News for the week of April 4-10, 2024

Well, here we are in the week after Easter. Let me say a huge “thank you!” again to everyone who contributed in so many ways to make last weekend’s events successful. Services on Good Friday evening and on Sunday morning were great, and the kids’ Easter event on Saturday was a delight. I trust that we will continue to see good fruit from all these things and more in the coming days.  I’m hoping you’ve all had a chance to relax and unwind a little after all these activities.

The week after Easter is one of those odd seasons in the church’s life—a little like the week after Christmas, except without the build-up to New Year. It’s quiet, and there is a feeling of decompressing after a time of busyness. In that way, it’s a nice break. At the same time, I sometimes find myself thinking about the amazing and extraordinary things we celebrate on Easter and the relative ordinariness of these days that follow. It’s an odd combination, and one that prompts reflection.

With that in mind, I’m going to go out on a limb and try something a little different this Sunday. Our message is going to look at what happened “After Easter” as the risen Jesus showed Himself to the disciples in various places and times. It’s a fitting subject for this week, and a chance for us to look at some things from the NT that we don’t often put together in a coherent package. I pray that it will be a stimulating and encouraging message for everyone. It has certainly been a good source of study and meditation for me.

One of the challenges with this topic is that none of the Gospels gives as a complete, linear description of all the things that happened on Easter and over the next 40 days. So, we’re going to have to weave threads together from all the Gospels as well as Acts 1 and 1 Corinthians 15. It will be a little like that video we watched last Sunday, which gave us a sense of the kids’ event on Saturday by weaving together pictures and movies from different people’s cameras into a single presentation. The upside is that the composite picture really is helpful for understanding what went on. The challenge is that there’s a lot of stuff to think about coming from different sources. You’ll get a sense of this even from our Scripture reading, which will move back and forth between John 21 and Acts 1.

For those who like to read ahead in anticipation, I have 2 suggestions. If your time is limited, the simpler approach would be to read John 20 and 21 and the first 9 verses of Acts 1. If you’re a keener and you want to explore more deeply, you can add a quick look at Mat 28, Mk 16:1-8, Luke 24, and 1 Cor 15:3-8.  We’re not going to try to read all of these verses on Sunday (whew!), but I will offer a quick summary of the main things we find when we put them together. If you’re a note-taker, you might want to grab a copy of the script this week, and that will save you a lot of writing down which things come from what passage.  

(Next week will be much simpler. We’ll be changing things as part of our Community Day, and I’ll do a short devotional that involves much less reading!)

In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful week. Enjoy that sunshine. And remember, even after Easter, He is still risen!