The Second Sunday of Easter – Commentary for April 12

Last updated on: April 7, 2026 at 7:55 am by Bruce Epperly

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The Second Sunday of Easter – Commentary for April 12 2026-04-07T07:55:38-04:00 Bruce Epperly

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The Second Sunday of Easter – April 12, 2026
Bruce G. Epperly

Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 16
I Peter 1:3-9

How shall we practice resurrection this year? Many of us feel like the first followers of Jesus. We experience a world gone mad in which leaders have lost their reason and fellow Christians, believing they are establishing a Christian nation, have replaced the way of Jesus by the way of Trump and have undermined the power of love by their love for Christian and political power.

Still, like the spiritually challenged followers of Jesus, living in their own upside-down word, we must claim the practices of resurrection. We must take seriously the biblical mandates of Easter: Breathe! Think! Expand! Love! These are also some of the themes from this week’s lectionary readings. Though considered a “low” Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter is a “high” Sunday in terms of homiletic possibilities. These passages are miraculous in their openness to divine power, arising in a variety of ways, joining the natural and dramatic, and ordinary and exception.

Easter Sunday’s resurrection stories don’t exhaust the possibilities for resurrection in our lives. We can experience resurrection power in miraculous ways emerging out of our everyday experiences. All is miracle, as Walt Whitman says. We can experience divine resuscitations, breathing with Jesus, restoring spirits and communities in ways we never would have expected, and we can experience God firsthand, touching and being touched by God’s Spirit.

I believe that mainline and progressive spiritual leaders and theologians need to reclaim words like “miracle” in new and creative ways, emphasizing “naturalistic” understandings transformation, energy, new life, and physical, spiritual, and emotional recovery congruent with the vision of an adventurous God moving in the lively interdependent realm of cause and effect. We need to be theologically and spiritually bold, expecting great things from God and great things from ourselves. The world is full of wonders, and we can embrace wonder without affirming supernatural violations of the laws of nature or the existence of a God who operates outside of time and space, showing up only to dramatically change our world. There is a deeper naturalism that arises from the ubiquitous call and response joining God and humankind.

In the Acts reading, Peter proclaims the power of God revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. Death in all its forms, physical, emotional, existential, and communal, cannot defeat Christ or us. Ezekiel’s vision is spot on: these dry bones can live! Dead spirits can rise! Dead congregations can experience new life! Divine power is life-giving power. While Peter’s concepts of divine planning and foreknowledge can be problematic for those of us who see the future as open-ended and relational, we can affirm that God has an unfolding vision that is intimate and immediate, and global and long term. God’s calling through the gift of possibilities and the energy to embody them need not be coercive but can be liberating. Moreover, divine election can be all-embracing rather than exclusive. God’s presence is not homogenous or impersonal, but may be more evident, by God’s choice, in some places than others. Some moments can be Christomorphic “thin places,” as result of the energetic confluence of divine lure, environmental factors, and personal decisions, and can accordingly reveal energy and creativity that is astounding and life-changing, transforming cells and souls alike. We can be little Christs, “shamans of the spirit,” mediating transformative power to heal our world.

Peter’s words open the door to survival after death, another challenging theological pathway for progressive Christians. Despite our need for theological and soteriological humility, the most significant historical and biblical meaning of resurrection involves Jesus’ transcending the power of death and living on as agent and subject on earth and in heaven. Progressive and process theologians have often been far too humble in reflections on the afterlife; indeed, some have made agnosticism and unbelief in survival after death an article of faith! Given the plethora of best-selling texts of near death experiences, offering glimpses of heaven, we need to both humble and hopeful in our preaching and speculation on the afterlife. We are rightfully worried about the temptation of being so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. But, progressive and process theology’s affirmation of the interdependence of life and creaturely creativity enables us to imagine a relational, evolving, and creative afterlife, in which new energies of love and artistry, forgiveness and reconciliation, healing and transformation will be available to us beyond the grave. In claiming the complex interdependence of life and imagining continuity of personal identity in the afterlife, we can articulate an ethics of immortality, affirming that our life choices today, personally and politically, shape peoples’ experiences now and beyond the grave. Though we must recognize that we see in a mirror dimly, we can be both heavenly minded and earthly good. (For more on survival after death, please see Bruce Epperly, “From Here to Eternity: Preparing for the Next Adventure” and “Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed.”)

Psalm 16 connects fidelity to God with a sense of joy and abundance. Focusing on God serves as our spiritual GPS, keeping us on the right path spiritually, relationally, and vocationally. This is not a form of linear acts-consequences theology in which the righteous are always rewarded and the unrighteous always punished, but the promise of relationship that awakens us to God’s path of life. Faithfulness to God does not guarantee success but it opens us to this-worldly wholeness and holiness, and to the experience of divinity amid the chaos of life.

I Peter proclaims new birth, new life, new hope, and personal and communal rejoicing as a result of our faith in God’s ever-living love and fidelity. We can rejoice in our personal and communal trials, knowing God has a glorious future planned for us. The present struggle does not exhaust, nor will it deter God’s vision for our lives. This future comes moment by moment, and over the long-haul as companions in God’s ever-faithful, resurrection love. God is always ready to give us more than we can ask or imagine!

John 20: 19-31 is one of my favorite lectionary readings. On Easter night, hiding in uncertainty and fear, the disciples experience another kind of resurrection. Jesus appears out of nowhere, able because of his resurrection body – perhaps a highly-charged energetic body – to go beyond the limitations of normal human bodies. Jesus encounters his disciples as embodied and still bearing his wounds. He breathes on his disciples, giving them a form of spiritual resuscitation, enlivening them by his power and energizing them for mission. This is John’s Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit to energize, empower, and enlighten. In an interdependent universe, could we be breathing Jesus’ Easter night breath? Can we today inhale divine energy and wisdom with every breath? It is clear that our churches need spiritual resuscitation to expand their mission to seekers, pilgrims, unaffiliated persons as well as to the vulnerable in our community.

John 20 concludes with a portrait of the heroic Thomas, who misses the excitement of Jesus’ resurrection, but stays with the disciples, faithfully opening to what may come. Thomas is one of my theological heroes. He is rightfully agnostic, and so should we, given the many wild and unsubstantiated claims by spiritual leaders today and throughout history. His faithfulness is found in his willingness to participate in the resurrection community, despite his missing the community’s mystical encounter with the Risen Christ. Surely, he felt left out, and yearned for a resurrection experience. But, Thomas did not sacrifice his questioning mind for the sake of going along with the crowd. His agnosticism is an openness to experience, not a closed mind. He willingly opens to resurrection when he encounters the Living Christ. Thomas exemplifies the faith of the scientist, questioning and yet following the evidence wherever it leads. In this time of war against science, medicine, and rational thinking, promulgated by conservative Christians, we need to connect the resurrection’s affirmation of embodiment with the scientific adventure.

John concludes with an invitation to imagine the many textures of Jesus’ life. The fullness of Christ cannot be contained by any text, including our Bible. God is more than we can imagine and so is Jesus. We cannot think small about Jesus; there is more to Jesus than we imagine or contain in the written word. Resurrection expands our minds and inspires unexpected compassion. John’s gospel invites us to be part of the resurrection story and become living witnesses to new life in our worlds. We are writing the resurrection story in our time by our faithful opening to divine resuscitation and willingness to go forth with good news of life-transforming love.

We can practice resurrection each day by listening for God’s call of new life, breathing deeply God’s spirit as we confront the evil machinations of national leaders, and expect great things of God and then expect great things of ourselves and go out and do them. Christ is alive! In us and our congregations, these dry bones can live, and we can be God’s companions in healing our nation and the world.

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Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. He is the author of over ninety books, including his Christological trilogy Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet; Whitehead and Jesus: An Adventure in Spiritual Transformation; and Messy Incarnation: Meditations in Christology in Process and also Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-Human World; and Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries. He is married to Rev. Kate Epperly, D.Min. and lives in Potomac, Maryland.

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