Thursday of the Second Week of Easter

We must obey God rather than men: This is not a license for every personal preference to override every human authority. It is Peter's settled decision about ultimate allegiance, spoken at real cost before real authorities with real power to punish. Preach the sentence in its proper weight - neither trivialized into a bumper sticker nor weaponized into a culture-war slogan.

He does not ration his gift of the Spirit: Many people in the pews live as though the Spirit were available in limited quantities - as though God gives more Spirit to holier people and less to the rest. The Gospel says the opposite. The Spirit is given without measure. Preach the abundance.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted: The boldness of Peter and the tenderness of the psalm are not in tension. They are both expressions of the same God. Preach a faith that can stand before the Sanhedrin and sit beside the brokenhearted in the same breath. That is what the parish is supposed to be.