Acts 3:12-19
April 19, 2015
First Presbyterian Church Clarksville
Harmony Presbyterian Church
Dr. Robert Wm Lowry
This is a difficult text.
In
fact, it is more than difficult. It is
downright nasty.
The
disciples, fresh from the Pentecost miracle experience, go to the temple at the
appointed time to pray and when they arrived they encountered a man. The man was unable to walk and was carried there
by his friends. Each day, he would ask
for money from the people entering the temple.
The text does not tell us how successful he was, but if his friends
brought him back day after day after day, there must have been some luck in the
spot.
When
Peter and John are about to enter the temple, they see him and when he asks for
a gift they heal him in the name of Jesus.
With
Peter’s help, the man stood up and walked.
It
was a miracle.
And
if it sounds familiar, there is a reason.
It was a miracle with echoes.
Echoes of the healing of the man whose friends carried him to Jesus in
Mark 2. Echoes of the healing of the man
who was ordered by Jesus to take up his mat and walk. Echoes of so many moments when so many people
had their lives transformed just by the words of this one named Jesus.
The
first moment out of the gate after Pentecost, the first public act of the
church of Jesus Christ gathered and formed by the Holy Spirit, the first
encounter between the world and the community of the Word is the restoration of
bodily wholeness to a man to whom the disciples spoke the name of Jesus.
It
was a miracle.
That
is the easy part. Strange for the miracle
to be the easy part of the story! To our
modern ears, the miracle is usually the hardest part to believe. But in the case of Acts chapter 3, the miracle
is the easy part. The trouble is in what
comes next.
We
have a clue that what is about to come is trouble because we know who is
speaking; Peter. Whenever Peter speaks,
part of me starts to shake my head and think, “oh no, here we go again.” Not that Peter is somehow a bad figure, far
from it, but he does have a tendency to step in it from time to time. Watching Peter fumble and stumble with the
gospel is kind of like watching a two year old make a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich. It makes a mess, but usually
comes out in the end.
What
makes this particular Peter moment difficult is that the first experience the
world has with the disciples is an encounter that is wrong on so many levels.
Hear
it again, but this time imagine that you are part of the breathless crowd that
has just seen this healing and, in its wake, run to Solomon’s Porch to get a
glimpse of these two who heal in the name of Jesus.
12 Seeing this, Peter addressed the people: “You Israelites,
why are you amazed at this? Why are you staring at us as if we made him walk by
our own power or piety? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of our
ancestors—has glorified his servant Jesus. This is the one you handed over and
denied in Pilate’s presence, even though he had already decided to release him.
14 You rejected the holy and righteous one, and asked that a murderer be
released to you instead. 15 You killed the author of life, the very one whom
God raised from the dead. We are witnesses of this. 16 His name itself has made
this man strong. That is, because of faith in Jesus’ name, God has strengthened
this man whom you see and know. The faith that comes through Jesus gave him complete
health right before your eyes. 17 “Brothers and sisters, I know
you acted in ignorance. So did your rulers. 18 But this is how God fulfilled
what he foretold through all the prophets: that his Christ would suffer. 19
Change your hearts and lives! Turn back to God so that your sins may be wiped
away. (CEB)
Did
you hear it that time? After
demonstrating the miracle of transformation that comes just through the faithful
name of Jesus, Peter stands in front of the awe struck crowd and essentially
calls them murderers and fools. “You rejected
the holy and righteous one,” he says. “You
killed the author of life.”
Like I
said, difficult.
When
the first crowd gathers to hear the first sermon, Peter starts by calling them
Christ-killers. In fairness to Peter,
the writer of Matthew and the writer of Luke-Acts make it pretty clear that the
real culprits in the crucifixion were not the Romans pounding the nails but the
crowd calling for blood. So Peter is not
entirely off base when he says what he does about the past. And as we know from our biblical studies,
sometimes an author will take liberties when recording a speech by making
helpful revisions to ensure that it complies with the theology of the broader
narrative.
There is
also the fact that the style of writing in this short passage from Acts demands
some measure of the scolding that Peter gives.
In the tradition of Greek rhetoric, there were three broad types of
persuasion that were used depending on the timeframe of the conversation. In this case, Peter wants the people to see a
past event in a different light. More
specifically, he wants them to see a person from their past in a different
light. Using the style of Greek judicial
argument, Peter points the crowd back to their own misunderstandings and
misdeeds and encourages them to rethink their mistakes, see Jesus for who and
what he really is, and, later in the story, repent of their mistakes and
believe in his name.
Both of
those academic arguments help to deflate the difficulty of this text, but I am
not sure that we can really hang our hats on technicalities if we press down a
little. If we begin to peek around the
edges of the text, I think there is a third possibility to explain Peter’s
ill-advised and less than pastoral response to the awe of the crowd. It is one that does not involve the technicalities
of Greco-Roman rhetoric or the theological implications of authorship in the
text.
Stepping
back and looking at this text in the larger context of the whole narrative of
Luke-Acts, I have to admit that though I am taken aback by Peter’s harsh tone
and scolding words and even the anti-Semitic undercurrent of the speech, I am
not wholly unsympathetic to Peter because beneath it all- beneath the formal
rhetorical style and the theological coherence with the larger narrative- Peter
is angry. He is sad. He has lost a friend and when the people
whose shouts of “Crucify him” are still ringing in his ears gather in front of
him at Solomon’s Porch, Peter just cannot hold it in any more.
He
chastises them and scolds them and theologically corrects them, but what he
really wants to say, I think, is, “you killed my friend!”
When it
comes to studying the biblical text, I love to spend time on those technical
issues. The study of a particular word
in Greek or Hebrew, a turn of phrase that can change the text depending on how
it is translated, the ancient writing style that influences any modern
reading. I love to get into my
commentaries and get deep in to the text.
From time
to time, when I am getting too far down that well of intellectual curiosity and
allowed the text to turn from the living word of God to a particularly
interesting jigsaw puzzle, I hear in the back of my mind the voice of my friend
and former parishioner Lucy who, when I got caught in a cul-de-sac inside my
head, would look at me and say, “Robert, put down the book and pick up the
baby.”
When
left to the devices of the experts and the books, this text is pretty easily
explained through technical arguments about style, theological context, and a
laundry list of other things that help us do a good reading of the
narrative. But when you put the book
down, and pick up the baby- when you get your head out of bible study and
encounter the words of the text as the voice of the men and women speaking
them, it is hard not to hear a very different voice. It is hard not to see Peter as more than a
theological mouthpiece for the larger text or a formal rhetorician formulating
his argument.
When you
put down the book and pick up the baby, you, or at least I, find a man who is
still in the midst of the pain that accompanies loss.
It is
difficult to read the apostles that way.
We are so attuned to reading their words as though they were as rigid
and precise as the stone their figures are carved in throughout the great
cathedrals of the world that it is difficult for us to hear the voices of the
stones sound so very human. But if we take scripture at face value, we know
that rather than being towering pillars of strength whose real lives rivaled
the strength of the stone effigies they would leave behind in the church’s
imagination, the people whom Jesus called to be his followers- the people whom the
Holy Spirit calls to be the church- are staggeringly unqualified for the job
and persistently getting it wrong. To be
sure, they all have their moments of great faith and great influence, but the
rest of the time they are deeply flawed, occasionally foolish, frequently afraid,
and seem to have to be told the same thing over and over again until it finally
sinks in.
So when
I read this and many other texts not trying to explain away this emotional
outburst from “Petras” Peter who is called “Petros” the Rock, I find that
rather than looking at Peter at a distance, I am looking at myself up
close.
Scripture
does that a lot. It uses ancient words
to hold a mirror up to us in the here and now so we are able to see, in the
common moments we share with men and women so long ago, our own reality staring
back at us.
So when
I put down the books and pick up the baby and look at this text and allow it to
hold up the mirror to my life, it does not take long for me to see that I have
the same problem Peter does in that moment; I’ve got some stuff I need to get
off my chest and let go of. We read this
text as Peter being this great and towering prophetic voice, but in reality I
think it is much more than that. I think
Peter is towering in his vulnerability.
He is towering in his honesty. He
is towering in his willingness to say, “you hurt me and I am still in pain.”
My
guess is that I am not the only one who might see something like that in the
reflection of this text. I’m probably
not the only one who needs to learn from Peter that letting it out and letting go
is important to moving on.
We see
what happens for Peter when he lets go.
The rest of the narrative of Acts 3 is Peter calling on the people to
turn to the God who is always willing to receive us; to turn to the God who is
always ready to forgive; to turn to the very one whose blood they were baying
for just weeks before outside Pilate’s palace.
The
story starts with Peter healing in the name of Jesus and ends with him inviting
the people into the transformation that comes through belief in the name of
Jesus and all the while Peter himself is being moved from hurt to wholeness by
what other than the name of Jesus.
At its
core this is a text about the power of Jesus’ name and the hope of the
resurrected Christ. It is the name that
can make us whole body and soul. In all
of our wonderfully made sinfulness, God gathers us in and calls us by name.
That is
a hope we are called to share with the world, but also a hope that is shared with
us! Remember the words of the gospel, “God
so loved the world.” Not the rest of the
world, or part of the world, but the whole world. We are in that circle as well; the circle of
hearers of the promise as well as bearers of it into the world.
When I
was a seminary intern, the Head of Staff was out of town and the Associate
Pastor was dealing with a couple of hospital emergencies, so she called me to
go to the home of a member who had died after a long illness and be with the family
until she could get things moved around to meet and plan the service.
I was
as green as green can get and this was going to be my first visit of this kind
so I began to wonder what my strategy should be for the visit. I may have even asked her using those same
words, “what should my strategy be,” and Sallie reminded me as only she could
that my job was to go there on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ and show
them and tell them that they are not alone and that Jesus loves them. No more no less. And, she said, if you aren’t sure what to say
just remember, “to err on the side of pastoral care.”
I went
to the house and I am sure that I managed to hit every possible pot hole. I was sure I was going to get fired for
messing up so badly. Then at the
funeral, the daughter of the woman who died took me by the hand and said, “thank
you for coming by. I needed someone to
remind me that while Jesus was welcoming mom he still had time for me.”
There is
such power in the name of Jesus that even an angry disciple or an inept
seminarian can be vehicles for its healing power.
And when
we put down the book and pick up the baby;
when we
let ourselves be swept up in the hope and the promise;
when we
let out and let go of all the things that weigh us down and we dare to proclaim
the power of Jesus’ name the world is not the only thing that will be
transformed. Like Peter standing on
Solomon’s Porch who went from lashing out against the people he felt robbed him
of his friend to calling those people to repent and know that God is good, we
too can and will be transformed when we share the power and the promise of the
risen Christ if we share it with open and vulnerable hearts.
He is
risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia, alleluia! Amen!
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