Easter

Easter is the Christian season in which the church contemplates Jesus’ resurrection and the Realm it reveals. In the reading of Acts, resurrection is not an isolated conclusion: it leads into the ascension, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the creation of a prophetic community, and an expanding mission. The season’s use of Acts can therefore invite congregations to consider how they bear witness to the Realm, while also requiring care not to sever the church’s identity from the Torah, Prophets, and Writings.

Acts in the Easter season

The Revised Common Lectionary assigns readings from Acts each year on the Baptism of Jesus, on the Sundays after Easter, and on Pentecost. These occasions give the book a place of honor in the Christian Year. Pentecost brings Acts 2:1–13 into the congregation’s hearing, while the Easter Sundays can trace what follows: Peter’s interpretation of the Spirit’s outpouring, the response of those who hear, and the shared life of the community.

In Year A, three successive Sundays hear much of Acts 2:14–47. The Second Sunday of Easter appoints Acts 2:14a, 22–32; the Third Sunday takes up Acts 2:14a, 36–41; and the Fourth Sunday turns to Acts 2:42–47. Together, these readings allow the congregation to consider what becomes possible in the wake of the resurrection: a community that receives the message, responds, and practices a common life. Pentecost Day supplies the earlier scene of the Spirit’s coming, bringing the chapter’s opening and its consequences into the same liturgical frame.

That arrangement, however, does not always preserve the story’s sequence. In the lectionary cycle, Acts 2:14–47 is heard before Acts 2:1–13. The resulting order may suggest that the later preaching and community life follow from the resurrection alone, when the book’s presentation also depends on the ascension and the outpouring of the Spirit. One proposed adjustment is to hear Acts 2:1–13 on Pentecost, Acts 2:14–36 on the First Sunday after Pentecost, Acts 2:37–41 on Proper 4, and Acts 2:42–47 on Proper 5. That order restores the chapter’s literary and theological progression in portions suited to separate Sundays.

Resurrection, Spirit, and witness

Acts presents Easter’s significance through a sequence of interpretation and response. At Pentecost, the striking behavior of the gathered believers prompts the question of what it means. Peter interprets the event through a modified passage from Joel, presenting the Spirit’s outpouring as a sign that the last days have begun. The promised Spirit falls on all flesh, and the prophetic vocation extends across divisions of gender, age, and social status: women and men, young and old, enslaved and free. The community is not merely a group that observes an extraordinary event; it is called to share in prophetic witness.

The speech also places Jesus within that end-time horizon. His actions demonstrated the Realm; God raised him from the dead; and the speech invokes David’s authority to interpret Jesus’ place in God’s purpose. David is dead, but Jesus is at God’s right hand. The argument culminates in the declaration that God has made Jesus Sovereign and Messiah. In this account, resurrection opens onto a changed present: the Spirit empowers a community whose witness announces God’s coming future.

The lectionary’s treatment of the chapter makes this theological sequence especially consequential. The Easter readings emphasize resurrection and its results, while Pentecost names the Spirit’s coming. Heard in a coherent order, the passages show these not as competing explanations but as connected moments in Acts’ account of the church’s emergence. The Spirit’s gift gives the community its capacity and vocation; the preaching interprets that gift; and the hearers’ response leads into a shared form of life.

The lectionary’s omissions and choices

Acts is prominent in the lectionary at Easter, but it is not heard there as a continuous narrative. The Revised Common Lectionary appoints only twenty-four passages from Acts across its three-year cycle, and the congregation does not hear the whole story in sequence as it does for most Gospel and Epistle readings. The final assigned reading from Acts is drawn from chapter 19. Chapters 20–28, including Paul’s arrest, arraignment, and journey to Rome, are omitted, even though these episodes disclose the narrative’s ultimate purpose. Acts also ordinarily remains subordinate to the Gospel reading; it speaks as the leading text only when the preacher chooses to give it that position.

A further concern arises on the seven Sundays after Easter. The lectionary replaces the principal reading from the Torah, Prophets, and Writings with a passage from Acts. At the season when the church contemplates the Realm manifested through resurrection, that substitution can imply that Israel’s scriptures are no longer necessary to Christian identity and witness. The resulting problem is theological as well as structural: Acts itself draws on Israel’s traditions, and its account of the church’s mission should not be used to erase the scriptures that inform that mission.

One response is to add a reading from the Torah, Prophets, and Writings that can be heard in relation to the other appointed texts. If a reading must be omitted, the argument is that the Letter or Gospel could be dropped instead. More generally, the lectionary is understood as serving the church’s witness to the Realm, not as an authority to which the church must subordinate every local interpretive need. Where an assigned passage does not correlate meaningfully with a congregation’s situation, ministers may depart from the schedule and preach from another passage in Acts. A sermon series or Bible study can also follow the book’s larger narrative, including Paul’s journeys or the full sequence where time permits.

The expanding community and its ancient setting

The Easter readings belong to a larger movement in Acts from Jerusalem toward the ends of the earth. The mission’s early extension to Samaria is not simply a passage from one religious world into another. Samaritan worship shares a broad tradition with Jewish worship, while also possessing its own version of the Pentateuch, priesthood, and observances. Samaritan tradition locates worship on Mount Gerizim and associates that region with foundational biblical events, including the Garden of Eden, Noah’s ark coming to rest, and Abraham’s offering of Isaac. The communities had tensions, but their history was not one of uninterrupted hostility; periods of tolerance and cooperation also occurred.

When Philip carries the message of the Realm into Samaritan territory, his role as one of the seven indicates that the mission is not an unauthorized private initiative. The apostles’ later arrival further signals the church’s recognition of the outreach. Samaritans receive the message, and the community’s membership expands beyond its previously Jewish composition. The sequence supplies a concrete example of a boundary being crossed while retaining the question of how the church’s authority supports faithful expansion.

Acts later portrays the inclusion of Gentiles through Peter and Cornelius. Luke uses their paired visions to frame the meeting as an event led by God: Cornelius, a Roman centurion and God-fearer who prays and gives alms, is directed to send for Peter; Peter sees animals, some unclean, and hears three times the instruction to kill and eat. The visions are not interchangeable with a simple rejection of Jewish practice. Purity and food distinctions had helped sustain a distinct community and its witness. The narrative instead presses Peter and the church to recognize God’s intention toward Gentiles, and the later reception of the Spirit, speaking in tongues, praise of God, and baptism makes their participation visible. The recurring pattern of Pentecost among Gentiles confirms their full inclusion in the community moving toward the Realm.

That expansion is not a warrant for reading every modern ideal directly back into Acts. The book’s account remains grounded in ancient Jewish and Gentile relations, and contemporary preaching must distinguish the text’s historical world from present-day hopes. At the same time, the portrayal of Gentile inclusion can prompt Christians to give thanks to the God of Israel and seek solidarity with Jewish neighbors, rather than treating Easter as a break from Jewish tradition.

Reading Acts without collapsing its histories

The book’s literary character also bears on Easter interpretation. Many scholars consider the speeches in Acts to express Luke’s theology more than to preserve the exact wording of historical speakers. Peter’s Pentecost address is therefore important not only as a reported speech within the story but as Luke’s theological interpretation of the Spirit, Jesus, and the last days. Readers should distinguish the narrative’s theological work from claims that its speeches are transcripts.

The same care applies to Paul. Luke’s vivid account has shaped many Christians’ knowledge of him, but the picture of Paul in Acts should not be casually equated with the historical Paul known through his letters. Comparing the two representations allows readers to see how Luke shapes the apostle to serve the theology of Acts. Even the narrator’s first-person plural in the account of the journey to Philippi, where Lydia becomes part of the community, has more than one possible explanation: it was once commonly treated as evidence that Luke travelled with Paul, while much recent scholarship understands it as a literary convention of travel narration.

The author’s identity and circumstances remain uncertain as well. The earliest records attaching the name Luke to the Gospel and Acts appear in the second century; although the Bible refers to a person named Luke, it does not identify that person as the author. The book’s composition is commonly dated between 80 and 90 CE, but neither its precise place of composition nor the location of its addressee congregation is known. Its movement among cities, attention to urban life, and engagement with Greek authors suggest an urban audience influenced by Greek culture, without resolving the uncertainties.

Easter as a summons to continuing witness

The lectionary’s Easter use of Acts can make the season more than a remembrance of an event. The resurrection, the Spirit’s coming, and the growth of the community form a connected account of witness that continues across cultural and religious boundaries. The book’s movement from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria toward Gentile settings gives congregations a way to consider where their own witness is directed, while the narrative’s reliance on Israel’s scriptures warns against treating that expansion as a repudiation of Jewish identity.

The sequence of readings matters because Acts asks to be heard as a story, not as a collection of interchangeable proof texts. Restoring the order of Acts 2 clarifies how the Spirit’s arrival, Peter’s interpretation, the listeners’ response, and the community’s common life depend on one another. Restoring the omitted scriptural reading after Easter likewise resists an account of Christian identity detached from the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. Easter’s proclamation in Acts thus holds together continuity and change: the God of Israel raises Jesus, the Spirit makes a prophetic people, and that people is sent to bear witness beyond its first boundaries.