Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: April 12 and 19 2026
Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.
April 12, 2026 – Second Sunday of Easter
Gospel: John 20:29-31
Dr. Raj Nadella, “Preaching Thomas and Embodied Solidarity”
What made Thomas call Jesus God and Lord was not his power but his wounds and scars. It was not the resurrection alone that convinces Thomas of the Lordship of Jesus but the assurance that Jesus did in fact place his body on the cross. For Thomas, the scars represent Christ’s commitment to challenge the power of the empire, to suffer along with the powerless, and stand in solidarity with them.
Ryan Panzer, “Doubting Thomas: A Disciple for a Digital Age”
We live in a culture where we are almost too quick to believe - not in God, not in Christ - but in what we see and read online. In tweets, memes, and TikTok videos, we’re all prone to believing, without verification, to placing our faith in untrustworthy sources.
Laura Jean Truman, “Easter: The Sacredness of a Good Feast”
We carefully read through Lenten devotionals and give up things for forty days, but then rush through Easter as if it’s one day, and never take time to think about what fifty days of feasting could look like for our so-tired souls.
April 19, 2026 – Third Sunday of Easter
Psalm: Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19
Rev. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Undeserving in Michigan”
It is then work of the church to nurture and evoke such practices of thanks that may issue in lives of gratitude. In a life of gratitude, the measure of “deserving” or “undeserving” simply becomes irrelevant. The center of our lives is reconfigured around generosity that need never be coerced, but is always glad and beyond limit or calculation.
Gospel: Luke 24:13-35
Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto, “A Table and a Promise”
Around that table would have been all kinds of different chairs, space for all kinds of people. And piled on that table would be mounds of delicious food, food we ate at our grandmother’s table, that food you imagined just a moment ago. But there would also be some strange food, food you don’t recognize. Food with smells that you can’t account for. Foods you can’t begin to imagine how you would begin to eat. But at that table such strange food is a delightful curiosity, a dish that makes you wonder who else is sitting at this table. When you look to your left and to your right, you see people you’ve loved and lost, people you’ve never seen before but love at first sight, people you wouldn’t have thought would make it through the pearly gates. And that table, that table rings with delight and laughter and joy.
Rev. Paul Lutter, “Hope Has You”
Could it be, as a former seminary professor once said, that the absence of a name in this story is so we can find ourselves in what unfolds there. You also are on the road. You’ve borne witness to a terrible catastrophe. You don’t know what to make of it. All you turn can do is turn toward Emmaus.
