A breath of fresh air
Commentary
Fresh air is precisely what many people feel they never get in church. Many recall the experiences of former times when the air was stodgy and stuffy. In some communities of faith the air is still a bit stifling, and so when invited to worship, the response is often, "Been there. Done that."
Yet our lessons are full of the freshness of spring, bringing life and vigor to what had been dormant, as though frozen in winter and refusing to thaw.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
The isolated verse that introduces our pericope identifies the speaker of the following sermon as Peter. The audience, omitted by our not reading the second half of verse 14, is the people of Judea who had gone up to Jerusalem as the rules required for the festival of Passover. Yet their experience there that year was so far from routine that Peter had to explain the whole phenomenon. First he cited the prophecy from Joel 2:28-32 about the outpouring of the spirit of God in the last days. Then he launched into the sermon that runs from verses 22 through 36.
Typical of the sermons of the apostles, the emphasis here is on the death and resurrection of Jesus, proven by the scriptures, and those who were eyewitnesses of the resurrection announce the reliability of the message. Striking in this sermon is the juxtaposition of the notion that Jesus' passion was "according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" and the accusation that "you crucified and killed (this man) by the hands of those outside the law," that is, the Romans. The early church indeed was faced with this conflict: on the one hand, Jesus' death was God's doing; on the other hand, the Jewish people used the Romans to crucify him. Perhaps the conflict is indeed intentional. What anyone can see is the role of the Jews in pushing the Romans to crucify him. What only the eyes of faith can perceive is that God's hand and will were behind the whole story in order to forgive our sins through that tragedy and then to raise Jesus from the dead.
The use of Psalm 61:8-11 at verses 25-28 is Peter's way of indicating that David predicted the resurrection of one of his family tree. Since David is still dead and buried in his own tomb right there in Jerusalem and since Peter and others were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus, then obviously Jesus is the one about whom David spoke a millennium earlier.
This sermon, like the other apostolic sermons reported in the Book of Acts, demonstrates to each and every generation what the content of Christian preaching needs to be: Jesus crucified and resurrected, then ascended to the seat of honor at God's right hand (see also Acts 10:34-43; 13:16b-41).
1 Peter 1:3-9
The author of this epistle, whether Peter, Silvanus, or someone else entirely, addressed the letter to "the exiles of the Dispersion" (v. 1). That he was not speaking of the dispersed tribes of Israel is clear from the continuation of the opening: "who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood." It is thus Christians who are the exiles of this greeting.
Later in the letter the author repeats that designation, speaking to his audience of baptized Christians as "aliens and exiles" (2:11). Probably thinking much like Paul that "our citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20), Peter speaks of the Christian life on this earth until Christ comes again as "the time of your exile" (1:17). His point is, of course, that Christians are different from the rest of humanity and are called to live out that difference. Such behavior will include not only morality but above all a stance of hope in the face of persecution.
The verses that comprise our pericope are a blessing to God for all that he has accomplished and promises to accomplish. First and foremost, God has given a "new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." That new birth is precisely the baptism that makes Christians "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) and that brings the children of God together as one in community (Galatians 3:28). It is that birth, therefore, that enables the author to refer to his readers as "exiles," for they belong to the kingdom of heaven even though they live their lives in the tumultous times of persecution from the good solid citizens of this world. Where such exiles and aliens find hope in this midst of such oppression is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and in their inheritance waiting for them in heaven.
Inheritance was a key theme in the Old Testament. Usually the term referred to the land of Canaan. In order for God to give that land as an inheritance to Israel, it must have belonged to God in the first place. By that understanding the Canaanites were living on God's land and would need to move over for the heirs. The Promised Land for Christians is the kingdom of heaven, and so, knowing their names are already written down to receive that gift, they can wait in hope through the persecution and be confident of the new world to come.
With that kind of confident hope, Christians can and should rejoice here and now, "even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials ..." (v. 6). This rejoicing shows the genuineness of faith and will result in praise and honor when Jesus comes again. Every pastor knows many examples of this indescribable joy from visitations to the hospital rooms where people of faith are dying with smiles on their faces.
That joy is possible not merely because of the hope for the future but because even now Christians "are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls" (v. 9). Salvation for the exiles of the Old Testament meant the empirical release from bondage to their Babylonian captors. In an earlier time salvation was the freedom from bondage to Egypt. For these exiles, however, the salvation of their souls allows them to rejoice even in the midst of their exile, where they are oppressed by the government of the powerful Roman Empire. These exiles rejoice in a Jesus they have not seen, in an inheritance they must die to obtain (there's a switch on a familiar theme!), and on a salvation that has nothing to do with their empirical state.
"Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
John 20:19-31
The author of John's Gospel must have taken courses in time management. The calendar in Luke-Acts was simply not economical: resurrection, then forty days until the ascension and ten more until the pouring out of the Spirit on Pentecost. For John they all happened on the same day.
Our pericope begins on the evening of Easter Day, which represents John's Pentecost, and then takes us off to another event in the same place a week later. These verses offer two resurrection appearances besides the one reported that morning to Mary.
On that same evening Jesus entered the room where the disciples had been hiding from the Jews. His initial greeting was the familiar, "Peace be with you." The words, however, might be more than that in this context, because the Lord himself offered the same greeting to Gideon (Judges 6:23). Since the words at John 20:19, 21 are spoken by the risen Lord who had already ascended to the Father, we might look at the expression here, as in Judges 6, as a manifestation of the divine presence.
After offering the greeting the second time, Jesus immediately commissioned the disciples: "As the Father sent me, so I send you" (v. 21). Jesus had uttered virtually the same words in his prayer in chapter 17, but since he was there talking to God the words were slightly different: "As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world" (17:18). These earlier words indicate the destination of the sending: the world.
John recognizes that the world is presently ruled by the Evil One, but it is nevertheless the world that God so loved that he gave his only Son (3:16). It is in the world that the word became flesh and dwelt among us (1:14). Jesus is said by the people of Samaria to be "the Savior of the world" (4:42). While the Synoptic Gospels speak repeatedly of Jesus' coming to Israel, John sees the bigger picture and directs God's mission toward the world.
In order to accomplish that mission Jesus provides the breath of fresh air they need. "And he breathed on them" as God breathed into the nostrils of Adam to transform the lifeless hunk of clay into a living soul (Genesis 2:7). There the breath created life itself. In Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones God sent breath into the bones so that this despaired and hopeless community of exiles might experience new life (Ezekiel 37:10).
Breath, wind, and spirit are essentially the same word both in Hebrew and Greek, and so the breath of Jesus is followed appropriately and immediately by the words, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (v. 22). This act is John's Pentecost, the pouring out of the Spirit on the disciples so they might be enabled to go on their mission into the world. It takes a breath of fresh air to take on such a task.
Quite specifically the mission of the disciples is to forgive and retain sins. The retaining of sin sounds harsh, but it is not unlike the theme in the Old Testament on hardening the heart. The Pharaoh of Egypt originally hardened his own heart in his refusal to let the Hebrew slaves go free. As the action moves on in the narrative of the plagues, the Lord becomes the subject of the verb, and so "Yahweh hardens Pharaoh's heart" in order to bring judgment on him and the Egyptians. The movement to the divine subject indicates that the hardness of heart Pharaoh chose for himself becomes the means by which the Lord will make him even more stubborn so that judgment is inevitable. In the same way, the retaining of sins is probably the announcement of divine judgment on those who have made the decision to stand against Jesus and the Father. They have made their own bed, and it looks like that of a teenager.
On the other hand, these Spirit-endowed apostles are charged to forgive sins. This act people cannot do for themselves. Forgiveness is the divine act the apostles are to accomplish in the world. Strangely, the word "forgive" occurs nowhere else in John's Gospel. Even the word "sins" is rare. It occurs elsewhere only at 8:24 where Jesus tells the Jews, "I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he." The saying certainly deals with retention of sins, but that retention is the people's choice, and sin is basically the refusal to believe in Jesus. The mission given in the room on the evening of Easter is that the apostles announce who Jesus is so that those who believe might receive the forgiveness of their sins and those who refuse retain their sins.
The appearance the following week is necessitated because Thomas missed out on the first visit and refused to believe his colleagues. He wanted proof, and the entire church owes a debt of gratitude to Thomas for insisting on touching the pierced hands and side. Without that physical test those who heard the story of the first week's experience might wonder whether it were a ghost or the minds of the apostles playing tricks on them. Those of us who read the story might wonder if someone back then did not have the ability to make a hologram. Surely the touch on which Thomas insisted completely rules out ghost and hologram. This Jesus standing in the room was the Incarnate One, the one last seen gasping for his own breath on a cross.
Whether Thomas actually touched the wounds of Jesus we are not told explicitly. What we do know is that confronted with the risen Jesus, Thomas confessed, "My Lord and my God!" He had recognized that he was in the presence of the crucified and risen Son of God who, because of the resurrection, was now the Lord (see also Paul at Romans 1:3-4; 10:9).
Jesus took the opportunity to speak those words that make possible such belief and confession even apart from that personal and physical visit. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (20:29). The words remind us of the distinction between faith and sight at Hebrews 11:1. The opportunities for later generations to come to that faith without seeing is the reason John wrote the Gospel: "that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (v. 31).
The gift of the Holy Spirit is granted to all of us at our baptism. After the sign of the cross is made with the Trinitarian formula spoken, the newly baptized receives the Holy Spirit. Having so been identified with the apostles of old, the same commission applies to each and every sister and brother in Christ: bear witness to Jesus Christ so that people may hear and come to believe in him rather than wallow in the retention of their sins.
The possibilities are endless out there. In fact, the whole world is waiting -- breathlessly.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Three important religious festivals are prescribed for Israel in the Old Testament -- Tabernacles in the fall, Passover in the spring, and fifty weeks later the Feast of Weeks, or what the New Testament calls Pentecost. It is during this latter religious celebration of Pentecost that the story in our text takes place.
According to the law of Deuteronomy, all Israelites journeyed to Jerusalem to celebrate their religious festivals, and so in our story, the apostles and followers of Jesus and many other devout Jews are gathered together in Jerusalem. Suddenly the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples in tongues of fire, and they begin to speak in other tongues, so that travelers from every nation hear the disciples speaking to them in their own language, proclaiming the mighty works that God has done. It is such an astounding phenomenon that many in the crowd think that the disciples are drunk. But Peter refutes that charge and declares to the crowd that the ancient prophecy of Joel is coming true. Before the coming of the Kingdom of God, Joel had promised, God would pour out his Spirit on the faithful in Israel, enabling them to prophesy. That, Peter declares, is what is happening there in Jerusalem. The "last days" are upon them. The Kingdom of God is breaking into history. Therefore all persons should repent and call on the name of the Lord and be saved.
Such is the account in Acts up to the beginning of our stated reading for the morning. Having explained what is happening, the Apostle Peter then proceeds to preach a sermon that connects the event with Jesus Christ, for it is with the appearance of Jesus that the new age of the kingdom has begun (cf. Luke 11:20; 1:21; Mark 1:15).
Who is Jesus Christ? That is what Peter wants to explain to the crowd of Jews in his sermon. The listening Jews are familiar with the stories circulating about Jesus' works and healings and miracles, but there are lots of miracle-workers and magicians and sages in first century Jerusalem. What makes Jesus so different? The answer is clear -- the resurrection. This man, who was "crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men," God raised from the dead. Death could not hold him, because God is more powerful than all the forces of death.
To support his point, Peter therefore quotes verses 8-11 from Psalm 16, which tradition assigns to David. The Psalm states that God would not abandon his Holy One to death. But David died, and all the Jews present know where he is buried. The Psalm therefore is speaking not of David, but rather it is prophesying the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ alone, God has fulfilled his promise that there will never be lacking a davidic heir, a Messiah, to sit upon the throne (cf. 2 Samuel 7). Christ has been raised (vv. 25-32). Moreover, he has ascended to the position of power, to the right hand of God, and he is the one who has poured out his Spirit there on the disciples on the day of Pentecost. God has made Jesus Christ therefore both Lord and Messiah, "this Jesus whom you crucified" (vv. 33-36; the pericope really should include these verses).
It is notable in this sermon by Peter that he connects the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ with the Old Testament, not only because Peter is speaking to Jews, but because the identity of our Lord cannot fully be understood except in connection with that Book of the Old Covenant. Jesus is not some new figure, suddenly dropped from the blue. Rather, his life, death, and resurrection form the final and full interpretation of all that has gone before in Israel's history. Jesus is the one who fulfills the plan and promises of God given in the past history of Israel. His death on the cross was not an accident perpetrated by sinful human beings. Rather it was foreknown, foretold in the Old Testament (cf. Isaiah 52:13--53:12), and fore-planned by God as the way to atone for the sins of the world. And the fact that he was raised by God from the dead was not a myth dreamed up by those who felt the spirit of a dead Jesus was somehow still with them. Rather it was a historical event that was foretold by "David" and witnessed to by those who met the risen Christ alive.
If we preserve that historical connection of Jesus with the Old Testament history and listen to the witness of the apostles in the New Testament, we are prevented from distorting the figure of our Lord. He cannot be seen as a myth, as an imaginary ideal, or as nothing more than a peasant revolutionary or traveling sage or mystic visionary, as some would like to make him. No. He is the flesh and blood descendant of Abraham and David who walked the dusty roads of Palestine in the first century A.D., who healed the sick and raised the dead and announced the arrival of the Kingdom of God, who was crucified on a Roman cross, and who on the first day of the week was raised from the dead by the power of God.
The content of the Christian faith is finally made up of a story, you see -- of a real history. And it is part of that history that Peter recounts to his listeners in Jerusalem. Our faith is not based simply on propositions -- on statements such as "God is love," or "Christ died for our sins," or "The Bible is the Word of God." We believe all of those things, but the content of them is spelled out in a history. What manner of love does God have for us? -- We find out if we read the story! What are our sins and how and why did Christ die for them? -- Only the story can tell us! Why is the Bible the Word of God? -- God speaks to us through its pages only when we read in faith! Our Christian faith rests on knowing the story, and so Peter tells some of that history in his sermon to convert his listeners. And we, when we say, "I believe," have to tell the story: "I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father, who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." It is on that basis that we can say, "I believe."
If we want to spread our Christian faith, to join those "witnesses" of whom Peter speaks in his sermon (v. 32), then we must know and tell, as did those disciples at Pentecost, "the mighty works of God" (v. 11) -- the events, the history, the story of what God did through 2000 years of history, in Israel and the early church, and what he is still doing today. He pours out the Spirit of Christ upon us, good Christians. Let us use it to proclaim his glorious deeds!
Yet our lessons are full of the freshness of spring, bringing life and vigor to what had been dormant, as though frozen in winter and refusing to thaw.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
The isolated verse that introduces our pericope identifies the speaker of the following sermon as Peter. The audience, omitted by our not reading the second half of verse 14, is the people of Judea who had gone up to Jerusalem as the rules required for the festival of Passover. Yet their experience there that year was so far from routine that Peter had to explain the whole phenomenon. First he cited the prophecy from Joel 2:28-32 about the outpouring of the spirit of God in the last days. Then he launched into the sermon that runs from verses 22 through 36.
Typical of the sermons of the apostles, the emphasis here is on the death and resurrection of Jesus, proven by the scriptures, and those who were eyewitnesses of the resurrection announce the reliability of the message. Striking in this sermon is the juxtaposition of the notion that Jesus' passion was "according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" and the accusation that "you crucified and killed (this man) by the hands of those outside the law," that is, the Romans. The early church indeed was faced with this conflict: on the one hand, Jesus' death was God's doing; on the other hand, the Jewish people used the Romans to crucify him. Perhaps the conflict is indeed intentional. What anyone can see is the role of the Jews in pushing the Romans to crucify him. What only the eyes of faith can perceive is that God's hand and will were behind the whole story in order to forgive our sins through that tragedy and then to raise Jesus from the dead.
The use of Psalm 61:8-11 at verses 25-28 is Peter's way of indicating that David predicted the resurrection of one of his family tree. Since David is still dead and buried in his own tomb right there in Jerusalem and since Peter and others were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus, then obviously Jesus is the one about whom David spoke a millennium earlier.
This sermon, like the other apostolic sermons reported in the Book of Acts, demonstrates to each and every generation what the content of Christian preaching needs to be: Jesus crucified and resurrected, then ascended to the seat of honor at God's right hand (see also Acts 10:34-43; 13:16b-41).
1 Peter 1:3-9
The author of this epistle, whether Peter, Silvanus, or someone else entirely, addressed the letter to "the exiles of the Dispersion" (v. 1). That he was not speaking of the dispersed tribes of Israel is clear from the continuation of the opening: "who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood." It is thus Christians who are the exiles of this greeting.
Later in the letter the author repeats that designation, speaking to his audience of baptized Christians as "aliens and exiles" (2:11). Probably thinking much like Paul that "our citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20), Peter speaks of the Christian life on this earth until Christ comes again as "the time of your exile" (1:17). His point is, of course, that Christians are different from the rest of humanity and are called to live out that difference. Such behavior will include not only morality but above all a stance of hope in the face of persecution.
The verses that comprise our pericope are a blessing to God for all that he has accomplished and promises to accomplish. First and foremost, God has given a "new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." That new birth is precisely the baptism that makes Christians "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) and that brings the children of God together as one in community (Galatians 3:28). It is that birth, therefore, that enables the author to refer to his readers as "exiles," for they belong to the kingdom of heaven even though they live their lives in the tumultous times of persecution from the good solid citizens of this world. Where such exiles and aliens find hope in this midst of such oppression is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and in their inheritance waiting for them in heaven.
Inheritance was a key theme in the Old Testament. Usually the term referred to the land of Canaan. In order for God to give that land as an inheritance to Israel, it must have belonged to God in the first place. By that understanding the Canaanites were living on God's land and would need to move over for the heirs. The Promised Land for Christians is the kingdom of heaven, and so, knowing their names are already written down to receive that gift, they can wait in hope through the persecution and be confident of the new world to come.
With that kind of confident hope, Christians can and should rejoice here and now, "even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials ..." (v. 6). This rejoicing shows the genuineness of faith and will result in praise and honor when Jesus comes again. Every pastor knows many examples of this indescribable joy from visitations to the hospital rooms where people of faith are dying with smiles on their faces.
That joy is possible not merely because of the hope for the future but because even now Christians "are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls" (v. 9). Salvation for the exiles of the Old Testament meant the empirical release from bondage to their Babylonian captors. In an earlier time salvation was the freedom from bondage to Egypt. For these exiles, however, the salvation of their souls allows them to rejoice even in the midst of their exile, where they are oppressed by the government of the powerful Roman Empire. These exiles rejoice in a Jesus they have not seen, in an inheritance they must die to obtain (there's a switch on a familiar theme!), and on a salvation that has nothing to do with their empirical state.
"Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
John 20:19-31
The author of John's Gospel must have taken courses in time management. The calendar in Luke-Acts was simply not economical: resurrection, then forty days until the ascension and ten more until the pouring out of the Spirit on Pentecost. For John they all happened on the same day.
Our pericope begins on the evening of Easter Day, which represents John's Pentecost, and then takes us off to another event in the same place a week later. These verses offer two resurrection appearances besides the one reported that morning to Mary.
On that same evening Jesus entered the room where the disciples had been hiding from the Jews. His initial greeting was the familiar, "Peace be with you." The words, however, might be more than that in this context, because the Lord himself offered the same greeting to Gideon (Judges 6:23). Since the words at John 20:19, 21 are spoken by the risen Lord who had already ascended to the Father, we might look at the expression here, as in Judges 6, as a manifestation of the divine presence.
After offering the greeting the second time, Jesus immediately commissioned the disciples: "As the Father sent me, so I send you" (v. 21). Jesus had uttered virtually the same words in his prayer in chapter 17, but since he was there talking to God the words were slightly different: "As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world" (17:18). These earlier words indicate the destination of the sending: the world.
John recognizes that the world is presently ruled by the Evil One, but it is nevertheless the world that God so loved that he gave his only Son (3:16). It is in the world that the word became flesh and dwelt among us (1:14). Jesus is said by the people of Samaria to be "the Savior of the world" (4:42). While the Synoptic Gospels speak repeatedly of Jesus' coming to Israel, John sees the bigger picture and directs God's mission toward the world.
In order to accomplish that mission Jesus provides the breath of fresh air they need. "And he breathed on them" as God breathed into the nostrils of Adam to transform the lifeless hunk of clay into a living soul (Genesis 2:7). There the breath created life itself. In Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones God sent breath into the bones so that this despaired and hopeless community of exiles might experience new life (Ezekiel 37:10).
Breath, wind, and spirit are essentially the same word both in Hebrew and Greek, and so the breath of Jesus is followed appropriately and immediately by the words, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (v. 22). This act is John's Pentecost, the pouring out of the Spirit on the disciples so they might be enabled to go on their mission into the world. It takes a breath of fresh air to take on such a task.
Quite specifically the mission of the disciples is to forgive and retain sins. The retaining of sin sounds harsh, but it is not unlike the theme in the Old Testament on hardening the heart. The Pharaoh of Egypt originally hardened his own heart in his refusal to let the Hebrew slaves go free. As the action moves on in the narrative of the plagues, the Lord becomes the subject of the verb, and so "Yahweh hardens Pharaoh's heart" in order to bring judgment on him and the Egyptians. The movement to the divine subject indicates that the hardness of heart Pharaoh chose for himself becomes the means by which the Lord will make him even more stubborn so that judgment is inevitable. In the same way, the retaining of sins is probably the announcement of divine judgment on those who have made the decision to stand against Jesus and the Father. They have made their own bed, and it looks like that of a teenager.
On the other hand, these Spirit-endowed apostles are charged to forgive sins. This act people cannot do for themselves. Forgiveness is the divine act the apostles are to accomplish in the world. Strangely, the word "forgive" occurs nowhere else in John's Gospel. Even the word "sins" is rare. It occurs elsewhere only at 8:24 where Jesus tells the Jews, "I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he." The saying certainly deals with retention of sins, but that retention is the people's choice, and sin is basically the refusal to believe in Jesus. The mission given in the room on the evening of Easter is that the apostles announce who Jesus is so that those who believe might receive the forgiveness of their sins and those who refuse retain their sins.
The appearance the following week is necessitated because Thomas missed out on the first visit and refused to believe his colleagues. He wanted proof, and the entire church owes a debt of gratitude to Thomas for insisting on touching the pierced hands and side. Without that physical test those who heard the story of the first week's experience might wonder whether it were a ghost or the minds of the apostles playing tricks on them. Those of us who read the story might wonder if someone back then did not have the ability to make a hologram. Surely the touch on which Thomas insisted completely rules out ghost and hologram. This Jesus standing in the room was the Incarnate One, the one last seen gasping for his own breath on a cross.
Whether Thomas actually touched the wounds of Jesus we are not told explicitly. What we do know is that confronted with the risen Jesus, Thomas confessed, "My Lord and my God!" He had recognized that he was in the presence of the crucified and risen Son of God who, because of the resurrection, was now the Lord (see also Paul at Romans 1:3-4; 10:9).
Jesus took the opportunity to speak those words that make possible such belief and confession even apart from that personal and physical visit. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (20:29). The words remind us of the distinction between faith and sight at Hebrews 11:1. The opportunities for later generations to come to that faith without seeing is the reason John wrote the Gospel: "that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (v. 31).
The gift of the Holy Spirit is granted to all of us at our baptism. After the sign of the cross is made with the Trinitarian formula spoken, the newly baptized receives the Holy Spirit. Having so been identified with the apostles of old, the same commission applies to each and every sister and brother in Christ: bear witness to Jesus Christ so that people may hear and come to believe in him rather than wallow in the retention of their sins.
The possibilities are endless out there. In fact, the whole world is waiting -- breathlessly.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Three important religious festivals are prescribed for Israel in the Old Testament -- Tabernacles in the fall, Passover in the spring, and fifty weeks later the Feast of Weeks, or what the New Testament calls Pentecost. It is during this latter religious celebration of Pentecost that the story in our text takes place.
According to the law of Deuteronomy, all Israelites journeyed to Jerusalem to celebrate their religious festivals, and so in our story, the apostles and followers of Jesus and many other devout Jews are gathered together in Jerusalem. Suddenly the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples in tongues of fire, and they begin to speak in other tongues, so that travelers from every nation hear the disciples speaking to them in their own language, proclaiming the mighty works that God has done. It is such an astounding phenomenon that many in the crowd think that the disciples are drunk. But Peter refutes that charge and declares to the crowd that the ancient prophecy of Joel is coming true. Before the coming of the Kingdom of God, Joel had promised, God would pour out his Spirit on the faithful in Israel, enabling them to prophesy. That, Peter declares, is what is happening there in Jerusalem. The "last days" are upon them. The Kingdom of God is breaking into history. Therefore all persons should repent and call on the name of the Lord and be saved.
Such is the account in Acts up to the beginning of our stated reading for the morning. Having explained what is happening, the Apostle Peter then proceeds to preach a sermon that connects the event with Jesus Christ, for it is with the appearance of Jesus that the new age of the kingdom has begun (cf. Luke 11:20; 1:21; Mark 1:15).
Who is Jesus Christ? That is what Peter wants to explain to the crowd of Jews in his sermon. The listening Jews are familiar with the stories circulating about Jesus' works and healings and miracles, but there are lots of miracle-workers and magicians and sages in first century Jerusalem. What makes Jesus so different? The answer is clear -- the resurrection. This man, who was "crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men," God raised from the dead. Death could not hold him, because God is more powerful than all the forces of death.
To support his point, Peter therefore quotes verses 8-11 from Psalm 16, which tradition assigns to David. The Psalm states that God would not abandon his Holy One to death. But David died, and all the Jews present know where he is buried. The Psalm therefore is speaking not of David, but rather it is prophesying the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ alone, God has fulfilled his promise that there will never be lacking a davidic heir, a Messiah, to sit upon the throne (cf. 2 Samuel 7). Christ has been raised (vv. 25-32). Moreover, he has ascended to the position of power, to the right hand of God, and he is the one who has poured out his Spirit there on the disciples on the day of Pentecost. God has made Jesus Christ therefore both Lord and Messiah, "this Jesus whom you crucified" (vv. 33-36; the pericope really should include these verses).
It is notable in this sermon by Peter that he connects the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ with the Old Testament, not only because Peter is speaking to Jews, but because the identity of our Lord cannot fully be understood except in connection with that Book of the Old Covenant. Jesus is not some new figure, suddenly dropped from the blue. Rather, his life, death, and resurrection form the final and full interpretation of all that has gone before in Israel's history. Jesus is the one who fulfills the plan and promises of God given in the past history of Israel. His death on the cross was not an accident perpetrated by sinful human beings. Rather it was foreknown, foretold in the Old Testament (cf. Isaiah 52:13--53:12), and fore-planned by God as the way to atone for the sins of the world. And the fact that he was raised by God from the dead was not a myth dreamed up by those who felt the spirit of a dead Jesus was somehow still with them. Rather it was a historical event that was foretold by "David" and witnessed to by those who met the risen Christ alive.
If we preserve that historical connection of Jesus with the Old Testament history and listen to the witness of the apostles in the New Testament, we are prevented from distorting the figure of our Lord. He cannot be seen as a myth, as an imaginary ideal, or as nothing more than a peasant revolutionary or traveling sage or mystic visionary, as some would like to make him. No. He is the flesh and blood descendant of Abraham and David who walked the dusty roads of Palestine in the first century A.D., who healed the sick and raised the dead and announced the arrival of the Kingdom of God, who was crucified on a Roman cross, and who on the first day of the week was raised from the dead by the power of God.
The content of the Christian faith is finally made up of a story, you see -- of a real history. And it is part of that history that Peter recounts to his listeners in Jerusalem. Our faith is not based simply on propositions -- on statements such as "God is love," or "Christ died for our sins," or "The Bible is the Word of God." We believe all of those things, but the content of them is spelled out in a history. What manner of love does God have for us? -- We find out if we read the story! What are our sins and how and why did Christ die for them? -- Only the story can tell us! Why is the Bible the Word of God? -- God speaks to us through its pages only when we read in faith! Our Christian faith rests on knowing the story, and so Peter tells some of that history in his sermon to convert his listeners. And we, when we say, "I believe," have to tell the story: "I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father, who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." It is on that basis that we can say, "I believe."
If we want to spread our Christian faith, to join those "witnesses" of whom Peter speaks in his sermon (v. 32), then we must know and tell, as did those disciples at Pentecost, "the mighty works of God" (v. 11) -- the events, the history, the story of what God did through 2000 years of history, in Israel and the early church, and what he is still doing today. He pours out the Spirit of Christ upon us, good Christians. Let us use it to proclaim his glorious deeds!
