First Presbyterian Church
April 14, 2024, Easter 2B
Who Are You, and What Have You Done With Peter?
Our reading for this morning begins in the middle of a particular story, one that begins at the beginning of this chapter and continues through chapter 4. We will pick up later in this same story in next week's reading, as the echo of what happens in this account leads to trouble with the Temple authorities and some excellent witness bearing in the fledgling community of followers of Christ.
It's worth remembering here that to some degree, this community doesn't have a name yet. You might find some reference to "followers of Christ" or "followers of the Way," but the word "Christians" isn't applied to this community until chapter 11 of this book of Acts. We need to remember that, at this point in the story, the dispute that will come of this event is a "family argument"; that is, it is an intra-Jewish disagreement taking place here. The very fact that Peter and John had come to the Temple at all should help us understand that when Peter addresses the crowd as "fellow Israelites" in verse 12, it isn't merely a rhetorical device; as far as Peter is concerned, he is addressing his fellow Jews.
He does this in the Temple to a crowd that has gathered around him and John and one other man, who the Temple-goers recognized, but not like this. They knew him as the man who was always seated at one of the entryways into the Temple, seeking alms. He was seated there daily, with the help of some sympathetic fellow Jews, because he could not walk; he was born paralyzed. When he asked Peter and John for money, Peter (probably truthfully) said he had none. He instead told the man to get up and walk and reached out his hand to help the man up. The man indeed did get up and walk, and even threw in a little jumping just because he could. It was this sight, as recounted in the beginning of this chapter, that drew the crowd looking for an explanation for this unexplainable event.
Peter's address to the crowd, of which we have the first half or so, can sound accusatory as it is translated in most English translations, especially after his initial statement that this man was healed, not by Peter or John, but by Jesus, the one whom "You handed ... over ... You disowned ... before Pilate ... You disowned the Holy and Righteous One ... You killed the Author of Life ... You acted in ignorance." You can probably imagine a courtroom lawyer in some kind of TV drama hitting that word "you" with increasing emphasis with each repetition.
Notice that beginning with verse 17, Peter's tone shifts from accusation to something like empathy, a "but you didn't know what you were doing" tone that opens the door to a call to repent of that ignorance. The accusation is not any kind of final condemnation, but the opening of a door, inviting those listening to follow the One whose power had raised up this paralyzed man to walk for the first time.
The story is itself compelling, and we will hear more of it in next week's reading. Before going too much further, though, it's worth noting just who it is that is delivering this strong proclamation and witness to the power of the risen Christ. It is, of course, Peter, one of the twelve. You remember Peter, right?
You know, the one who used to be called Simon. The one who was the first to call Jesus the Messiah, only to turn around and mess up what "Messiah" meant so badly that Jesus basically called him the Devil. The one who put his foot in his mouth on the mountaintop when Jesus was transfigured. The one who denied Jesus not just once, but three times. You know. That Peter.
What has gotten into Peter? Or, to borrow the modern slang idiom suggested in the title of this sermon, who are you, and what have you done with Peter?
Let's retrace Peter's steps for a moment.
In the gospel reading from Mark that we read two weeks ago, the account that ends with the charge to follow Jesus to Galilee, the messenger at the tomb told the women there to repeat this instruction to the disciples and specifically, by name, to Peter.
In John's gospel, when Jesus meets some of the disciples by the lakeside, he asks Peter "do you love me?" three different times, you might imagine once for each time Peter denied Jesus. Each time, once Peter had answered in the affirmative, Jesus told him "Feed my lambs," "Take care of my sheep," "Feed my sheep." Despite his multiple failings, Peter was never shamed out of the community. If anything, Jesus put that much more of a charge on him.
As we move out of the gospels and into the record of the development of the early church in Acts, we first see Peter as more or less the leader of the disciples in the first chapter of Acts, an account we will come to read in a few weeks. Then of course comes the Pentecost event, at which Peter first steps forward to speak to the startled crowds. Only a few days later, the healing that sets today's reading in motion happens at the Temple.
In the span of about two months' time as we would count it, Peter has clearly changed. How do we account for this?
For one, as noted above, Peter wasn't thrown out or abandoned by Jesus despite all those stumbles and shortcomings, even if that encounter on the lakeshore was a rather hard and bitter one for Peter. The modern church could stand to remember that sometimes.
We also have to acknowledge, especially for this post-Pentecost story, that the one speaking through Peter is no less than the Holy Spirit.
Due to the oddities of the Revised Common Lectionary we won't get to that account for a few weeks. For now, we should remember that the disciples, gathered in a room waiting as they had been for ten days since Jesus's ascension, were touched by "a sound like the rush of a violent wind" and "divided tongues, as of fire," after which they "began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability."
As far as we can tell, that was, in Peter's time frame, just a few days ago.
Peter knows firsthand what the Holy Spirit is and what the Holy Spirit can do, and because of that Peter can speak with boldness and give good testimony to the work of Jesus, and people hear, and people are changed. The response to that first sermon, at Pentecost? Three thousand people. As we'll see next week that number goes up after this speech.
We have safely cordoned ourselves away from anything so rash and disruptive as the Holy Spirit. At most it's one Sunday of the year when the pastor tries to get people to wear red and some different hymns or songs might get sung. But the idea of actually living under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, well, that's risky. You might get in trouble, as we'll see with Peter and John next week. Things might <shudder> change. Can't have that.
As we will see through these next few Sundays, our earliest ancestors in the faith went through some shocking and extremely disruptive things under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, some of those things extremely difficult for us to comprehend or accept. But without these ancestors and their willingness to be led by the Holy Spirit, to put it bluntly, there's no church today. It doesn't spread out from Jerusalem into all of Judea and Samaria and then to Syria and Asia Minor and even all the way to Rome and then beyond. We don't exist without the Holy Spirit and those who welcomed that Spirit and were led into things they would never have imagined.
What about the church if we won't be led by the Spirit? Let's not find out.
For the Spirit that incited the first believers, Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #234, Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain; #494, Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts; #629, Jesus the Very Thought of Thee
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