Reflection: That Times of Refreshing May Come (April 22, 2012)

The Third Sunday of Easter
Acts 3:11-21; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36-49

Many people have grown weary of the problems brought on by the lingering recession. Hopes for a quick recovery are long gone and hopes for an eventual recovery seem to waver daily. Good news is mixed with bad news on Wall Street and Main Street. We're weary of the conflicts in the Middle East, the gloating of China, and the defiance of North Korea and Iran. We see our superpower status slipping away from us and we can't seem to do much about it. Meanwhile, Europe is in worse shape than we are — which causes a lot of anxiety about which countries will take leadership roles in our world. Americans need something refreshing. Unfortunately, we don't know where that refreshment will come from. We look for it in political candidates, Congress, the stock market, statistical trends, and a host of other people and places, but the times of refreshing continue to elude us.

Times of refreshing often come in ways that we don't expect. When the disciples had locked themselves in a room to hide from their enemies, they were never so low in spirits and so lost in direction. Every hope and dream that they had dared to imagine while Jesus was with them had been crushed and scattered. At this worst of times, Jesus came to them with the refreshing word of God's peace. After opening their minds to the Scriptures, He told them that they would soon be His instruments to bring refreshment to others. When that time came, Peter stood before a people who had lost their superpower status centuries before, lived under occupations by a series of foreign powers, and longed without hope for their days of glory to proclaim the unexpected way to the times of refreshing: repentance.

As much as we desire the times of refreshing in our lives, we are reluctant and skeptical about finding refreshment in repentance. We prefer to think that we can continue to pursue the ways that have brought us to this point — our greed, materialism, self-centeredness, and living for pleasure — and usher in the times of refreshing too. We don't want to acknowledge these ways as sinful. We certainly don't want to turn away from them, change our lives, and abandon our lifestyles. God's grace is calling us to repent — to turn away from these failed ways and turn back to Him — not as a burden or a punishment, but "that the times of refreshing may come from the Lord."

Audio file of the sermon based on this reflection