2026 Easter Series: That Message Spread

Year A 2025-2026 Seeds and Ways Focus and Roadmap: Stay Awake

Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
(Matthew 24:42 NRSVue)

The liturgical calendar calls us to remember expectation. While our memories of the days preceding Christmas may include anticipating gifts and festival gathering around meals and decorated trees, that is not the memory Advent amplifies. While Epiphany greets us at the dawn of a new year, memories of midnight toast and kisses does not frame that season. Lent may evoke shudders as we consider how difficult it may have been to forgo that favorite practice, menu item, or other thing in order to share in the sacrificial activity of Christ. Yet, if that struggle fails to generate empathy for the suffering of our neighbor on our block and across the world, the sacrifice was empty. A sunrise service on Easter Sunday morning may transport our imagination to the empty tomb, but that shocking moment led to uncertainty, discovery, and an empowered movement that launched on the Day of Pentecost and continues today.

The future of the church faces threats. While some have the reasonable fear of closing church doors, the more urgent and salient problem is the church that has lost its way, its voice, its witness, and its commitment to embodying good news in the world as Christ’s agents in the world.

The call to remember expectation is a call to hope, to agency, and to activation in a world in need of conduits and co-creators of good news. In the anchoring text for the liturgical year, Jesus cautioned and encouraged their followers to “keep awake.” The command encompasses attentiveness, alertness, and readiness. The context of the passage emphasizes the anticipated return of Christ, the Chosen One. Could the Body of Christ reclaim its mantle and mandate to embody God’s love and liberating power in the world? Could that be the return we expect…to the movement to follow the way of Jesus in spirit and in truth…not to give us an escape to heaven but to realize the kindom on earth through our collective, Spirit-led salvific acts in the name of Jesus? Are we prepared and willing to be that church?

That is the question we will ponder in Year A even as we heed the call to “Stay Awake.”

2026 Easter Series: That Message Spread

"Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. 36 You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. 37 That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him." -- Acts 10:34-38

If the liturgical year takes us on a journey in which the first part of the year (Advent through the Day of Pentecost) emphasizes the work of Christ and the second part emphasizes the work of discipleship, then the season of Easter may be considered equal parts culmination, celebration, and commission. The incarnational and enfleshed ministry of Jesus concludes. The joy, relief, and wonder at the resurrection consumes the first disciples. The time of preparation and mentorship transitions to the establishment of the church, embodied in the people who commit to The Way and endowed with the power of Spirit.

During this season of Easter, the theological and biblical focus will center on the intentional instrumentality of the disciples in spreading the good news. For contemporary followers of Jesus, these texts invite us to consider our role as ambassadors, agents, and advocates of the kindom of God as we heed the call to “Stay Awake.”

Scripture and Themes
Resurrection Sunday A – April 5: Matthew 28:1-10 | “They Left the Tomb”
Easter 2A – April 12: John 20:19-31 | “So I Send You”
Easter 3A – April 19: Luke 24:13-35 | “Going On”
Easter 4A – April 26: John 10:1-10 | “By the Gate”
Easter 5A – May 3: John 14:1-14 | “Do the Works”
Easter 6A – May 10: John 14:15-21 | “Coming to You”
Easter 7A – May 17: John 17:1-11 | “In the World”
Day of Pentecost A – May 24: John 7:37-39 | “Who Is Thirsty”

“Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology, United Church of Christ, (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves as a local church pastor and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities.