First Presbyterian Church
April 21, 2024, Easter 4B
Rock and Cornerstone
Yeah, I know, I could have preached on Psalm 23. Everybody loves Psalm 23, right?
Or I could have turned to the day's gospel reading from John 10, the part that starts off with the declaration from Jesus that "I am the good shepherd." Or I could even have pulled those two together, around that common "shepherd" theme.
But there's still this ongoing story in Acts, one that takes a dramatic and threatening turn as we come into today's reading. While those other two readings about good shepherds place us in the role of sheep, today's Acts story reminds us that there are times when following Jesus and being moved by the Holy Spirit results in actions that are, after all, not very sheep-like. And it turns out this passage has its own pretty significant quote in here, even if it's borrowed from one of the Psalms and shows up in the gospels too.
Peter continued to teach the people who had gathered at the sight of the long-paralyzed man walking and jumping around, finally living up to that name Jesus had given him all those years ago (remember, his name roughly meant "rock"). They only stopped when the priests and the Temple guard captain (the Temple has a guard?) showed up. The priests were highly agitated at just what Peter had been saying about Jesus and his being resurrected from the dead, not to mention how the power that healed the paralyzed man had been in the name of that same Jesus. The priests presumably had Peter and John seized by that captain of the Temple guard and thrown in jail for the night.
(An aside: not only did the Temple have a guard with a captain and everything, but they had the power to arrest people? I really don't like the idea of some kind of church guard corps that could come in and arrest me if I said something they didn't like in a sermon or prayer or something. Anyone who would advocate for such a thing would clearly be rejecting any idea of religious liberty, which has been kinda important in this nation's history. But I digress.)
The next day Peter and John are brought forward before an impressive array of priestly power, both past and present. The list of names given would likely have been familiar to any Jewish folk of the time, especially those with any connection to Jerusalem or the Temple. Their question to Peter and John was simple and direct: "By what power or what name did you do this?" Its simplicity offered Peter and John an escape clause; just don't keep going on about this Jesus that they clearly don't want to hear about.
So of course, Peter and John doubled down. Not only is Peter "filled with the Holy Spirit" again, that Holy Spirit seems to have added a gift of something like sarcasm or snark for Peter this time. "If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed ... ". OK, fine, if you're really going to arrest us for healing a paralyzed man, here goes. It is a masterful stroke of reframing that would leave a modern p.r. consultant blushing with envy. It's very unlikely that this escaped the notice of the high priests.
With that established, Peter keeps on doubling down: "then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man who stands before you healed."
You can't be much more direct than that, but Peter has one more rhetorical trick up his sleeve, one that is even more direct at the assignment of blame for that crucifixion. In chapter 3 Peter would have been speaking to a crowd who, for all we can know, were not part of that mob that the religious leaders riled up to demand Jesus's crucifixion. Maybe they were, or maybe some of them were, but we really can't know. This audience, on the other hand, would have been exactly the group that gathered to condemn Jesus and send him off to Roman officials for crucifixion. Peter knows this, and pulls out a passage that will turn extremely accusatory.
Psalm 118:22 reads in its original form "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone...". Versions of this verse also show up in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in that final week of Jesus's earthly pre-crucifixion life, which Peter and John would have been around to hear. Peter's version of that verse is a little different; he declares that Jesus is "the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone." [emphasis mine]
And to top it all off, in verse 12, Peter asserts that there is no other name in which such a feat could have been accomplished.
All of this is enough to provoke the priestly group to withdraw into a private meeting - an "executive session," we might say today - to figure out what to do. The answer to that question was: nothing, pretty much. The man was still out there walking and leaping when everyone who ever came near the Temple knew that he had been unable to do that in his lifetime before. That man was still making sure that everybody knew this had happened, if not by Peter and John, then at least through them. And no, it wouldn't look good to "blame" the healed man.
All they could come up with was to order Peter and John not to keep talking about Jesus, which went about as well as you would expect it to go by now. Notice one again how the two frame their answer. They don't say "we're not going to stop." If anything, their answer makes it clear that it wasn't up to them:
Which is right in God's eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.
It's not up to us. We can't refuse to talk about what God has shown and taught us. And even then, all the priestly cohort could do was mumble another couple of threats and let them go.
Later in Acts, there will come threats to the followers of Christ that will do actual harm. The deacon Stephen would be executed by a lynch mob, and violence against the other followers would drive many of them out of Jerusalem. Then in chapter 12 the Roman puppet king Herod would discover that punishing these disciples gained him favor with the locals, and had the disciple James (John's brother) killed with the sword, and arrested Peter with the intent to do the same to him.
However, those followers who scattered after Stephen's lynching just kept telling what they had seen and heard, with the result that the good news spread farther and farther out from Jerusalem. As for Herod, after an angel helped Peter escape from prison, Herod came to his own bad end.
Still, filled with the Holy Spirit and founded upon the cornerstone that is Jesus, these disciples (now becoming known as apostles) and deacons and other followers without names kept telling what they had seen and heard. And the body of the followers of Jesus kept growing, possibly up to five thousand by now.
There would be persecution to come. There would be challenges for the growing fellowship to face. And yet, after its first major confrontation with the religious authorities, they were not only still together, but they were still growing and still bearing witness, both to their own contemporaries in their own time, and also to us today.
For the witness of the early followers of Jesus, Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #624, I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art; #353, My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less; #394, Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation
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