First Thoughts on Year B First Reading Acts Passages from the Lectionary
Easter 3
William Loader
Easter 3: 14 April Acts 3:12-19
Luke,
the author of Acts, has just reported an astounding miracle. A lame man
begging at the temple gate receives not a gift of money from Peter and
John, but an act of healing, enabling him to stand, walk and leap for
joy. The crowds are amazed and Luke pictures Peter as then responding
with an explanation. His claim is that the power which Jesus exercised
as a faith healer was again evident in this act. In Jesus' name and
with his power the man had been healed. It was in part a proof of
Jesus' resurrection and so the starting point for Peter to comment on
his execution.
Such stories were in circulation in Luke's time both about Jesus and
about the disciples. Such stories were always prone to exaggeration, as
a look at Matthew and Luke's use of Mark shows, and sometimes generated
ever more spectacular legends until Jesus seems in the second century
more like a magician. We have no way of testing their validity, but it
is clear that behind the human tendency to make up stories about heroes
there is some basis in reality. Jesus in his time was known as a healer
and exorcist and in his world that meant having the ability to liberate
people from the powers and plights which oppressed them. Precisely how
that happened, whether through shock, focused faith, or confronting
challenge we cannot recover, but making people whole was seen as doing
God's work and evidence of God's action. So it is here.
At a superficial level one could conclude that this should mean that
everyone with a disability or an illness can be healed and made whole
if only they would have faith. The prospect of the world being flooded
by such magicians who could do such things is something wonderful, but
this is not how it happened nor is this the underlying understanding.
Simplistic magical faith of this kind marginalises all those people for
whom disability or illness is part of life. They don't need to be made
to feel guilty for being the way they are. So there are dangers when
faith is too focused on the miraculous. Indeed other New Testament
writers deliberately undermine faith based primarily on miracles.
Famously, John's gospel tells us that when people believed in Jesus
because of the miracles he did, he did not believe in them (2:23-25).
Faith meant something deeper than following for marvel's sake.
Similarly Matthew pictures Jesus as dismissing those whose cvs paraded
mighty miracles, because they failed to heed the core of his message
which was love - as in the Sermon on the Mount (7:21-23). Using
miracles as propaganda was a standard strategy of people seeking a
following. Roman emperors employed it also to press their claims to
authority.
Notwithstanding Luke's tendency to treat the time of Jesus and the
first apostles as a golden age of wonders, he still knew that if Peter
had spoken to the crowds in those days he would have put the focus very
much on Jesus himself and what he shows us about God. So he provides us
what he imagines Peter might have said, a common practice of historians
of the day. Such historians composed speeches to give profile to the
figures of the past, often including within them ideas and images known
to belong to the period. Luke's speeches in Acts are therefore a rich
source for understanding how he as a historian of his time understood
what was going on.
Here the message put simply is: "You thought you had snuffed out the
liberating ministry of Jesus. You didn't. It's alive and well because
God has raised him from death, elevating him to his presence, and so
demonstrating that Jesus was indeed God's Messiah." The message and
mission of Jesus goes on. Peter hails him therefore as the prince or
pioneer of life and confronts his hearers with the stark and bitter
irony that they put to death the one who came to bring life. They
brought hate upon the one who brought love.
They could have met with hate in return. This happened later in those
awful pogroms and their sequel in the holocaust, where Jews were
ostracised as God-haters and later consigned to gas chambers. Luke is
far from having Peter, a Jew, promulgate Jew-hate. Nor does he want to
offend the Romans who were ultimately responsible for the execution.
With one hand, as it were, he has Peter acknowledge that they acted in
ignorance, but with the other he calls them to repent: face up to what
they had done, regret it, and express remorse. Ignorance may not be an
excuse when it is wilful and careless. Peter offers not condemnation
but opportunity for change.
Our passage cuts off mid sentence at the end of 3:19. The full sentence
deserves to be heard. They are to repent and be received with
forgiveness, but there is more. They are to look forward to times of
refreshing and renewal, the vision which Jews commonly associated with
the coming of the Messiah who would set up a community of justice and
peace. Luke has Peter still look forward to Jesus fulfilling the role
of the Messiah in those terms, though his ministry had given a
foretaste of how it could be. Luke's portrayal of the first Christian
community in Jerusalem also depicts it as a foretaste of that great
vision. Breaking bread in communion was a foretaste of the great feast
for all peoples and still is. The true magic of faith is not to be
found in exceptions and wonders, imagined or real, but in compassion
and caring in community.
Gospel: Easter 3: 14 April Luke
24:36b-48
Epistle: Easter 3: 14 April
1 John 3:1-7
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