Sunday, May 8, 2011: Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Luke 24:13-35
At times I will again be struck by the smallness of the thing, of this bit of bread and sip of wine.
"When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them."
(Luke 24:30)
A spoken word, a bit of bread, a sip of wine: in a world that is spinning out of control and out of whack, these things seem woefully inadequate. When congregations are dying, when membership is down, when we are edging toward a post-Christian culture, these things seem hopelessly passé.
What is our response to this world? If we turn to our texts, we read that these small things—the word, the bread and the wine—have the power to redeem and restore, to heal and embolden, to nurture and sustain, and to call human beings back to their best selves.
Peter was hardly the most likely candidate to preach the first post-resurrection sermon. It's true that he'd always been in the inner circle of the disciples, and so it might seem right that he'd become the public face of the Jesus movement. But at times he had failed, and failed spectacularly. When given the opportunity to stand with Jesus in his most difficult hour, Peter not only denied being his disciple: he denied knowing Jesus at all.
