The gospel reading for the Daily Office on the Fifth Sunday of Easter is Luke 4:14-30.

Even as we are settling into this new uncomfortable routine, I find that I am learning and discovering new things. As much as I miss gathered worship with hymns and Eucharist, I am also discovering the spiritual power of gathering online for the Daily Office, whether it is our Monday-through Friday of Morning Prayer at 9:00 am, or our offering of Evening Prayer Rite I on Sundays. Coming together as we do on Sunday evenings has come to be one of the highlights of my week, and certainly of my day, as it brings together various things and offers an opportunity to ask God’s blessings on what has passed and what will come.

One of the suprises for me in all this is my encounter with the gospel readings for the Sunday daily office. They are, especially in this season of Easter, a familiar yet disorienting set of texts. Familiar, because we encounter many of them in the Sunday morning Eucharistic lectionary. Disorienting because I read them differently in this context because they are taken out of the roughly sequential order of the 3-year lectionary and often, as in the case both today and last Sunday, they include additional verses that provide additional context and possible focus for reflection.

Take the case of today’s gospel. A portion of this reading, verses 14-21 are read on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany in year B, the year we read the Gospel of Luke. In that context, it’s clearly meant to symbolize Jesus’ proclamation of the coming of God’s reign, a symbol of the season of the Epiphany, when we explore all the ways God comes to us.

But today is the 5^th Sunday after Easter and the significance of Jesus’ first sermon seems less important than other themes that emerge from reading this text in the context of our celebration of Christ’s resurrection, not to mention our immediate context, as well.

The drama and power of that sermon, Jesus’ reading those verses from Isaiah, sitting down, and saying, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your midst.” The promise of fulfillment, the promise of the coming of God’s reign continues to beckon us. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ we see the first fruits of the realization of that promise—the power of God’s reign breaking in upon the world, conquering humanity’s greatest fear: death and the grave.

To end the reading with verse 21, Jesus saying, “Today this scripture is being fulfilled in your midst” is to end it on an unambiguously positive, powerful note. We are left with no questions, no uncertainty. But the story doesn’t end there it continues with confrontation, doubt, opposition, and an attempt to kill Jesus. He escapes by passing through their midst. We might imagine a fog descending on the crowd to disorient them and to hide him from them.

So today’s reading ends on a much more ominous note than the reading as it appears in the Eucharistic lectionary. It’s a puzzling story when it’s looked at as a whole and leaves us wondering. In the context of the gospel, it seems to be foreshadowing the conflict that will come between Jesus and the religious authorities of first-century Judaism, and Rome, as well, I suppose. In the context of Eastertide, it reminds us not of the victory of Christ’s resurrection, but of its ambiguity. It reminds us of all those stories that mention the disciples’ fear when they encountered the Risen Christ; all of the stories that emphasize the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus until they heard his voice; all those stories of doubt, and questioning, and wonder.

We tend to emphasize the power of resurrection, the story of God’s victory over death and vindication of Jesus Christ against the forces of evil and darkness. But the truth is more complex than that. “The strife is o’er the battle won” but the war is not over. Evil is not finally vanquished. We live in a world where Christ’s victory over evil and death has only begun, in which the forces of evil continue to do battle.

As we reflect on our lives today and on the struggles going on throughout our community, nation, and world, it’s clear that good has not yet triumphed over evil. The battle still rages. Whether it is in the senseless murder of a young black man jogging down a Georgia road, or the apparent willingness of so many to sacrifice the lives of the weak and vulnerable for their own “freedom;” whether it’s the abandonment by persons in our government of the rule of law and our constitutional norms, it’s clear that the battle between good and evil continues, that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ has not finally vanquished Satan and the forces of evil.

The news is dire. Not just the apparent tolerance of the deaths of tens of thousands, or the hate that divides communities and our nation; not just the reality being laid bare of the deep inequities in our society as unemployment skyrockets and people risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones to work jobs with low pay. The brokenness of our society is on display for all to see.

Yet here we gather, if only virtually, in the small number of those of us who choose to take these few moments from our day to pray and read and listen. Even this may be as much an occasion for despair as for hope and faith as we wonder what the future holds for our gathering and our congregation.

In all of this fear, and doubt, and despair, we wonder. Yet we are not alone. Jesus did proclaim the coming of God’s reign. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.

We are not alone, either in our homes or in this virtual gathering. As the letter to the Hebrews we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who give us strength and hope; a great cloud of witnesses whose faith inspires our own, and we follow Jesus Christ, the great pioneer and perfecter of our faith. May we take heart and trust that God is with us, that through God’s power and justice, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the beginning of something completely new; that in his resurrection, we can glimpse a future where Christ reigns over all and all suffering and death are brought to an end. Thanks be to God.