prophet Joel, psalms of David, and 2 Samuel—evidence of the disciples’ intense scripture study over those seven weeks.
Years later, the letter of 1 Peter is addressed to exiles living in five provinces of the Roman Empire. They are marginalized, suffering people who have fled from their native villages and are living as insecurely as refugees and undocumented immigrants today. Amid many assurances of their high spiritual status, Peter makes this extravagant statement: “[Christ] was destined before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake” (1 Peter 1:20 in The Jewish Annotated New Testament).
Reta Halteman Finger, a retired associate professor of New Testament and freelance writer, lives in Rockingham, Va.
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