Christ is Risen! Alleluia! The tomb is empty! Alleluia! Death is no more! Alleluia! …Now what?
This is precisely the feeling I think many congregations have in the wake of Holy Week and the celebration of Easter. And even though we all know that technically Easter is a whole season (50 days of resurrection) nothing quite lives up to the hype of the first day, when the Alleluias are fresh on our lips after their 40 day Sabbath. We wonder why the resurrection grows so humdrum so quickly. We worry that our pews aren’t as full the week after Easter. We wonder where everyone goes and what we are meant to do now that we are reminded of resurrection and new life.
Some of these feelings and questions were also on the hearts and minds of the earliest disciples. Once Jesus ascended into heaven, the early church had to figure out what it meant to be the body of Christ on earth without the physical Christ leading them. How did the Spirit of Jesus stay alive and moving throughout time and space? How did this group of people organize and gather and love and serve one another?
In a spirit-filled move, the lectionary (the order of readings we follow for our weekly worship) offers us readings from the Book of Acts during these weeks of Easter. We hear the stories from the early church as they struggled to answer questions about priorities, inclusion, direction, and God’s vision for the church. These will be stories any congregation can learn from, but perhaps these are especially important stories for St. John’s as we live into this time of transition. We will listen and learn from these stories about what the Church did after experiencing the resurrection. We will see how they answered the “Now what?” question as we ponder it for ourselves.
I pray that the season of Easter inspires you to find ways in which the resurrection and new life continue in your life and in the world.
