Acts 5:27-32 (33-42)
There are seven weeks between Easter and Pentecost. These seven weeks are the Season of Easter: seven weeks, in which we specifically celebrate the Resurrection, and seven weeks which represent an entire season, not just one day during which we contemplate the resurrection and what it means in our lives and how it shapes everything about who we are as Christians. So for the next seven weeks instead of reading from the Old Testament the church turns to the book of Acts and allows the narratives of the book of Acts to point them to what it means for us as Christians to be shaped and changed by the story of the Resurrection. As we move toward Pentecost, the day which is celebrated as the birthday of the church, the day which changed Jesus’ rag-tag band of merry men, who never really got it, into an unstoppable force. A force which moved the church through the first century, growing and spreading and setting up a nearly unshakable foundation, which allows the Church worldwide for these two millennia to stand strong on what those first great pioneers of our faith, who through their blood, sweat, tears and unwavering proclamation of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, set up for us in the months, and years following the resurrection.
As we move toward our celebration of the Church, and all she was, is and will become, let us walk with these early founders of the Church as they were living out their resurrection faith in a dieing world and learn from them, their words, their actions and their deeds. So that we too can be the Church today strong, bold, and living the truth of the resurrection before our dieing world so they too might know what we know, love the one we love and experience God the way we experience God.
Our passage begins with our heroes, a handful of apostles, probably headed by Peter and John, being brought before the council. This is not the first time these apostles, have been brought before the Sanhedrin council. In fact these men had been brought in less than 24 hours before the scene in the passage we read this morning. But the claim brought against them the night before was not because of their teaching in Jesus name as we might think based on what they are accused of in this passage but the previous day they were brought in by the high priest because they were healing people.
The apostles were brought in because the heinous acts they were doing to the sick, and to those tormented by unclean spirits. The Chief priest was beside himself, he simple could not bear what these men were doing to these sick and ill used people. They were healing them. Earlier in chapter five it tells us the apostles were doing many signs and wonders among the people. We are told that people, both men and women were being added to their number daily because of their witness among the people. Many were coming to believe the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that Jesus is the messiah. We are then told people would bring their sick out so that Peter’s shadow might fall on them as he came by and in this manner might be healed. It says they brought out people with all manner of ailments and they were all cured.
It is because of this that these apostles, among them Peter and most likely John, are imprisoned by the high priest. In the morning the prisoners are gone. The jail is locked up tight and there is not sign of a break-in or break-out. During the night an angel had been sent by God to release the prisoners. So when the high priest and the council summoned them they were not in jail, as they should have been, but had been released by the hand of God and were at that very moment carefully concealed in broad daylight and hiding out in the center of the temple courts for all to see them, teaching all those who would listen, about Jesus Christ.
So they round the men up again, careful to do so in an orderly fashion as to not get the people all riled up and bring them before the council for a hearing. At which time the high priest questions them about a previous encounter they had had with the council. You see, as I have mentioned before, this is not their first encounter with the council, nor was it their second. They had been carted in the day before but some time before that Peter and John had been brought before this very group of people, because they had been healing and teaching about the resurrection of Jesus and ultimately the resurrection of all humanity, presumably, based on what little the Bible says about this, they were preaching an early version of Paul’s discussion in his correspondence with the Church at Corinth, about Christ’s resurrection being the first fruits of those who have died, but that is another sermon for another day.
The two apostles were brought before the council where they speak boldly about the personhood of Jesus Christ and the council is pretty amazed at their rhetoric and adjourn to discuss privately what they will do with these men and their teaching. Not wanting to make a huge scene among the people and being fairly impressed with their boldness and well spoken pleas, the council decides to set them free with only one stipulation. They are not to teach in the name of Jesus Christ. The two apostles make no promises about this but leave saying they will do what is right in the eyes of God which is to speak the truth about Jesus Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection and his teachings. The council is not happy with this answer but feel they have no choice but to let these men go.
So this is not the first, or the second but the third time the council has rounded up these apostles. They are frustrated with them, with their healing and with the teachings about Jesus Christ, those who follow them and believe as they believe are multiplying daily and they are none too happy that these people seem to be flocking to them and abandoning traditional Jewish belief for this new belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah who was crucified and whom God resurrected from the dead three days later. They press the apostles asking them, about their previous encounter with the council during which they were strictly informed they were not to teach, preach or heal in the name of Jesus Christ. Once again the apostles share with the council a concise sermon about the nature of Jesus and his plan for salvation and forgiveness of sins. They present this message and the teaching of it as nothing less than obedience to God.
They speak boldly and with out apology. They know what they teach to be true. They know people are coming to know the truth through their boldness and they know people are being cured through their ministry. They are doing the right thing. They are teaching the right thing. There is no apology for truth of the gospel and there is no denying that lives are being made better through their ministry among the people.
Again the council does not know what to do with these men and the talk amongst themselves trying to figure out what they will do with these men and this new teaching they insist on proclaiming. One among them, Gamaliel, stood and spoke to this confused and frustrated council. He reminded them of other new teachings which had arisen and how in time each of the movements had dispersed shortly after the death of their leader. These men’s leader had already been put to death. It was his belief that the council should leave these men alone. If they were not of God then they and their teaching would too die in time, but if what they were doing and teaching was truly of God not only could they not be overthrown but the council would find they were not merely fighting against a fly-by-night group of men but they would find they were fighting against none other than God.
The council heeded Gamaliel’s words and let the apostle’s go, once again instructing them to not speak in the name of Jesus and gave them a flogging for good measure. And they left there rejoicing, and went straight back to the temple where they had been before being drug into the council, to teach and proclaim Jesus as the messiah.
Last week we were left with the vision of Mary running back to tell the apostles and the other disciples the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And here some months later we have Peter and John, the very two who accompanied Mary to see the empty tomb that morning and went away believing someone had stolen Jesus’ body, teach, preaching, ministering and healing in the name of Jesus. Last we knew they were disappointed and distraught because the body of their Lord is missing and here we find them strong, pillars of the budding Christian community. These men we encounter here this morning are not the confused and frightened men who went back to the other apostles and the disciples that Resurrection Sunday morning, they are changed. If their names had not been given earlier in the story we would never even guess these two men to be Peter and John. But the last time we saw them they did not know the truth of the resurrection. The last time we saw them they believe death to have the final word, they believed there was no victory, they did not yet know Jesus to be the Messiah.
Last we hear Mary was running off to tell them. Last we hear they did not yet know what we know to be true. Last week I said that the resurrection shapes us and changes us. I said the resurrection makes us who we are and those are not just pretty words. They are not empty semantics, words that sound good but don’t mean anything. This is the heart, breath, and blood of what makes Christian life. We are who we are because of the resurrection. Quite literally we would not be here this morning, if that tomb had not been empty and had Jesus not called Mary’s name.
We know by observation that these two men are not the same men who walked away from and dark empty tomb on a Sunday morning. We can see they are changed, we can see they believe something they did not believe that morning. They walked away believing what Mary said about the body being stolen but when they stand before the council they believe something different. They believe what Mary said about the risen Christ. They believe what they saw, they believe what the experienced, and they believe Jesus to be the risen Lord. They believe Jesus to be the Messiah, who came to set us free, to forgive us and change us. They believe in the power of the resurrection to shape and change, because they are living proof that this one fact reforms, reshape, recreates us in to the people God knows us to be.
Who would have thought that Peter, and John, the apostles, who no matter how many times they were told did not understand the words which came clearly out of Jesus mouth regarding who Jesus was, the purpose of his life and the truth of his death and resurrection, would stand before the religious leaders of their world and refuse to stay silent about what they knew and what they believed about Jesus Christ. They know the truth and it has changed everything and because it has changed everything it is not something they can remain silent about. They are asked, they are cajoled they are threatened but nothing will convince them that to do anything other than to share the good new of the resurrection is obedience to God, to not do so would be disobedience.
They teach in the temple are put in jail, miraculously released and return to proclaim Jesus in the temple. They are brought before the council told not to speak not once but twice, the second time being flogged in an attempt to dissuade them and they immediately return to the temple to teach and then begin to teach in houses as well. They can not stay silent they can not be silenced they share what they know to be true with all those who will listen.
Who are we? We are Christians. I can say with some assurance that those of us who choose to here on a Sunday morning and not in our beds or outside enjoying this beautiful morning would call ourselves that. And as such, we are the inheritors of the truth of the resurrection. We have at the very least by our choice to be here this morning instead of the myriad of other places we could choose to be this morning, shaped by the resurrection. But coming to church is not enough. Our whole lives should be changed and shaped by this truth. Our attitudes, our actions toward each other and toward other people.
These men we encounter this morning could not help but reach out in love to heal and to share the good news they knew to be true. They knew all the people around them had spent their whole lives longing for the coming of the messiah, they knew the people of their world joined their dreams with the dreams of generations who had come before them waiting and desiring the day when God would send the anointed among them. They knew the anointed had, come. They knew the messiah and they knew that he lived, taught, died and rose again so that these people among whom they lived could be forgiven, so theses people who surrounded them could life lives free of sin. They had the truth and they could not keep silent.
We too should not be able to keep silent. We too have knowledge of the love of Jesus Christ. We too know that Jesus came to this earth so that we might be forgiven and live lives which are not chained and bound to sin. We too know the truth of the resurrection. Are lives are shape, changed transformed by these facts and we too should not be shamed, cajoled, or otherwise persuaded by those in the world around us who disagree with this one basic tenant of our faith, to remain silent. We should not be simply changed in what we believe, we should not simply be changed in how we act and interact but we should be changed in everything we do and everything we say and we should be changed and empowered by the truth we know to share and proclaim what Jesus has done for us to all those who will listen.
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