Sixth Sunday of Easter

The Sixth Sunday of Easter is a place in the Christian liturgical calendar where readings from Acts bring the expansion of the early Christian movement into focus. The book connects the day with accounts of Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit and, in Year C, with the gospel’s advance from Jerusalem toward the ends of the earth.

Lectionary Readings and Variations

Acts 10:44–48 is appointed for the Sixth Sunday of Easter in Year B. The book proposes reading that passage instead on the Baptism of Jesus, the First Sunday after the Epiphany, in Year A. If worship planners adopt that change, it suggests choosing another passage from Acts for the Year B Sunday, since Acts 10:44–48 would no longer be available there.

The book also observes that the lectionary omits the latter third of Acts. As an alternative for the Sixth Sunday of Easter in Year B, it suggests a passage from that less represented portion, such as Acts 21:17–26, which also concerns the Gentile mission. These recommendations treat the lectionary not as a fixed limit on what the church hears, but as a selection that can be adjusted to bring more of Acts into worship.

Gentile Inclusion in Year B

The Year B reading from Acts 10:44–48 presents Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit as Peter preaches. The Spirit falls upon the listeners; they speak in tongues and praise the God of Israel. They are then baptized, becoming full participants in the community moving toward the Realm. The book calls this episode the “gentile Pentecost,” while noting that the phrase itself does not occur in the passage and that the event does not take place on Pentecost. The description points instead to a recurrence: experiences associated with the Jewish community at Pentecost now occur among Gentiles.

Jewish believers are present as witnesses, and Acts 11:12 reports that six accompanied Peter. Peter asks whether anyone can withhold baptismal water from people who have received the Holy Spirit just as the Jewish believers did. The parallel affirms Gentile participation while also identifying the Jewish experience as the originating pattern. The book reads this as a two-sided invitation: Jewish prejudice against Gentiles is challenged by the equality of their experience, while Gentile believers are called to respect the Jewish community from which the movement arose.

Witness Moving Outward in Year C

The Year C readings from Acts on the Sundays of Easter trace a larger geographical and communal movement. By the Sixth and Seventh Sundays, the sequence has followed the call of Saul and the beginnings of the Gentile mission toward fully authorized outreach to Gentiles. The Sixth Sunday reading is listed as Acts 16:9–15, but the book recommends Acts 16:6–15 as its more appropriate boundary. This wider passage situates the reading within the movement toward the “ends of the earth.”

Within Acts 16:6–15, the witnesses cross into Macedonia and arrive in Philippi. On the sabbath, they go to a place by the river where Jews and God-fearers pray, and meet Lydia, a Gentile seller of purple cloth. The cloth signifies means, since purple was affordable only to the wealthy. Through baptism, Lydia and the household she heads enter the community of the Realm. Her appearance also makes the reading notable in a lectionary in which passages centered on women are scarce.

The Day’s Wider Significance

The book presents the Sixth Sunday of Easter as an opportunity to hear Acts as a continuing story of widening participation: the movement carries its witness beyond its initial Jewish community, and Gentiles enter through baptism and the reception of the Holy Spirit. In Year C, Lydia’s household further shows how this expansion takes shape through a woman who heads her own household and makes her own decisions, as well as through a person of means whose resources can serve the community.

The proposed adjustments to the readings reinforce that emphasis. Moving the Year B passage about Gentile reception of the Spirit and selecting another text from the less-heard final portion of Acts would broaden the lectionary’s representation of the book. The Year C sequence, meanwhile, locates the Sixth Sunday within a sustained arc from Jerusalem toward a fully authorized Gentile mission, making the day’s readings part of a wider account of communal expansion and witness.