Lectionary Commentaries for April 4, 2026
Vigil of Easter

[Looking for a related commentary on Matthew 28:1-10? See this 2026 commentary by Matt Skinner.]

In our often fast-paced contemporary world, Easter Vigil is a countercultural celebration that invites us to slow down and do what is so difficult for many of us: wait. Smartphones and social media have trained our brains to seek the instant gratification of scrolling quickly to the next post or making an impulsive purchase. We often lack the patience to carefully read an entire news article and instead seek just the headlines or latest sound bite. When binge-watching a series becomes boring, we can instantly stream a different story.

Easter Vigil presents a powerful challenge to our “highlight reel” mentality, calling us to journey patiently through God’s ongoing story of dedication to a broken world. It’s a long service that leads us to the resurrection of Jesus, but not before meditating on many Scriptures that attest to both the reality of suffering and God’s long-standing faithfulness to deliver from evil. It compels us to dwell with Jesus in the tomb as we simultaneously await his victory over death. Easter Vigil brings us into the fundamental tension that characterizes Christian life: the reality that Jesus’s death and resurrection have already freed us from sin and death for new life, but we still live in anticipation of the fullness of this resurrection life.

John 20:1–18 draws us into this tension. Yes, it ends with the glorious revelation that the crucified Jesus has been resurrected. But it takes its time getting to this conclusion, leading us first on a winding journey of uncertainty and grief.

The text begins in the pre-dawn darkness with Mary Magdalene venturing alone to Jesus’s tomb. Unlike the other New Testament Gospels, John gives no indication of why she makes this journey. She has only previously appeared in John as a witness to Jesus’s crucifixion (19:25) and has no reason to expect to find anything other than Jesus’s sealed tomb. When she arrives to unexpectedly find the stone removed from the tomb’s opening, she does not go inside but rather tells Peter and the beloved disciple that someone has taken the Lord Jesus from the tomb (20:1–2). The scene is shrouded in mystery when Mary abruptly drops out of it for eight verses.

In the meantime, Peter and the beloved disciple run to the tomb to investigate Mary’s report (verses 3–10). The detailed nature of John’s account—including the race between these two disciples to reach the tomb—contributes to the suspense of the story. Once both disciples reach the tomb and actually enter it, they find Jesus’s body missing but the cloths that had wrapped it still in the tomb. This sight leads at least the beloved disciple to “believe”—presumably, that Jesus had risen from the dead, but the text is not explicit (verse 8). In any case, these disciples do not yet understand how Scripture points to this event (verse 9). Their resurrection faith is still forming when they decide to go home (verse 10).

One of this passage’s many ambiguities is why Mary is subsequently said to be weeping outside Jesus’s tomb (verse 11), when the other disciples have already discovered Jesus’s grave cloths inside and at least one of them has come to believe. Didn’t Peter and the beloved disciple tell Mary about their life-changing experience? Was her grief too strong to hear this news? Like a long Easter Vigil, John’s Gospel lets us linger in the sacred space between mortality and resurrection life, refusing to give easy answers or fast-forward to a happy ending.

Instead, the text draws us into Mary’s grief. It’s the grief we will all know at some point of losing a loved one and not finding immediate consolation or the answers we often seek. When Mary finally looks into the tomb, surprisingly, she sees something the other disciples did not in that very same place: two angels (verse 12). For reasons unknown, Mary alone is granted this encounter with divine messengers. Unlike in other Gospels, the angels do not tell Mary that Jesus has risen and thereby resolve her crisis.

Instead, the drama continues and Mary witnesses something else the other disciples did not: the risen Jesus himself (verse 14). But even this sight does not bring Mary to resurrection faith, as she initially mistakes Jesus for the gardener (verse 15). She only recognizes the resurrected Jesus when she hears him address her by name (verse 16). It is this personal encounter that leads Mary to faith in Jesus as her risen Lord. Jesus’s calling of Mary’s name is also a call to vocation, as he commissions her to announce his impending ascension to others. Mary’s declaration, “I have seen the Lord,” is both the basis of her own faith and her gospel witness to others (verse 18).

This text provides a wealth of insights for preaching and teaching, including by the way it is structured. The slow build-up to the eventual recognition of the resurrected Jesus reflects how growing in Christian faith and discipleship is a process that can have various twists and turns. Moments of disorientation, grief, and joy can all be acknowledged as part of the journey. The beloved disciple coming to faith before fully grasping the Scriptures reminds us that belief and questions about faith can coexist. We all need to continually nourish our faith by Scripture study and gathering around the gospel proclamation that unites even strangers as siblings in Christ (verses 17–18).  

John 20 also reminds us that the gospel reaches people in different ways. Seeing the empty tomb led the beloved disciple to believe (verse 8). Mary needed to hear Jesus address her. The church does well to engage multiple senses and learning styles in its preaching and other ministry activities. Mary’s seemingly unnoticed presence outside the tomb calls us to be attentive to those who live just beyond the doors of our homes or the church building who need the hope of resurrection life. We are called to enter uncomfortable places of grief and loneliness with our neighbors and share tables of mutual blessing with new friends.  

And the text calls us to a patient faith that perseveres when facing uncertainty and retains hope of new life amid ongoing forces of death. The church shares Mary’s vocation to boldly witness to the Living Lord’s presence in our world—even when we can’t perceive it, and especially where it seems impossible. 

The biblical story of The Flood recounts the undoing of God’s original created order and a reorientation of human relationships with God, the earth, animals, and each other.

The ancient context

Babylonian stories of a primordial flood are found in the prebiblical myths of Atrahasis and Gilgamesh, among other ancient texts. These stories depict the capriciousness of the gods who unleash the deluge with little forethought of its devastating effects on the world. After earlier attempts at population reduction were unsuccessful, the deities’ intent is to exterminate their noisy creatures so they can sleep without disruption (contrast Psalm 121:4). 

Only the gracious trickery of one god (Enki) saves one man (Utnapishtim), his family, and his livestock from death by building a boat to survive the coming flood. Their eventual survival and ritual sacrifices come as a great relief to the hungry and thirsty gods, who had forgotten that their human servants brewed their beer and baked their bread!

In contrast with these ironic Babylonian myths, the book of Genesis carefully lays out God’s rationale in sending the flood. Genesis 6:5 explains that “the wickedness of humankind was great” and that “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” Verse 11 redundantly insists, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence … for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.” Then, as now, human sinfulness brings ecological disaster, and all forms of life suffer. 

The reference to “all flesh” may even suggest that animals, like humans, had departed from God’s intended plan or that “fallen angels” had come to earth and contaminated human DNA by begetting offspring with human women (see 6:1–4). This tradition of the Nephilim, named in 6:4, is expanded in the noncanonical book of 1 Enoch. First Peter 3:18–22 and Jude 6 similarly allude to this tradition, with 1 Peter further connecting the waters of the flood with the waters of Christian baptism as a means of salvation. 

Undoing creation

Children’s Bibles routinely depict the image of Noah and his ark full of happy animals, rather than imagining the catastrophic nature of the biblical account. Darren Aronofsky’s 2014 film Noah brilliantly captures the violence and apocalyptic destruction inherent in this story, even as he takes great creative liberties with the details of the narrative. 

Genesis 7 subtly relates the deluge to the Bible’s opening account of creation. Genesis 1:20 provides a liturgical description of the proper ordering of creation out of its original chaotic waters and sweeping winds. Genesis 1:6–7 describes God’s masterful separation of the primordial waters above the dome of the sky from the waters beneath the earth.

The flood narrative erases this original cosmic structure as “the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened” (7:11). The rushing of the primordial waters into the world acts as a radical reversal of the orderly structure of creation in Genesis 1. 

Once the flood has accomplished its deadly purpose, Genesis 8:1–2 specifically notes that the “fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were closed” as God sent “a wind to blow over the earth” (see also 1:2) as a form of re-creation. 

Grace after the flood

After Noah’s family has departed from the ark and offered a pleasing sacrifice, God admits that the flood did not accomplish its intended task of cleansing humanity of its depravity and the evil “inclination of the human heart” (8:21). God affirms, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind … ; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature” (8:21). 

God promises a regular seasonal pattern and blesses the remaining humans with fertility to replenish the world’s population and fill the re-created earth (9:1). God also institutes a new law of responsibility for the sacredness of all human life in 9:5–6. 

The Hebrew Bible’s first reference to a divine “covenant” (berith) is found in God’s words to Noah in Genesis 6:18, and our lectionary text recounts the establishment of this covenant after the flood (9:8–13). Often called the Noahic covenant, this promise from God is in fact addressed to humans—“every living creature” (9:10)—and the earth itself (9:13). As an act of unmerited grace rather than a reciprocal agreement, God binds Godself by this “everlasting covenant” (9:16) that does not require anything on the part of Noah, humans, animals, or the earth. 

God states, “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (9:13). In the Babylonian myth of creation, Enuma Elish, the warrior god Marduk hangs his battle bow in the heavens as a constellation to celebrate his victory over the primordial forces of chaos. Here God offers a weapon of warfare as a sign of comfort among the clouds to remind us of God’s rejection of hostility toward creation and its renewed ecological and moral order. 

Genesis shows concern for animal welfare as God instills a new fear of humans into the world’s animals (9:2). God now allows the originally vegetarian humans, animals, birds, and creeping things (see 1:29–30) to consume meat of all kinds: “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything” (9:3). As the book of Psalms celebrates in 104:10–30 and 147:9, God sustains all creation and provides food and drink for all creatures—humans, domesticated and wild animals, and the birds of the sky—as part of this ecological revisioning. 

Reflection

The imagined darkness within the ark as the flood rages outside may provide an appropriate parallel for those observing Holy Saturday’s dark time of mourning and lament during the Easter Vigil. As the rainbow symbolizes God’s renewed care for the world in Genesis, so Christians may anticipate the Good News of Easter’s first light. 

This text is situated near the end of the prologue (Proverbs 1–9) within the book of Proverbs. This prologue extols the benefits of seeking wisdom to motivate readers as they study the proverbs that follow.  

Theological context

While this lectionary text does not mention God explicitly, it can be understood within the theological framing of the book. Though many debate how theological the book of Proverbs is, I find it fruitful to interpret Proverbs through its key theological statements. For example, the prologue declares, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Proverbs 9:10). This statement offers a guide for understanding the vision of Proverbs: a relationship with God is assumed, and it is the foundation for growing in wisdom. 

Woman Wisdom

The prologue employs a range of rhetorical strategies and metaphors to inspire students to pursue wisdom, and one of the most prominent figures of speech features in Proverbs 8–9: the personification of wisdom as a woman. The Hebrew word for wisdom (ḥoḵmâ) is grammatically feminine, which may have invited the poet to make this personification. The book of Proverbs begins and ends with attention to two fascinating women: Woman Wisdom of Proverbs 1–9 and the celebrated woman in Proverbs 31. 

The original assumed audience of the book of Proverbs may have been largely male, as these women function partly as objects of desire. However, the gender dynamics in this poetry are complex and layered because these women are simultaneously objects of male desire and exemplars of wisdom who offer instruction. They invite their students both to desire and to imitate them. Regardless of the implied audience, Woman Wisdom’s teachings and exemplary practice of wisdom can be instructive for wider contemporary audiences. 

Woman Wisdom calls (Proverbs 8:1–3)

Proverbs 8 opens with an invitation. Wisdom and understanding call everyone around to come and listen to their instruction. Wisdom and understanding are the subjects of the verbs in Proverbs 8:1, which marks this as part of Woman Wisdom’s portrayal. It is noteworthy that she calls to potential students. The pursuit of wisdom is a choice: One is not compelled to learn wisdom, so one must choose to heed Woman Wisdom’s call and seek wisdom.

Proverbs 8:2–3 describes locations from which Woman Wisdom calls, and all these locations indicate that she wants her call to be heard by as many as possible. She goes out to find people where they are so she can offer her invitation to all. 

In Proverbs 8:2, she calls from a hill near a road—a strategic position for reaching passersby. She also stands at the crossroads because such a juncture is another high-traffic spot. In Proverbs 8:3, she strategically stations herself near the city gates. City gates are not only points of entry into the city but also sites of community gatherings. Thus, these gates are another locale for finding as many people as possible. This extended description of locations emphasizes how Woman Wisdom takes the initiative to go to places where she can issue her invitation as widely as possible. 

Nature of wisdom (Proverbs 8:4–8)

Proverbs 8:4 makes explicit what was implied in Proverbs 8:2–3: Wisdom invites all people to learn wisdom. Woman Wisdom then goes on to explain her goal for those who heed her call—learning (Proverbs 8:5). She hopes her instruction will teach her students to live well. 

As she continues (Proverbs 8:6–8), Woman Wisdom describes the character of her instruction and the nature of wisdom. She asserts that she speaks “truth” (Proverbs 8:7), indicating both that she guides her students honestly and that her teaching leads to a life of integrity and faithfulness. She also describes her speech as “right” (Proverbs 8:6) and “righteous” (Proverbs 8:8). These descriptions reinforce that she teaches truth and illuminate how her instruction leads to rightly ordered relationships with God and with one’s neighbors. Living with wisdom has a moral dimension because it shapes not only the individual, but also how one relates to others. 

Woman Wisdom’s emphasis on the truth and righteousness of her teaching exemplifies the focus of much of Proverbs’ prologue. The prologue illustrates why wisdom is worth pursuing. The benefits of wisdom include a life of honesty, faithfulness, and rightly ordered relationships. 

Benefits of wisdom (Proverbs 8:19–21)

In Proverbs 8:19, Woman Wisdom declares that the benefits of wisdom are more valuable than the best silver and gold. She employs a common biblical metaphor that uses agricultural terms—“fruit” and “yield”—to describe the results of the way one lives one’s life. Her comparison illustrates a central aspect of Proverbs’ vision of a life guided by wisdom: Living wisely actually matters. Living with wisdom benefits not only one’s relationship with God but also one’s life in the present and one’s community. Proverbs’ view is that living with wisdom, integrity, and faithfulness improves one’s own well-being and benefits everyone who encounters them. Woman Wisdom declares that these results are more beneficial than material wealth. 

In Proverbs 8:21, Woman Wisdom also asserts that living with wisdom leads to an increase in material wealth. While this is part of Proverbs’ view of wisdom, it is helpful to read it in conversation with other biblical voices. For Proverbs, living with wisdom, honesty, and integrity is profitable in that it contributes to the prosperity of one’s farm and community. Other parts of the Bible—most notably Job—caution against pushing this principle too far to conclude that a life of faithfulness and prosperity always correlate. 

In this section, Woman Wisdom exemplifies another key metaphor Proverbs uses for characterizing the life of wisdom: Wisdom is a “way” or “path.” In Proverbs 8:20, Woman Wisdom herself walks in the way of wisdom, righteousness, and justice, and in Proverbs 9:6, she invites her students to do the same. With these images, Proverbs envisages a choice between following the way that leads to growing in wisdom and faithfulness or the way of folly and destruction. This metaphor also emphasizes that seeking wisdom is ongoing—it is a lifelong journey of growth. 

Bread of wisdom (Proverbs 9:4–6)

In Proverbs 9:4–5, Woman Wisdom continues her invitation, and she uses another metaphor for the benefits of wisdom. She encourages her students to eat her bread and drink her wine. These images illuminate how a life of wisdom offers wholistic nourishment. Furthermore, the reference to bread and wine is ripe for a connection with communion, particularly since Proverbs 8–9 has long been connected with Christ, “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). 

The Epistle reading assigned for Easter Vigil is especially appropriate for congregations where baptism(s) will take place in the context of that service. It offers the preacher a chance to link the resurrection Gospel to baptism, and to the “newness of life” possible for believers. The language of sin as Paul uses it in Romans may be confusing for some, so I discuss that here for the preacher’s own background.

The legacy of theological tradition has left many people with the understanding that a central theme of Paul’s letters generally is the “problem” of sin. However, a word search for “sin” (Greek, hamartia) reveals that the Epistle to the Romans far outweighs the other epistles in discussion of sin, with 60 instances of hamartia and related words. First Corinthians contains 12 instances. Three letters have no discussion of sin at all. 

What Paul is addressing in Romans is a local dispute among the Roman house churches over who is under sin and who is not. In other words, Paul is picking up on the term “sin” because various Roman Christians are leveling it at each other, and he is seeking a way to stop their divisive practice.

• In the capital city of the Roman Empire, there is a relatively large number of house churches that appear to be divided between Jewish-Christian gatherings and assemblies of Gentile converts (see Resources below for more information on the constitution of the house churches).
• In short, the Jewish-Christian churches see the Gentile converts as embedded in societal sin in such a profound way that faith alone cannot solve the problem. They need the help provided by the system of Temple sacrifices and daily holiness outlined in the Torah. The Gentile converts, on the other hand, appear to see strict Jewish observance as a weakness not sufficiently grounded in faith (Romans 14:1; 15:1).
• In 3:21–26, Paul uses a powerful image of the Jewish sacrifice of atonement to put both groups on the same level, in need of reconciliation with God and with one another. This reconciliation has been achieved by God’s willingness to receive the death of Jesus on the cross as a sacrifice of atonement, effective for Gentiles without their own effort (3:21–26). It is God’s startlingly generous move to make reconciliation and justice possible in a broken world.

In chapter 6, Paul picks up on the language of sin that has proven so divisive among the Roman churches. The sin he speaks of here does not consist of small-scale human deeds, but is Sin as a transcendent power that enslaves human beings.

• The passage assigned for Easter Vigil focuses very tightly on the image of baptism as a union with Christ in his death so that the baptized may “walk in newness of life,” free from the power of Sin.
• Without much of the very complex language that occurs later in Romans 6, the preacher can focus on the newness of life made possible in baptism.
• For Paul, the baptismal font is a womb for new life, as he says in 2 Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation” (5:17–18).

Romans 6:3–4

These first two verses are the dynamic crux of how the power of Christ’s death and resurrection are received by the baptized.

• Baptism unites believers with Christ in his death so that by the intensity of God’s power made known in Christ’s resurrection, believers may be freed from any elements of their former way of life that would keep them from being able to “walk in newness of life.”
• In Judaism, a person’s “walk” refers to how they act morally in the world. Using this Jewish term, Paul sees the font as the place where the body of Christ is born into the world through his followers, the place where justice and righteousness take on flesh again in the body of Christ that is the church.

Romans 6:5–11

These verses expand upon the first four. It is important to note that Paul does not conceive of the baptized as having been raised with Christ during their lifetimes (unlike the author of Colossians; see Colossians 3:1–4, the epistle for Easter Day).

• To the Romans, Paul is careful to say, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (6:5). Resurrection is a future reality for the faithful. 
• What is the present reality? Christ’s death has broken the enslaving grip that sin had upon us, and now what opens up before us is the freedom to live “to God,” a reorientation of our lives moment by moment in relation to the God who made us and loves us infinitely.

The promise of this beautiful, short passage is that, through the death and resurrection of Christ, a way has been made for human beings—amid all the confusion and uncertainty of life—to be “alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Paul’s insights into baptism move the story of Christ’s death and resurrection into an autobiography of new life for the baptized.

Resources

Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2006). Jewett’s is an exhaustive study of the on-the-ground realities of the people Paul was writing to in Romans. The size of the book is daunting, but I have found that people are riveted by getting a glimpse into the possibilities for who the people were who were drawn to Paul’s teaching in mid-first-century Rome.

Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (Yale University Press, 1994). Stowers asserts that Romans was written with a Gentile audience in mind, challenging the long-held assumption that he was addressing Jews and Gentiles universally about sin and salvation. This was a pivotal book for my understanding of Romans, and I continue to unpack its insights 30 years later.