Scripture Reading: Acts 5:12-21a, 27-33, 40
In Jerusalem, many signs and wonders were being performed among the people by the apostles. All the believers met regularly in the part of the Temple called Solomon’s Porch. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.
Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. And because of what the apostles were doing, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds also came in from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.
The high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people all about this new life.” At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people.
[Later that morning, when the high priest sent to the jail to have Peter and the others brought in for questioning, he was told they were gone, and were back preaching in the Temple. Immediately he sent the captain of the guard to bring them back in.]
At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles back in. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them.
The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”
Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings! The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead – the one whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. God exalted him to his own right hand as Leader and Saviour that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”
When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. [After much discussion,] they had the apostles flogged, ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.
Meditation
For the followers of Jesus, it was like déjà vu all over again. A bad dream being relived. A sad tale being acted out once again.
Although, it also wasn’t.
A few months earlier, when Jesus was put to death, the Sanhedrin had a hand in what happened. They were the City Council responsible to oversee the political, legal, economic and religious life of the city. Because Rome recognized and worked with them as the local authority to keep things in order, whatever they recommended was pretty well guaranteed Roman support and action.
So, when Jesus was arrested by the Sanhedrin and put on trial for being holy and disorderly, it made perfect sense for his followers to flee, go into hiding, pretend they didn’t know him, and try to figure out what on Earth to do now. Except, it broke their heart and maybe even broke their spirit, to do it.
And now, here they are – as they go about acting in Jesus’ way and in Jesus’ name, arrested by the same Sanhedrin, accused of being holy and disorderly, and asked to recant, to deny, to cease and desist once again for their own well-being.
It reminds me of the movie, “Groundhog Day.” In it, Bill Murray plays a cynical, self-centred, unhappy weatherman on his fourth annual pilgrimage from the big city of Pittsburgh to the town of Punxsutawney – the ultimate sign of how unsuccessful his career and his life have been. With plans to get out of there as soon as his job is done, he gets stuck, though, first by a blizzard that forces him to stay overnight and then by a time warp that forces him to relive the day – Groundhog Day, over and over and over and over again, until he gets it right.
At first, it’s baffling. Then frustrating and enraging as he lives the same day over and over again, and the only one in town who is. As he gets used to it, though, he seizes on opportunities to get whatever he wants. But then, as he spends more and more time over and over again with these same people, in the same situations, facing the same accidents and heartaches and needs and unrealized dreams day after day, he actually starts to care about them, learns to take care of them, and in the process become a real human being. At which point – spoiler alert – the time warp ends and he is able to move on into the rest of his life as a person with a warm and loving heart, happily committed to loving and caring for the people he once despised and looked down on.
They say that life will teach us what we need to know, and will give us chances – always and as many and as often as we need, to grow into what we are meant to be.
That’s one thing the disciples experienced in their openness to the resurrection of Jesus. God’s raising of Jesus from the dead is sometimes called the great overturning.
It’s an overturning of the death itself. The one who was put to death and buried by the world, is raised up to life by God. Death, often assumed to be the final word, is shown to be not. God and God’s word is not only the first word, but also the last.
It's an overturning of the world’s verdict about Jesus. The world ultimately said – and still often says, “No” to Jesus’ way. That it’s not practical. Not sustainable. Not reasonable to follow. God, in raising Jesus, says it’s ultimately the only way to follow and put into practice for the world’s good.
It's also an overturning of the expectations Jesus’ followers have about how God’s kingdom comes to be on Earth. All the way along, the followers of Jesus harbour unrefined notions and dark dreams of somehow beating the world at its own game. Of out-powering the powers, out-killing the killers, out-suppressing the oppressors, out-hating the haters. According to Acts 1, right up until the day of Jesus’ ascension they were asking, “Now, Jesus? Now will the kingdom come in power?”
But the answer that comes, and that his followers step by step find themselves living out is that the way he lived and showed in the flesh among them – the way of love, of healing and open invitation, of vulnerability, forgiveness and reconciliation – is the way. Always and only and forever the way of God’s kingdom on Earth, never to be superceded or replaced by another, more worldly and self-serving way.
Which is why his followers find themselves doing and living as he did when he was with them in the flesh – being a channel of healing for others around them who are broken, inviting people of all kinds to the table and gathering them into community, worshiping the God who is Lord and Lover of all – even of their enemies, and taking care of one another and whoever their neighbour is revealed to be.
Which is also why within just a few weeks or months his followers find themselves in the same place as Jesus was – arrested by the Sanhedrin, accused of being holy and disorderly. Except this time, instead of denying, scattering, ceasing and desisting, they do as Jesus did.
They let go of self-saving fear. They also let go self-serving hatred of their enemies, of any vengeful desire for their enemies’ destruction. As Jesus did and always does, they simply state what they know to be true and invite their judges to decide for themselves, what they will do. This time ‘round, in the power of the resurrection, they get it right.
And I wonder if at that point, they feel like Bill Murray does at the end of “Groundhog Day”? That the time warp is ended, and now that they have learned at last to be real followers of Jesus, real children of God, real people of the kingdom of love, the rest of their life can begin? And they can now start to live it out what they have learned and have become, each and every new day rising to the challenges and opportunities life always gives us.
On one hand, that may sound tiring -- having to do it right, over and over again in every new day, every new situation, every new circumstance. I think sometimes we want faith in God to be like a test at school we can study for, pass and then put behind us so we can get on with other stuff that we want to do and want to accomplish in life.
But, the day by new day rising in the way of Jesus is the only way.
For one reason, because each of us, like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day’ and like the first followers of Jesus in the New Testament, has what’s called our own “besetting sin”– our own personal, distinctive and persistent way of not living the way of Jesus, of serving ourselves instead, of not fully loving others, of avoiding real community. I have my ways; you have yours. We each have our own habitual ways of less-than-holy being. And they never really go away, do they?
For another reason, the world also never really grows fully and finally into what God intends. There is always some evil, some oppression, some cruelty, some blindness, some hatred, some new way of being a place of death and sorrow for so many rather than life and well-being for all.
And is there anything better than the joy, the sense of fullness, the sense of rightness with God and the world and ourselves, each and every time we “get it right”? Each and every time we grow and take a step beyond our little selves, and find ourselves humbly living God’s way of love and Jesus’ way of healing and empowering community with others?
They say that life gives us chances – always and as many and as often as we need, to grow into what we are to be, and to help at least our little part of the world to be what God intends it to become, over and over again, world without end. Thanks be to God – the God of Easter’s promise of rising and rising and rising again to the occasion.
Amen.
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