2nd Sunday of Easter
April 3, 2016
Acts 5:27-32; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31
It can be a dangerous thing to study the book of
Acts. The first time I participated in a
bible study on Acts I heard God calling me to serve and I ended up in
Nicaragua. The second time I was
facilitating the bible study and that was when the opportunity came up for us
to move here, and, well, you know the end of that story. Yet during the Easter season, the lectionary
always has us read from the Acts of the Apostles. I don’t choose the Scripture readings each
Sunday; we follow the Revised Common Lectionary which provides readings that
cover most of the Bible over a three year span.
Each of the three years, however, the seven Sundays of the Easter
season, from Easter Sunday until Pentecost, there is no Old Testament reading
(aside from the Psalm), and instead we read from Acts. All three years. I think the people who developed the
lectionary were trying to tell us something.
You see, the book of Acts is about the early church. It picks up where the four Gospels leave
off. In fact, it’s even written by one
of the authors of the Gospels, by Luke.
Today we read from chapter 5, but there’s some background
that we need to know before we get to this morning’s passage. Chapter 4 ends by saying that “The community
of believers was one in heart and mind. None of them would say, “This is mine!”
about any of their possessions, but [they] held everything in common.”[1]
And a couple examples are given about how they did this, distributing things
according to where there was need. Then
chapter 5 begins with the first hint of trouble in paradise. There is a couple who sell a piece of land
and only bring part of the proceeds to the apostles, rather than all of it,
like everyone else had been doing. The
apostles take care of it, the couple ends up dying, and then life goes on, and
the apostles were doing so many signs and wonders that the Sadducees became
jealous. Now the Sadducees, just to
remind you, were the sect of Jews who didn’t believe in resurrection. And here we are, in the early church, weeks,
months after Jesus’ resurrection, and the apostles are witnessing to Jesus’
resurrection and are doing these signs and wonders in Jesus’ name. The Sadducees are jealous of this new sect of
Jews, because that’s all the early Christians were; it’s not until chapter 11
that the early believers were called Christians. So, the Sadducees use their political power
and have the apostles thrown in jail.
That night, “an angel from the Lord opened the prison doors… and led them
out. The angel told them, “Go, take your place in the temple, and tell the
people everything about this new life.”[2]
The apostles do what the angel tells them (wouldn’t you if an angel broke you
out of jail?). In the morning, though,
of course, the Sadducees hear about this supposed jailbreak and when they
investigate there’s nothing amiss at the prison, the doors are closed, the
guards are in place, yet there are those pesky apostles back in the temple
teaching! So that’s where we pick up today, with the Sadducees questioning the
apostles and the apostles giving this great statement that “We must obey God,
not men. The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from death, after you had killed
him by nailing him to a cross. God raised him to his right side as Leader and
Savior, to give the people of Israel the opportunity to repent and have their
sins forgiven. We are witnesses to these things—we and the Holy Spirit, who is
God's gift to those who obey him.”[3]
What’s interesting is that the apostles are all together
on this. Peter’s name gets singled out,
it says “Peter and the apostles replied,”[4]
yet they all gave the same reply. It
wasn’t like each apostle had to have his turn to speak, or Peter gave the main
point and then John piggybacked on that and then Barnabas had to add in his two
cents because he always has to share his own opinion. No, they were all of one opinion. The
apostles, the leaders of the early church,
were united. There are no dissenting opinions recorded here. No one has to make sure their individual
voice is heard, because they’re all speaking together as one. They all agree that God is first. “We must
obey God rather than any human authority.”
The apostles all know and agree that God is the most important voice to
listen to, he gets priority. My Grandma
once taught me an acronym for JOY, she said if you get your priorities
straight, then you’ll have JOY – Jesus, Others, Yourself. Jesus is always first. Period.
End of Story. When everyone puts
God first, above self, above our own desires to be heard and to be important,
above our own personal preferences; when God goes first and the focus is
exclusively on him, then we get this great united front with this phenomenal
witness, that the council didn’t know what
to do with the apostles! If you keep
reading in Acts 5, you’ll find out that a Pharisee, another sect of Jews, was
present for this whole conversation and suggested a solution: “Do not take any
action against these men. Leave them alone! If what they have planned and done
is of human origin, it will disappear, but if it comes from God, you cannot
possibly defeat them. You could find yourselves fighting against God!”[5] That’s pretty wise advice, isn’t it? If what they’re doing is of human origin,
then it will end, and if it’s from God, then you won’t be able to stop them.
The council follows this advice and we’re told that the apostles leave “happy,
because God had considered them worthy to suffer disgrace for the sake of Jesus.”[6]
They’ve all gone through this all together, from prison to witnessing in the
temple to witnessing to the Sadducees, to now going back to the other
believers. And they are all happy.
It’s a slight contrast to the story we read in the Gospel
of John today and what happens when the disciples are not all together. Most of
the disciples are gathered together, on the evening of the resurrection, except
Thomas is missing. We don’t know
why. Maybe he was sick, maybe he was
visiting family, maybe it was taking him longer than usual to care for his
animals. Maybe he misplaced his iPhone
and didn’t get the message that this is where the disciples were gathering that
night. We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t
there, but that’s not what’s important.
Instead, we see what happens when
everyone’s not all together, for
whatever reason, and what happens is that seeds of doubt are sown. Thomas wasn’t there, and feels left out. He missed a Jesus sighting! Perhaps the ideal
response would have been a sincere, “Oh that’s so great, I’m so happy for you!
How cool that you got to see the Lord!”
However, if we’re perfectly honest with ourselves, it would have been
really hard for any of us to respond that way.
Instead, for whatever reason, we missed this great event, we’re jealous
that we missed it, we feel left out, and so it’s human nature to respond with
doubt and disdain, “Unless I see for myself, I won’t believe.” Now, Jesus is kind
of a nice guy, and so he makes sure to appear again when all of the disciples are present and he responds to Thomas’
feelings of jealousy that he missed out by inviting Thomas to do more than the
other disciples did. Jesus invites
Thomas to touch him, to put his hand
in the hole in his side.
(Caravaggio's The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, 1603)
Jesus gently and kindly invites Thomas to stop
doubting, to stop being jealous, to stop feeling left out, and instead, to
believe. When we are outside the group,
for whatever reason, Jesus gently opens up space for us to come back in so that
we can all be together.
And that’s a good thing, because as we read in
Revelation, God made us all together to
be his “kingdom of priests.”[7] That begs a few questions. What’s it mean to be made a kingdom? There’s only one king, and that’s God, which
I guess makes us all the townspeople and citizens of the kingdom. Except it appears we all have one job in
common, which leads us to the next question, what’s it mean to be made priests?
In 1 Peter we read about the priesthood of all believers, “you are a chosen
race, a royal priesthood, [there it is again, the king’s priests,] a holy
nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who
called you out of darkness into his own marvelous light. At one time you were
not God's people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know
God's mercy, but now you have received his mercy.”[8]
So, what’s it mean that God made us his kingdom of his priests? It means we’re
part of his people, part of his kingdom, part of his family, as declared at
baptism. And it means we are to proclaim
the wonderful acts of God, or, in other words, to witness, which brings us back
to Peter and Thomas and the apostles and the early church and their witness in
the days and months following Jesus’ resurrection. God made us part of his kingdom of
priests. We are part of his people and
we are to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ crucified and risen and the
wonderful acts that we each individually can testify to. We have a united witness of what God has done
for us as a people, and we have an individual witness of what God has done in
each one of our lives, where God gently and tenderly opened up space for us to
be part of his people. Let us pray…
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