Reading for Monday, Easter Week

Acts 2: 14, 22-32

In this first week of the 50 days of Eastertide, The Daily Office Lectionary takes us through the earliest preaching of the Church, found in the first 3-4 chapters of Acts. Today’s sermon from Peter is the first public proclamation of the Gospel on the day of Pentecost.

As his “proof-text,” Peter quotes from Psalm 16, which is attributed to King David. The Messiah (or in Greek, “Christ”) expected by the Jewish people was supposed to be the descendant of King David, the successor who would establish the Davidic reign over all the earth for all time. Now we know from the birth stories in Matthew and Luke that Jesus was, by adoption, a son of David through Joseph. He fulfilled that criteria.

But what about the great kingdom? Jesus, by all accounts, died a failure. How could he be the Messiah if the world looked just the same? Anticipating that argument, Peter teaches of the wider vision that David had, a vision so outlandish that he could only express it, not as prophecy, or as religious doctrine, but as song (which is what the Psalms are). No, this Christ does not look like the expected picture of a conquering general. His triumph is beyond our imagining. But of that triumph, “we all are witnesses,” Peter says.