Easter 5A 2026

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ The lectionary for the Easter season always seems to be a bit confusing. The first three Sundays all have events that take place on the first day, the day of resurrection. The Fourth Sunday is always Good Shepherd Sunday. Then Sundays five, six, and seven feature lessons from what’s known as the Farewell Discourse in John’s Gospel.
 
Today’s lessons begin with the martyrdom of Stephen, a deacon who is known as the first martyr of the church. His example is supposed to give us strength; his faith is about trusting the God who raised Christ from the dead even as Stephen is pummeled with rocks as religious authorities stone him to death. 

You might have noticed the identity of the man watching the coat closet at this event. Luke, the writer of the Acts of the Apostles, tells us that those wielding the stones laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. This is the entry of the man who will become known as Paul the Apostle into the story of the first-century church. 

The gospels for today and for the coming weeks help us understand Jesus’ words preparing his closest followers for his imminent departure. Today’s lesson takes place immediately after the scene in the upper room. Jesus has shared supper with his friends. He has washed their feet and given them an all-encompassing new commandment—the mandatum novum, as it is known, from whence we get the name for the day we hear it. Maundy Thursday. 

For us, it seems strange. While there are seven Sundays in the Easter season, there simply aren’t enough gospel lessons telling us of post-resurrection appearances of the risen Christ so that we have different lessons for all the Sundays in the three-year cycle. And so, the lectionary prepares us for a coming event. Forty days after the resurrection, Luke tells us, Jesus met with his disciples on a hilltop. He raises his hands in blessing and is raised into the heavens, a day we call the Feast of the Ascension. 

But there’s something else at work in today’s readings. Today’s Psalm is part of the same one chosen for the Feast of Saint Stephen. You probably aren’t aware of that because the Feast of Saint Stephen falls on December 26, when most of us have other things on our minds. Today’s Psalm is also identical to the Psalm the lectionary chooses for Holy Saturday, also a day when we are usually too busy to stop and take notice. Yet this Psalm contains a sentence that Luke quotes from Jesus as he hangs on the cross. I'll let you look for that on your own. 

All this raises a question in my mind. What do we do when it seems that God has gone silent or has even gone away? 

​For a long time now I've been thinking that we seem to be stuck in this Holy Saturday moment. Jesus is gone, and even though we know what is to come in just another day, we don’t seem to be able to move beyond this moment.

While we wait, while we wonder what’s next, there are many opportunities made available for someone or something to come and enter the void in our hearts, in our minds, in our faith. At least one of the temptation stories heard on the First Sunday in Lent tells us that the tempter went away to wait for a more opportune time.

We are living in that more opportune time.

Luke, Paul, Peter, John—all the writers of the books and letters we now call the New Testament—expected the risen Christ to return to earth in their own lifetime. Even now, some 2,000 years later, there are those still expecting the risen Christ to return in a triumphant, military-style victory in our own lifetime. Some are so eager for this moment that they decided to try to bring it about by creating the chaos, the conflict that they expect to happen at that time. Yet faith stands silently while we wait in this moment between Jesus’ departure and his expected return. What do we do?

We remember. We remember ourselves—join ourselves together with Christ in as many ways as we might find possible. That is what the word "religion" means. We join as ligaments join muscles to bone and to flesh for movement, for signs of life, so that even though we stand on this day and time in between, we find life.

The church, that life that Paul calls the body of Christ, is to live into the uncertainty of the moment, just as the risen Christ moved into the uncertainty of death and transformed it into life in ways no one else could do. We are called to live into Jesus’ admonition to Philip, who asked Jesus to show us the Father. I can just imagine the incredulity in Jesus’ voice as he wonders out loud, "Have I been with you all this time, and you still don't get it?”

Then comes the statement that we all fail to live into. Jesus says if you don’t believe because I tell you who I am, then believe because of what you have witnessed. Indeed, you will do what I have done and even more, even greater things than I have done.

I can’t tell you how many times I've stood beside a hospital bed, a grave, or a crying parishioner with the full understanding that I have yet to live fully into that moment. It doesn’t mean I’ve given up. But it does mean I still have a lifetime of work to do. Most of that work is to open myself to be in the time and place where Jesus can fill me with his promised Spirit.
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It’s good to know that I’m not alone.