April 17, 2025

“Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears God and practices righteousness is acceptable to God (Acts 10:34-35)”

This Sunday many of you will hear the story of Jesus’ resurrection from either the gospels of John or Luke. These are among the Easter texts from the Revised Common Lectionary, the Scripture resource used by many preachers in pulpits.  In its three-year cycle the Lectionary alternates the resurrection narrative from the four gospels. Yet the above text from Acts 10-34-43 is part of the Easter texts every year.  

The above text is part of one of my very favorite stories in Scripture. Peter’s declaration that God shows no partiality comes after he received a vision from God of a large sheet containing all kinds of animals, reptiles and birds.  At first, Peter resisted God’s command to kill and eat the offering because he had not eaten, in accordance with Jewish law, anything impure or unclean. Then God commanded Peter again not to “call anything impure that God has made clean (Acts 10:15).” Immediately following this vision, Peter received an invitation to be a guest at the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion. Upon witnessing the faithfulness of Cornelius and the Gentiles gathered at his home, Peter grasped by revelation that “in every people anyone who fears (or more accurately reveres and honors) God and practices righteousness is acceptable to God.”  In my opinion, Peter’s epiphany extending the gospel to the Gentiles is one of the most pivotal events in Christianity.

Yet I wondered why this epiphany was so important by the Lectionary planners that they considered it a story for every Easter Sunday.   And my reflection came to a very simple conclusion. Resurrection is for all.  It is not just for some. It is for all. God’s gift through Jesus Christ of new life, possibility beyond the present, and a hopeful future is for everyone who, as Peter proclaimed, fears God and practices righteousness. Regardless of the ways that individual sin and institutional evil attempt to place human beings, and all creation, in emotional and spiritual tombs of malevolently manufactured finality, Jesus’ resurrection declares that the last word on possibility and destiny belongs to God. We live in a country and world where some seek to deny resurrection for others. But Jesus, and His resurrection, is a gift of God’s grace available to anyone, regardless of race, country of birth, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, physical or mental ability, or any human criteria determining ‘who is in and who is out.’  

Resurrection for all is not a message for us to merely embrace. It is a message for us to embody and proclaim for everyone. Resurrection is for the family of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, illegally imprisoned and separated from his family in Maryland, now the innocent pawn in a show of power. Resurrection is for immigrants, asylum seekers, and political refugees who have experienced or are now threatened with deportation. Resurrection is for our transgendered siblings in fear for their lives due to legislative attacks on their freedom to exist. Resurrection is for our African American communities experiencing racist forged efforts to ‘whitewash’ and erase invaluable contributions to the history, present, and future of the United States, Resurrection is for employees of government agencies, real public servants, finding themselves unjustly and unfairly unemployed. Resurrection is for the more than fifty thousand people killed in Gaza and the families who grieve and mourn them. Resurrection is for the people of Ukraine, engaged in a valiant struggle against now both the aggression of one country and intimidation by another.

The above is but a sample of all who need resurrection of some kind this Easter.  My prayer is that the spirit of resurrection calls us to rise, not only for ourselves, but for every soul, yearning to rise, who are buried in tombs created by hatred, bigotry, injustice and inequity.  When we act in love and solidarity, we participate in the resurrection for all people. This Resurrection Sunday, let us proclaim in word and deed that resurrection is for all people – past, present, and future, for the Shalom of the world.

May Resurrection for you and for all this Easter,

Love and blessings,