Lectionary Commentaries for April 12, 2026
Second Sunday of Easter

This week’s passage, John 20:19–31, concludes the main section of John’s Gospel, although an extended chapter 21 follows. In this passage, we see Jesus appearing to the disciples with greetings and messages, showing his hands and side, engaging with the doubting Thomas, and addressing his followers. The Gospel concludes with a statement of its purpose.

Jesus appears to the locked-in disciples, who are inside because they are afraid of the Jewish authorities. Several times, John emphasizes this motif of fear (7:13; 9:22; 12:42; 16:2). This fear is connected to their confession that Jesus is the Messiah; publicly declaring this could lead to expulsion from the synagogue, making faith an act with significant social risk. While it’s unlikely that actual expulsion was happening at this stage due to Jesus’s movement still being small, the Gospel reflects the tension faced by the Johannine community. It interprets these stories as reflecting their experience of alienation and conflict with the Jewish authorities.

In this context, the Gospel’s message is more clear. The community members felt shaken and marginalized because of their faith and confrontation with the Jewish establishment. The Gospel narratives respond to this experience. For example, in John 14:1, Jesus comforts the disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.” He assures them they will not be orphaned after his departure (14:18) and promises the coming of the Holy Spirit, the “Advocate,” who will remain with them forever (14:16).

When Jesus appears to the disciples in today’s reading, his first words are “Peace be with you”—spoken twice—accompanied by showing his hands and side. This greeting offers reassurance to the frightened disciples and the community. Then Jesus declares, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This statement is central in the Johannine Gospel, which emphasizes “the Word,” or Logos, becoming flesh (1:14). 

God sent his Son to save the world (3:16), and Jesus embodied the divine Word, demonstrating divine love, even at the risk of death. His act of service was exemplified in washing the disciples’ feet, and he prayed for their sanctification (John 17:18). On the cross Jesus’s final words were “It is finished” (19:30), signaling the completion of his work. As he is resurrected, he reminds the disciples that they are also sent into the world, continuing his mission of love and salvation.

Jesus then breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” empowering them for their ongoing work. While the full coming of the Advocate will happen later, at this moment Jesus blesses them with the Spirit. Whether this Spirit is identical to the Advocate or not, it signifies God’s presence and guidance. In Jesus’s absence, the Spirit will be crucial for guidance, remembrance, and empowerment.

Jesus further instructs them, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (20:23). This echoes the themes of forgiveness in Matthew and Luke’s Lord’s Prayer, emphasizing the importance of forgiving others, following God’s example of love. However, forgiveness does not mean condoning evil or injustice; it involves offering grace and mercy, with genuine repentance and justice from those who have wronged others.

Mutual forgiveness rests on the foundation of God’s love and forgiveness, which believers experience first. Humans love and forgive because they are loved by God and understand their worth through divine love. This attitude influences how believers relate to others—with mercy, empathy, and compassion—although forgiveness does not erase consequences or negate justice. It is an act of offering understanding and grace, not dismissing wrongdoing.

The scene shifts to Thomas, who doubts Jesus’s resurrection because he was not present during Jesus’s first appearance. Thomas demands to see and touch Jesus’s wounds in order to believe. Later, Jesus appears again, greeting him, “Peace be with you,” and showing his hands and side. Jesus then urges Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe” (20:27). Thomas responds, “My Lord and my God!” (20:29), recognizing the reality of Jesus’s flesh and the truth of his resurrection. Jesus emphasizes that belief is more important than sight, highlighting faith as perceiving truth beyond physical evidence.

The Gospel concludes with its purpose statement: “But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:31). This underscores the Gospel’s goal—encouraging ongoing faith in Jesus as the Christ and Son of God, sent by God to embody divine truth. Following Jesus’s example leads to an abundant life, fulfilling the central message for the Johannine community.

The final statement in John 20:31 serves as the summary and overarching purpose of the Johannine Gospel. Its central theme revolves around Jesus’s true identity and his works of God, which are inseparable from his role as the Messiah. His primary mission is to embody and reveal the truth—specifically, the Word of God—which is fundamentally rooted in divine love. This truth is not merely an intellectual concept but an experience to be encountered through faith.

Importantly, the Gospel emphasizes that this faith is distinct from simple knowledge; it involves a trusting relationship with Jesus and a commitment to follow his teachings and example. Believers are called to walk in his way, embody his truth, and live his life. Such a lifestyle enables them to partake in the abundant life Jesus promises—life filled with meaning, purpose, and divine blessing.

However, this abundant life requires more than passive belief; it demands active participation in the way of Jesus. As Jesus declares in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” His words underscore that he is the path to the Father and the embodiment of divine truth and life itself. To follow Jesus is to walk in his footsteps, embody his love and truth, and live out his mission in the world. This dynamic relationship with Jesus leads to a transformative, abundant life—one that reflects the very nature of God’s love and truth, guiding believers into deeper communion with God and with one another.

This commentary highlights the importance of reading the lectionary passage with attention to how Acts portrays Judeans (Jews) under the Roman Empire. The selection for this week frames the words of Acts 2:22–32 by calling the reader’s attention back to the beginning of Peter’s message during Shavuot, in Acts 2:14a. The Judean festival of Shavuot marked the end of the harvest, seven weeks after Passover. Acts refers to it as the pentēkostos or 50th day. Peter rises during Shavuot and addresses a group of Judeans from across the Roman diaspora who are temporarily in Jerusalem for the festival.

Reading Jews/Judeans in Acts

I translate Ioudaioi (yoo-dai-oy) in Acts 2:14 as “Judeans.” Many translate the term as “Jews,” and some, like the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVue) translate this phrase as “men of Judea.” The NRSVue translation sheds some etymological light on why it can be useful to translate this term here and in other places throughout Acts as “Judean/Judeans.” The NRSVue translation shows one aspect of the complexity of Judean/Jewish identity in the first centuries CE. The term Ioudaioi can refer to people who share ancestry, adoration of Adonai, active cultural practices, or actual residence in Judea. Ioudaioi can refer to people who claim any or all of those descriptions.

I translate the term as “Judeans” here for two primary purposes. The first purpose is to provide a resource for interpreters to avoid anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic readings of the text. Often the characters described in Acts as Ioudaioi are the antagonists to the apostolic protagonists of the movement (hē hodos, the Way) in Acts. This is clear in the early messages in Acts, in which Peter and Stephen blame Ioudaioi for the execution of Jesus the Messiah. 

Later in Acts, Ioudaioi are categorically portrayed as the jealous, bloodthirsty group of people who cause troubles for those of the Messiah movement (the Way) from city to city across the Roman Empire. I want it to be clear that contemporary Jews should not be held responsible for Acts’ portrait of first-century Judeans. Closely examining the narratives proves that Ioudaioi in Acts are less of a competing religion and more of a literary foil.

Translating Ioudaioi as “Judeans” also allows interpreters to consider the function of the characters described as such in the narrative. Reading Ioudaioi this way brings out an irony of Acts: Although the antagonists are described as Ioudaioi, all the protagonists in Acts are also Ioudaioi, and they remain so throughout the entire narrative. 

Some have attempted to reconcile this irony by calling the protagonists in Acts “Jewish Christians,” but that interpretive move presupposes a separation between Jews and Christians that would not be pronounced until at least a couple centuries after the events portrayed in Acts. To that end, Ioudaioi in Acts should not be used to draw historical links to contemporary people, nor to draw an anachronistic definitive line between Christianity and Judaism. 

The story in Acts is messy. As if the complexity of Ioudaioi is not enough, our reading for this week further complicates it. After Peter cites Joel 2:28–32, he turns to his exegesis. Assuming he is addressing the same group, he switches his address from Ioudaioi to Israēlitai, from “Judeans” to “Israelites.” The term Israelitai conjured a mythic past. 

At the time of the writing of Acts and at the time of Jesus, there was not a governmental entity or geographic territory recognized as “Israel” by the Romans. “Israel” functioned as an ideological homeland where David had been king, and it was a source for projecting a collected identity for people whom empires had dominated and dispersed. The evidence for Israel lacking a kingdom or governmental entity is provided earlier, in Acts 1:8, when Jesus’s disciples ask whether he is going to restore the kingdom to Israel. Jesus effectively answers “no.”

What should be clear by this point is that Acts appeals to various nodes of Ioudaioi identity to describe the audience Peter addresses. It should also be clear that Acts wants us to understand Peter’s message within Ioudaioi traditions and texts in the first and second centuries CE. This helps contextualize how Acts has Peter apply Joel 2:28–32 to the life of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Acts’ first prison break

Peter declares that despite God performing mighty works and signs through Jesus, he was executed with a death instrument reserved for people who were enslaved or of low status. Peter blames the death of Jesus on the Jerusalem Judean judiciary who had been empowered by the Romans. Acts has Peter acknowledge a historical fact: The Romans, those outside of the law (anomōn), are the ones ultimately responsible for lawlessly lynching Jesus. He says that it is their hands that do the despicable deed.

To this grave miscarriage of justice, God responds by overturning the layered violence directed toward Jesus of Nazareth by raising him from the dead. This, for Acts, proves God’s ultimate plan that the power of life has the final say over the pangs of death.

Peter quotes Psalm 16, demonstrating again that Acts wants its audience to interpret this story through the lens of Ioudaioi texts and traditions. One important feature of this quotation is the reference to hades, which the King James Version translates as “hell.” Although more contemporary understandings of hell are the products of imaginations that arise later than Acts (and later than the New Testament, for that matter!), it is worth noting that within both Ioudaioi-specific traditions and Ioudaioi traditions influenced by Greco-Roman traditions, hades or sheol was understood as a holding place, and more nefariously as a place of confinement, a carceral space, a prison.

Recent scholarship has highlighted how ancient prisons were subterranean, so there was a connection, at least mythologically, between imprisonment and death. Acts is not shy about its understanding that Jesus was shackled by death (thanatos, 2:24) and incarcerated (temporarily) in hell (hades). To this reality, God stages a prison break, which is a foreshadowing of what God will do throughout the book of Acts. God abolishes (lusas, 2:24) the shackles of Jesus’ incarceration through resurrection. 

Remembering that Jesus explains what the Spirit anointed (echrisen) or “christed” him to do according to Luke-Acts is significant here. One of the tasks he is anointed for is to proclaim abolition to the prisoners (kēruxai aichmalōtois aphesin, Luke 4:18). So when Peter notes that David the Psalmist foresaw the resurrection of the Anointed One (christou, Acts 2:31), we should see that for Acts, this event signals the resurrection of Jesus, the one anointed to proclaim abolition to prisoners. Such is a paradigm for Luke-Acts, and it should be a guidestar for interpreters of Acts. The bottom line is that the God of Judeans breaks people out of prisons and, in the process, breaks the prisons themselves.

Select Bibliography

Megan Henning, Hell Hath No Fury: Disability and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature (Yale University Press, 2021).

Matthew Larsen and Mark Letteney, Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (University of California Press, 2025).

Mitzi J. Smith, The Literary Construction of the Other in Acts of the Apostles: Charismatics, the Jews, and Women, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Pickwick Publications, 2011). 

Christopher Stroup, The Christians Who Became Jews: Acts of the Apostles and Ethnicity in the Roman Empire (Yale University Press, 2020).

Jeremy L. Williams, “Bible and Racial Violence,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible, Race, and Diaspora, ed. Mitzi Smith, Raj Nadella, Luis Menéndez-Antuña (Oxford University Press, 2025). 

People are not sure what to think when they are asked questions like, “Do you want to be close to God?” or “How will you grow in trust and intimacy with God?”¹ The answer sounds too simple to be true: Read the Psalms. Over and over. The language, and the mind and spirit behind the language, creates just this closeness, this tender intimacy. 

Psalm 16 can do this work for us, as the psalm itself is witness to that work having been done in someone, and in the many someones who’ve prayed, sung, chanted, and pondered these words for centuries. The words of our final verse are unmatched when it comes to simple eloquence, the single-minded articulation of the benefits of sticking close to God. When we repeatedly affirm in prayer, 

You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore (verse 11),

we begin to experience that joy. We’re on the right path.

From various angles, the psalm explores this life lived close to the heart of God, asking, “What is good? With whom do you hang around? Where is your trust placed? Are you content?” Our society, perversely, describes the “good life” as precisely what the church has warned us are the “seven deadly sins”: envy, greed, sloth, anger, gluttony, pride, lust. But they are still trouble, leaving us hollow. Our psalm, like Psalm 73, makes plain that our only good is God.

Oversimplifying things? The great saints have taught us what they learned: Gradually shedding other goods until there’s nothing left but God is the fullness of life, the experience of complete joy.

What company do we keep? Verse 3 names the holy, noble ones. We might think of a friend as “someone like me, someone I enjoy.” In ancient times, Aristotle suggested that a friend is someone who makes you wise. St. Augustine said a friend is someone who helps you to love God. As I try to pray, what impact do the people around me have on my praying, and on my life?

Verse 4 warns against adhering to false gods. If we recall that a god is whatever we cling to, whatever we think will deliver us and bring the good life, then we begin to notice many gods clamoring for our attention, crowding out the one true God. Fawning after what isn’t God is the “multiplication of sorrows.” We have plenty of sorrow anyhow, without augmenting it by the sneaky griefs we bear when chasing after what promises to alleviate sorrow but cannot.

Surely we hear an echo here of Genesis 3: Adam and Eve seize the fruit, and then God explains the struggles and pains that will ensue, not as God retaliating against them for sinning, but as the inevitable outgrowth of what life at odds with God the creator will be like.

These “boundary lines” that have “fallen in pleasant places” (verse 6) aren’t about luck or good real estate investments. It’s all about being content. When Israel entered the promised land, the property was divided up by lot, as they perceived that God was giving the whole nation enough land—and here’s your part. Not wishing for the other guy’s plot of land, but accepting what you have, only then do you realize you do have more than enough. Desire and envy are nothing but fear of insufficiency. But God is always sufficient. Even if we only have a little.

Verse 7 envisions a benefit of proximity to God as having excellent “counsel” or “guidance.” Most Christians err by not having all that much to do with God until they are in a pickle or have to make a tough decision—and then they dial up God for some guidance.

But if you’re close to God all the time, you may not get in as many pickles, and the guidance isn’t a one-off bit of advice for what to do in a challenging situation, but a constant moving forward in sync with God. One so close to God isn’t blown about like autumn leaves or a small ship in a storm. “I shall not be moved” is a regular declaration of being on solid footing with God.

In religion courses or seminary, we learn that in the Old Testament there’s no eternal life, no individual resurrection. But is there a glimmer of such hope in this psalm? Could it be that by letting the remarkable, overarching words of this psalm come down to us, we see God affording a peek behind that curtain of death—maybe seeing through the glass not so darkly after all?

What the psalmist experiences is knowing God face-to-face, up close, personally, intimately. Isn’t this what eternal life really is all about? Not the reward for a good life, or the prize for believing, or the payoff for accepting Christ as savior. Eternal life is this, or nothing: that God loves; that we have a relationship with God that is so very precious, not just to us but to God; that death isn’t strong enough to sever it. God’s intense, relentless love for you is such that, even if you die, God’s not done; God wants, even needs it to continue.

As mentioned earlier, verse 11 doesn’t need to be exegeted. We just hear the words, immerse ourselves in the thought, letting it take on its own lovely reality in the soul and body. Cross-stitch this and hang it above the mantel. Get a tattoo running down your arm. Memorize it and make it your mantra. You may hear Mick Jagger singing, “I can’t get no satisfaction,” and in that moment, you respond, with no smugness but only humble joy, “I can.”

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for June 26, 2022.

Living as strangers, sojourners, and exiles in a world larger than one’s imagination can deprive Christian believers of the essence of faith. The Bible reminds us of our faith ancestors in the persons of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Jacob, and that suffering accompanied them as they responded to the call of God (Genesis 12–22). To lose faith and hope in moments of suffering makes God’s promises irrelevant, and as such, having confidence in the promises of God means believers are not exempt from the trials of this world. Hence, Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Jacob did not lose their hope in God but were made stronger in the process. 

In the context of suffering, Apostle Peter writes to exhort, encourage, summon, and plead with ancient and contemporary Christians to never lose or neglect their hope in Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world (1 Peter 1:3–4). In a world where people are dying each day due to wars, natural disasters, various forms of sicknesses, lack of proper healthcare, and with Christian leaders preaching false ideologies, the message of the apostle Peter holds power and assurance that the only hope is in the one who rose from the dead. The one who sits in heaven at the right hand of God, the Father, is the foundation of human hope. 

The question embedded in 1 Peter 1:3–9 is simple: Where is human hope if it is not in Jesus Christ? In Jesus Christ, God acted to save the human family, as well as to offer continued hope throughout salvation history until the second coming of Jesus. Hence, the apostle Peter exhorts Christian believers to respond faithfully to God’s actions in Jesus Christ and calls on believers to live morally, ethically, and spiritually in this world. Right living in a hopeless world means modeling oneself as a true disciple of Jesus Christ by not neglecting the gift of salvation (Hebrews 2:1–4). In a hopeless situation, it is possible—and, at times, even easy—to drift away from faith because human souls need an anchor.

Peter’s audience probably wondered where God was as they were confronted with suffering, trials, and tribulations. In the Global South—that is, Africa, Asia, and Latin America today—Christians face all kinds of painful circumstances, such as hunger, disease, death caused by HIV/AIDS, cultural oppression, ethnic fighting, and human animosity, which can metastasize into violence against children, women, and the powerless. Amid all these calamities, Christian believers will long for peace, and the New Testament, as the book of hope, always provides answers to the true nature of faith and salvation. 

The apostle Peter calls on despairing Christians to look to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit as the only source of hope, peace, and eternal love. In other words, people are used to praising God when things turn out good, but the message of Peter is that in trials, hopelessness, sickness, and tribulation, Christians should continue to praise God. 

The reason Christians praise God amid trials is that God gave the world a redeemer in the person of Jesus Christ. All who believe in Jesus and call on his name shall not perish but have true life in this world and the eternal heaven (Romans 10:13; 1 Peter 1:3–4). The message of Peter assures Christians that faith in Jesus Christ is a living legacy that ushers them into their heavenly home. When Christians lose hope, they will forfeit their legacy of faith and their eternal heavenly inheritance. 

In the 21st century, many churches have led people into thinking there is no God, and even no need to repent of their sins and receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Ideologies and rationalization of sin have become rampant in the church of our time, with many Christians compromising their faith by becoming complacent and accommodating of all forms of false teachings. The message of true hope needs urgent attention and must be taught in all contemporary congregations, and people must be taught never to succumb to fear, trials, or temptations, but to know that in suffering we experience God, Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, the hymn of hope is sung, reminding Christians of the benefits of salvation and resurrection. Faith in Jesus Christ assures believers that a new relationship is made possible by the shedding of the blood of the Lamb of God, and that in our new relationship, we go through trials and heartbreaks. In a word, suffering does not mean the absence of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Instead, the presence of God is manifested through the hardships we endure in the world. 

As justified believers and citizens of heaven, Christians have peace, a gift made possible through grace. Apostle Paul goes on to say, “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:3–5).

The impetus for Peter’s words are that God is present in and through the suffering of believers, and through the power of baptism, Christians are shielded from inner pain, and their souls are kept safe by the hand of God. In the here and now, as in the eschatological times, God is at work. Salvation is not just a future reality, but is always in the present tense. 

In the early 1800s, hymnwriter Edward Mote penned a song that begins, “My hope is built on nothing Less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Indeed, it is in Jesus Christ that we have hope, security and life everlasting. All in all, Peter assures Christians that suffering has a purpose, planting people on a solid ground and confirming their faith, spirituality and essence of being a heavenly citizen. 

As Jesus suffered on the cross, endured the pain of the grave, and rose from death on Sunday morning, Christians should not fear going through suffering. For without suffering, pain, sorrow, headaches, and trials, there is no resurrection. Through resilience and overcoming worldly pain, God will always come true, and that is the essence of Peter’s message (1 Peter 1:9).