Contributed by Bob Chell, Lutheran Campus Ministry at South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota

Warm-up Question

As children, we sometimes misconstrue reality because we misinterpret what we see:  “Dad took me to watch firefighters train on an abandoned house. For years I thought firefighters drove around looking for run-down houses to burn and was scared they would burn down our house.”  

Sometimes we are mislead:  “When I was little, my Dad told me that the tune played by the ice cream van was the ice cream man letting everyone know that he’d run out of ice cream.”

What have you believed which turned out to be untrue?

Life Out of Doubt

A young woman lay dead; nearby, an abandoned truck was stuck in the mud.  The investigation was quick.  Within hours, police had suspects and by evening Greg Taylor and Johnny Beck were in jail, charged with murder.  Both were crack addicts who admitted they were only looking for their next high.  Johnny Beck was released before trial for reasons which are unclear. Greg Taylor was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.  That was sixteen years ago.  A month ago Greg Taylor was released from prison upon the recommendation of a special innocence panel which found “clear and convincing evidence” that Gregory F. Taylor was innocent and had been convicted based on flawed evidence and unreliable testimony.

Source:  (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/us/18innocent.html)

Discussion Questions

• Had this been you or someone you love, would you be grateful or bitter upon release after sixteen years?  How would you reconcile the two feelings?
• Have you ever had first-hand knowledge of a news story that didn’t match what you heard in the media?
• Have you passed on a story you later learned was untrue? What were the consequences for the person in the untrue story you passed on?  For you?
• Did you take any action upon learning the story was untrue?  What was the result? 

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, April 11, 20110 (Second Sunday of Easter)

Acts 5:27-32

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

(Text links are to Oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year C at Lectionary Readings.)

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

Thomas stands in a long line of doubters stretching back to the beginning of the faith.  Abraham was skeptical that God could deliver on the promise of a son while Sarah, his wife, laughed in God’s face.  Moses doubted he could accomplish what God called him to do.  Gideon demanded proof.  Elijah ran away.  Jeremiah and Job—even Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane before his arrest and crucifixion—struggled with doubt.  One theologian notes that the only people in scripture who are certain of God’s will stone the prophets and crucify Jesus.

Doubt is not an enemy, but a friend.  Doubt keeps us from being a sucker for every get-rich, get-beautiful, get-saved scheme that comes along.  The danger is that, surrounded by pop-up ads and bogus invitations to wealth and intimacy, we will become cynical and cease to believe anything.

Yet, it is doubt that pushes us forward in life and faith.  Doubt is a way of life for high school and college students:  Doubting your major, doubting your current romance, doubting there will ever be a romance, doubting your career plans, doubting your faith.

Doubt is useful when it pushes us beyond the superficial to the substantive, when it pushes us to ask hard questions and look at life, and ourselves, with clear and open eyes.

Doubt is at the heart of education.  It drives the scientific method.  How does this work…what would happen if…can I prove…?

In our personal life doubt keeps us awake at night and commands our attention. It is unpleasant but useful, drawing us to attend to those things most important in our lives.  Doubt pushes us to change and grow.  It forces us to ask hard questions about faith, family, and vocation, the things which define who we are.

Doubt is not the end but the beginning.  Most of us, when plagued by doubt, try harder to figure it out, to think it through, to discern the truth—and we should.  Whom we choose as a life partner, the career we choose, the faith we embrace will shape and change the rest of our lives.

Easter isn’t about happy endings, Jesus springing up three days later so we can have Easter eggs, a new outfit and time off from school or work.  Easter is about a God who stands with us, suffers with us, even dies with us.

The poet Gerhard Frost once wrote: “Doubt gnaws at faith but faith gnaws back, and faith has better teeth.”  God’s promise is that Jesus can and will break through the locked and shut doors of our lives, the prison of doubt we live in.  Jesus comes through the wall, breaks in, and speaks “Peace be with you.”  God’s peace isn’t a promise that there will be no doubt, pain, struggle, indecision, or any of the other things which are part of being human, part of being in relationships. God’s peace is a promise to walk with us, to strengthen us, to sustain us, to forgive us, to challenge us.

The time for hunting Easter eggs is over, but if we are hunting for God working in our lives, we need only look where we doubt.  There we will find God’s Spirit moving us to growth and faith.

Discussion Questions

• Recall a time when you thought you would never be happy again.  Was God at work in you and others?
• How do we discern when doubt is useful and when it is useless?
• If doubt is a good thing, can we be certain about anything?

Activity Suggestions

• Ask several persons you love and trust if there was ever a time when they wanted to run away and leave their life behind because they were embarrassed, ashamed or in deep pain.  Ask what enabled them to survive that time and, looking back, how they see that God was at work in their lives during that time.
•  Reflect on a time when you were so unhappy you wanted to quit, give up, move, and get away from doubt and pain.  What enabled you to survive?  Is there a learning there for your faith?  for your future?

Closing Prayer

God of grace and mercy, we want to believe and trust your promises.  Give us courage and perseverance to confront the doubt and pain and brokenness in our lives.  Give us, also, the wisdom to know when to let go of broken dreams and move on.  Move our hearts to forgive others and ourselves, so we may live with Easter joy.  Amen.

There is no Faith Lens this week, however, you might ponder this artistic reflection on the holiest of mysteries intersecting the mundane.

"Easter Morning," James B Janknegt

Contributed by Pastor Seth Moland-Kovash
All Saints Lutheran Church
Palatine, IL

Warm-up Question: People often talk about the importance of making a good first impression. Do you think it’s really all that important or not? Why?

One of the hallmarks of the legal system in this country is the idea of a trial by a jury. Part of that process is that the jury is supposed to be impartial; they are not supposed to have made up their minds about whether you are guilty or not guilty before the trial starts. They are supposed to make their decision based on the evidence and what they hear in the courtroom, not on what they knew about the situation before the trial even started. We often talk about this in terms of an impartial jury: you have the right to be tried by a jury who is impartial, who has not already decided whether you are guilty.

Finding an impartial jury can be difficult sometimes when cases get a lot of media coverage or are very high-profile. When celebrities or major politicians are on trial, or when crimes get a lot of coverage, it can be hard to find 12 people who are impartial. Sometimes defendants gain the right to move a trial to another city, county, or even state, so that they can find a jury of people who have not already made up their minds or been influenced by the media or other people in the community.

Consider the difficulty in finding unbiased, fair, impartial jurors for the following cases:

A story of trying to find an impartial jury in the case of someone accused of starting wildfires in southern California that ended up killing 5 firefighters. 

• Rod R. Blagojevich, now former governor of Illinois, was impeached under accusations of criminal corruption, wasting taxpayer money attempting to sell Barack Obama’s vacant senate seat. Blagojevich has made the rounds of TV talk shows, radio shows, and has been highlighted in newspapers and Web publications around the world. He is still awaiting trial.
• Or talk about a court case in your area that everyone seems to know about, or has strong opinions about.

Discussion Questions

• Why is having an impartial jury so important? To the defendant? To all of us?
• If you had heard a lot about a case, like the wildfires or political corruption in these stories, would you be able to judge someone fairly who was accused of the crime? How difficult would it be for you to put aside your assumptions and weigh the information and arguments of both sides?
• On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being not at all; 10 being always open and receptive), how open are you to receiving new ideas, opinions, or different views from other people? How would you decide that a person was trustworthy or worth listening to?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, April 26, 2009.

(Text links are to oremus Bible Browser Oremus Bible Browsernot is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year B at Lectionary Readings.)

• Acts 3:12-19
• Psalm 4 (3)
• 1 John 3:1-7
• Luke 24:36b-49

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

One of the hardest things about learning anything new is when we think we already know the answer. We think Sarah’s mean and snobby so no matter how she acts toward us, we are not going to like her. We think something that weighs more should fall faster than something that is lighter, so we won’t believe it until we see it — sometimes we don’t even believe it then!

The same thing is true about God. We think we know things about God, and it’s hard to hear or accept anything new. We may think that God could never love us because of the bad things we’ve done, so it’s hard to hear that God will always love us, no matter what — end of story!

In today’s Gospel reading, Luke 24:13-49, two followers of Jesus are walking along the road after what had happened in Jerusalem on the day we call Good Friday. They hadn’t heard about Easter yet. They thought Jesus was dead and everything was over. The Gospel lesson tells us that Jesus came along and walk with them, but “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

Eventually, the two people recognized Jesus and he explained everything to them. But maybe they needed a fresh, unbiased start — sort of a do-over. Maybe they needed to not see him as Jesus for just a minute so that they could get past their preconceived ideas and assumptions about his death. Maybe they needed their eyes to be closed for a little bit, so that they could be opened again and see something completely new!

Discussion Questions 

• What would it be like to meet someone walking along the sidewalk who you thought was dead?
• Do you think these followers learned the lesson of Jesus’ resurrection better because they had to learn it this way? What impression would this situation have made on you if you had been one of the people walking on the road with Jesus?
• How would you go about telling the story of Jesus in a believable, trustworthy, truthful way? How would you tell it to different people? A stranger? A close friend?

Activity Suggestion

• Arrange with your congregation’s Sunday school leaders to teach Sunday school for a day, especially the very young kids. They will love having youth around to teach them. And you’ll get to teach young children something completely new… it’s all new to them!
• Create a list of things you believe or know about God. Create another list of questions you have about God. Use the lists to stir up discussion, study, curiosity, and prayer.

Closing Prayer

Faithful God, we thank you for always finding ways to reach us and to teach us. We pray in the name of your risen Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Contributed by Pastor Jay Gamelin
Columbus, OH

Warm-up Question: Think of a time when you got hurt (physically, emotionally, spiritually, or otherwise). What’s the most important thing you learned from that experience

In the weeks leading up to Easter this year, sad news filled nearly every newspaper and broadcast. In just over a week, there were five mass murders in the U.S. alone, from Oakland, CA, to Binghamton, NY, killing nearly 40 people. In Italy, just as that predominantly Roman Catholic country was beginning to celebrate Holy Week, a massive earthquake killed at least 260 people. Violence continues in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in other war-torn corners of the globe. And all over the world, people continue to struggle with a devastated economy.

All this news has surrounded what for Christians ought to be the most joyful time of the year. Figuring out how to celebrate on a tighter budget in the midst of difficult times is an ancient challenge, and one that the faithful will face again as they gather to celebrate the festival of the resurrection and the bright, seven-week season of Easter that follows.

Discussion Questions

• Have you ever tried to celebrate something (Christmas, Easter, your birthday, family weddings, etc.) while also having to deal with sad news? How did that go?
• What did your family do for Easter this year? Was anything different than years past?
• How do you think the families of people who died in the shootings in the U.S. felt during the Easter celebration this year, especially if they were Christians?
• What do you think Jesus would say to folks who were trying to celebrate Easter while also finding themselves homeless after the earthquake in Italy?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, April 19, 2009.

(Text links are to oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year B at Lectionary Readings

• Acts 4:32-35
• Psalm 133 (1)
• 1 John 1:1-2:2
• John 20:19-31

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comicAgnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

The week after Easter is a peculiar Sunday in the church. On most Sundays, the appointed readings are different each year, following a three-year cycle. But every year, on the week after Easter, we hear this story about Thomas, the disciple who asked for proof. That makes me wonder: What’s so important about this story that the church asks us to read it every year during this time?

It seems to me we could answer that question with two words: doubt and scars.

Isn’t it a bit jarring that just one week after the lilies and the brass, the egg hunts and family gatherings, the joyful shouts and songs filled with “Alleluia!,” all of a sudden we run into doubt and scars? What happened to butterflies and bunnies?

The church is trying to tell us something. From the beginning, the joyful news of the resurrection had to be spoken, heard, sung, and lived by people whose lives were not very joyful. “He is Risen!” did not put an end to the suffering and persecution, death and danger that those first Christians lived with. In fact, their claim that Jesus, whom the Empire had tried to destroy, was in fact living and reigning as the true King of Creation, made things even worse for the faithful.

In the midst of danger and suffering, it’s normal for a little doubt to creep in. Thomas asked, and for good reason, to see the same proof that Jesus handed — literally — to the other disciples. For Thomas, as for most of the citizens of Jerusalem, the resurrection had not changed anything. Well, not anything they could see anyway. Life was still hard, and death was still at hand. So before Thomas took the message of “He is risen!” very far, he needed to be sure he wouldn’t just be telling a cruel joke to people who needed some real, meaningful hope.

Legend has it, Thomas ended up taking that message very far indeed — all the way to India! So whatever Jesus showed him was good enough.

What Jesus showed him were scars. Jesus was alive, but his body still had the marks of what he had suffered. His own flesh would not let him, or us, forget about the real tragedy and death he endured. Knowing that Jesus was still a marked man helped Thomas know that God still understood the danger and the risk of living faithfully in a broken world. Those scars gave Thomas’s own scars holy meaning: doubt and danger are still abundant, but God’s love and life are more abundant still.

We, too, live this Easter faith in a dead and dying world. Thanks be to God, Jesus lives and breathes in the midst of our doubts, bearing the scars, and yet overflowing with life. Alleluia! Amen.

Discussion Questions

• If you were Thomas, what proof would you ask for to know that the resurrection — rising death — was real?
• What does it mean to you that Jesus still has the scars on his resurrected body? If God could raise him from the dead, why didn’t God take the scars away, too?
• Do you have any scars (physical or otherwise)? Where does God fit into the stories about how you got your scars?
• What difference does “He is risen!” make in your own life? If “He is risen!” actually made your life more challenging and dangerous, would you still tell it to your friends and neighbors? Would it make a difference to them?

Activity Suggestions

• Get a laminated map of the globe and some Vis-à-vis overhead pens. Invite folks to draw or write on places on the map where the world is scarred or marked. Play some music during this time (anything from Taizé songs to an iPod mix of thoughtful or thought-provoking music like The Fray’s “You Found Me”). After they’ve had some time to write, draw, or circle places, ask them to share why they drew or wrote what they did. Then ask where they think God is in all the world’s scars.
• Have youth draw temporary tattoos (any non-permanent marker pen will do fine) on their arm, wrist, or ankles. (Draw it on paper first. Some may choose not to draw on themselves — a valid choice that should be respected.) What mark would you draw that would describe your faith and your doubts in your life? What invisible scars do you have that you could make “visible”? Where does Jesus fit into this picture? Have them share as they are comfortable.

Closing Prayer

Jesus, you lived and died and live again, feeling in your own body how hard life can be. Help me see your love and grace in the midst of the entire world’s, and my own scars. Be patient with me, and accept my doubts even as you give me faith. Amen.

Contributed by Jocelyn Breeland
Fairfax, VA

Warm-up Question: If you could be a groupie, which celebrity would you follow?

President Barack Obama’s recent trip to Europe, the first of his presidency, created a public frenzy that recalled his visit to Europe during the 2008 presidential campaign.

True, there was a lot of real work to be done this time, at the G-20 summit and in meetings with British, Russian, and other heads of state. Pundits (an expert, commentator, or opinion-leader) are divided over the value of what was accomplished. Most agree that the tone of the gatherings was more productive than would have been possible during the Bush administration.

Based on the news reports, Americans could be forgiven for thinking the trip was more a tour by American royalty than an opportunity for serious work on the critical issues of our time.

The screaming crowds that greeted Mr. Obama and his wife at many stops provided plenty of “distraction” for the news media. Reporters seemed transfixed by the first couple’s every move, especially Mrs. Obama. Breathlessly, they reported that she touched the queen! That she wore a sweater to Buckingham Palace! That she got emotional while speaking with a group of adoring school girls!

Of course, some maintain that, despite the conspicuous display of admiration, not much of importance has changed in the relationship between the U.S. and its European partners. Yes, there were adoring crowds, but there were also large violent protests.

Discussion Questions

• Should European public opinion matter to Americans?
• What is it about President Obama that inspires such adoration?
• Are those who put President Obama on a pedestal setting themselves up for inevitable disappointment?
• What are your impressions of President Obama and his wife? How do your impressions shape your expectations of President Obama’s leadership?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, April 12, 2009 (Easter Sunday).

(Text links are to oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year B at Lectionary Readings.)

• Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 25:6-9
• Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 (24)
• 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 or Acts 10:34-43
• Mark 16:1-8 or John 20:1-18

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

Jesus’ followers were frightened and confused by his death. They’d served with him for three years, so the confusion didn’t result from not knowing Christ well enough, but from not yet comprehending the way he had transformed their lives. On Easter morning, Jesus gave the disciples the key to understanding what the prophets of the Old Testament had foretold, and what he had been trying to explain throughout his ministry.

The story is simple; its meaning is earth-shattering. The tomb is empty because Jesus, once dead but now alive, has left. Skeptics said someone must have moved the body. But the miraculous resurrection isn’t the only (or even the most important) headline of this tale.

The amazing story that God begins to reveal on Easter morning is what Jesus’ victory over death means to each of us. It’s as if he gave us a beautifully wrapped present at Christmas, and at Easter we get to open it and see what’s inside. Later, as we grow in faith we, like the disciples will understand and appreciate this gift more and more.

Because God sacrificed his son for us, we have the assurance of eternal life. We can be sure that our creator, who can bring life from death, can protect and reclaim us no matter how dire our situation. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, our sins are forgiven. With this certainty, we can boldly do whatever God calls us to do.

On Easter morning, the disciples were grieving and fearful. But we, who know the rest of the story, truly the greatest story ever told, can joyfully express our thanks to God for this gift. Alleluia! He is risen!

Discussion Questions

• What in today’s Gospel makes the greatest impression on you?
• Mark 16:8 says the women said nothing about what they saw, because they were afraid. What of?
• If the disciples had fully understood what happened Easter morning, how do you think they would have reacted?
• How is your relationship with Jesus different from that of a celebrity groupie?

Activity Suggestion

Jesus Christ, the rock star, is going on. Create the official tour t-shirt. What words or images would appeal to Christians? What would draw the attention and appeal to non-believers?

Closing Prayer

Almighty God, this week we are celebrating your greatest gift to us — the life and sacrifice of your son Jesus. Words alone cannot express our intense gratitude. But in our songs, in our prayers, and in the way we care for each other and the world, we praise you, and glorify you. Thank you for continuing to walk with us everyday. When we’re in trouble, comfort us with the assurance of your love, and the promise of life everlasting. In the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns, now and forever. Amen.