The Book of Acts I - Faithful and Responsive
I plan to do something over the second half of this year that I haven’t done before, which is to offer a series of sermons on one book of the Bible. I have chosen the book of Acts, because it’s rip-snortingly interesting, and because with Ascension and Pentecost behind us, we’re already up to chapter 3. I don’t plan to talk about every chapter, because it’s a very long book. And I may not stay with Acts every week, if another topic emerges that seems important from time to time. But hopefully, between now and the end of the year, we’ll meander through such territory as signs and miracles, betrayals, culture wars, the nature of opposition and persecution, God’s surprises, and Christianity and Empire.
Before I get going, some observations about the book as a whole.
The book of Acts was probably written by the same person that wrote the Gospel of Luke. It is one story of what happened after Jesus went away – covering the first few years of the fledgling Christian church. It tells of how the Apostles found themselves doing some of the same healing signs that Jesus did, and then testifying that these signs were in the name of Jesus – a testimony that attracted some and repelled others. It tells of how the early community formed and gathered, and then how martyrdom and persecution led to the spread of these Jewish followers of the Way, first into outlying Jewish territories and then into non-Jewish countries. It tells of some of the key evangelists and leaders in the movement…their conversions and their courage and their tribulations. It tells of early conflicts within the Way, and how these were addressed. By the end of the book, the story of Jesus resurrected from the dead has travelled as far as Rome. And the rest, as they say, is history.
It is, as I mentioned, one story of these events. Had someone else written the story we might have heard of a different set of acts, a different array of characters. There may well have been a number of different threads and movements within the early spread of Christianity that are now lost to us, as this book particularly follows the missionary journeys of Paul. But this is the story we have, and there is plenty that is of value to us as we try to figure out how to be the church in our own time and place.
As we attempt to apply this story to our own world, it’s important to remember that this book is not a template, or a blueprint, for us to follow. There is a frequent push by some Christians to recover a way of being church that models itself on this first church of Jesus’ early disciples. But there is a limit to how possible or even desireable such modelling would be. Any attempt simply to copy what we find here ignores the substantial differences of culture, context, the legacy of history and tradition that have intervened since these times. It assumes that ‘early’ is ‘only’ or ‘best’, which in my view doesn’t credit God’s Spirit with much ability to go on shaping the church anew in each age.
I think that it’s important to see this story as a one off – the events it describes are extraordinary because it was all about newness, formation, beginning. This was the one opportunity for Jesus’ message to take hold in multiple communities, and to take root within the cultures of the day. It was the birth of Christianity. So it would be facile of us in C21 New Zealand simply to try to ‘get back’ to these times and re-create the birth of a movement. And yet, we can still let this book shape us, because there are stories in here of ordinary humans endeavouring to live a life of Spirit in the midst of a hostile culture. These are stories of courage and faith…they can inspire and challenge us. And there is much to learn from watching these early followers grapple with the process of trying to follow God’s lead, trying to make sense of things that God was doing, that were unlike anything they had expected or previously experienced.
As I re-read this book, I was struck by the palpable absence of any kind of mission strategy. I found no sense in this book of a group of people getting together to determine how they were going to get the message out, no sense of them having an imperative to save as many people as they could. Even though the movement spread in both geography and in numbers, it doesn’t seem to me like that was the goal of the first disciples. As I read the book of Acts, I have two strong impressions, which I’ll keep coming back to. These are faithfulness and responsiveness. What I see throughout this story is people who had a profound experience, and who were learning to be faithful to the implications of that experience. That meant being faithful to testify, to speak of what had happened to them…to acknowledge God and not themselves as the source of the remarkable things that were happening. It meant being faithful to live differently, to participate in this new community that was forming around the experience of God’s Spirit. And I see people who were responsive…who felt and heard God leading them into new territory, and were willing to follow. People who were looking to see where God’s Spirit was already at work even if that was in strange or unexpected places, and who would act on nudges and pushes to participate in that work. This book is the story of God doing a new thing, a big thing, and the human people who found themselves as agents of what God was breathing into being.
So, let’s begin with the first story that’s recorded after the events of Pentecost. Here’s some bits from chapters 3 and 4 from Acts.
3:1-16 (excerpted)
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o’clock in the afternoon. And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God… While he clung to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s Portico, utterly astonished. When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate… But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One… and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong.
4: 1-21 excerpted.
While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead. So they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who heard the word believed; and they numbered about five thousand. The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.”… Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus. When they saw the man who had been cured standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition… So they ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
I’d like to notice a couple of things about these events. This is the first of the healing signs that happens in Acts. But they are as consistent a feature throughout Acts as they are in the Gospels.
The similarity between these healings and the things we see Jesus doing in the Gospels is very significant to the story. Because the core message is that this is still the same Jesus, doing the same things as he always did, only now acting in Spirit through his followers. It’s not that suddenly Peter and John have become miracle healers, but that they are acting in Jesus’ place, animated and empowered by the same Spirit that animated and empowered Jesus. It can be important to remember this when we try to figure out the relationship between the Jesus in the gospels, and the big abstract ideas about Jesus Christ that are developed over the rest of the New Testament, and subsequently over the centuries by theologians. In the first instance, Jesus followers simply did as he did, healing people’s suffering, and then faithfully attributing the healing to the presence of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
I wonder how it would have felt to be Peter and John in this moment, as they looked at the lame man at the gate. How did they know that this man, this moment, called for a healing miracle? Something inside them must have stirred…perhaps a memory of when Jesus had sent them out in pairs to teach and heal and cast out evil while he was still alive. Perhaps an inner nudge saying ‘heal this man.’ Perhaps Jesus himself spoke to them saying, ‘now, do it.’ I wonder how easy it would have been for them to override all that, to think only of how embarrassing it would be if nothing happened. I wonder how often we stop short of acting on our inner knowing – a word not spoken, an act not taken.
Last week Fergus suggested that this life was ‘about taking risks and possibly going down in flames’, rather than regretting all that we didn’t do. The risks that we have to take in our life might not have anything to do with miraculous healings. But we all have little moments in a day where we choose to respond to, or ignore, what our heart tells us is a thing to say or do. Sometimes our hearts are out of kilter, and best ignored. But if we say that we are people who live by the Spirit of God, then ought we not to have some expectation that this Spirit will nudge us from time to time?
Back to our text…we notice that the religious leaders of the temple had a pretty similar reaction to this miracle as they did to the ones Jesus did in the flesh. That old ‘imprison first, ask questions later’ approach. And the same result – there is nothing these religious leaders can pin on Peter and John, but they are deeply uncomfortable nonetheless. Jesus was a profoundly disturbing presence to them and they wanted him gone. Now, he appears to be popping up again. So they try to silence Peter and John…can we have your assurance that you won’t mention this inconvenient matter again?
It’s the first test of loyalties for these Jesus followers…and having seen their master killed they would have had no illusions about the consequences of getting on the wrong side of the Jewish religious authorities. But their answer at the end demonstrates that, since Pentecost, they have an internal compass that allows them to see the conflict between faithfulness to God, and faithfulness to their inherited religion, and gives them the freedom to choose God. ‘We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.’
What are the things that you have seen and heard, that you feel tempted to keep quiet about? How is your faithfulness to the calling and the experience of God tested by the reactions of others? Who is it that asks you, by their words or actions, to live a life that is less responsive to God than you feel called to live? This might be a person, or a system or a structure that you find yourself part of in your daily life. It might be a voice inside your own head. What does faithfulness to Jesus look like in this context?
It is possible to be obnoxious about this – there are people who coercively over-ride other people’s freedoms and boundaries, or very reasonable ethical frameworks, in the name of being faithful to God. And probably many of us have painful stories from our childhood of feeling compelled to stand up in the school playground and preach repentance and that if we didn’t we’d be betraying Jesus. These things do no honour to Christ.
It’s useful to notice the order of things in our story…first the healing, then the explanation. I don’t suppose that Peter and John went up to the temple that day to do anything but pray. But, moved to heal the man at the gate, they were then left with some explaining to do, and they didn’t shirk from speaking their truth at that time. Remember the famous saying: preach the Gospel at all times, use words if necessary.
The calling for us, then, is simply to live as faithfully as we can to the message of Jesus, responsive to the Spirit of Jesus. And when, as inevitably happens, we find this life coming into conflict with any of the Powers That Be…whether those are in our family, our work, our society…to name Jesus Christ as our Way, and to keep on following, whatever the cost.