April 26 2020
Acts 3
At our house for the past month or so, at two a-clock in the afternoon everyone gathers round for the latest press conference concerning the corona pandemic. This is where we hear from Governor Mike Dewine, Lieutenant Governor John Husted and Director of Health for the State of Ohio, Dr. Amy Acton. Now, what has impressed me most about these daily conferences is the authority that Dr. Acton commands and rightfully so. She is a doctor who knows an unbelievable amount of knowledge about public health and safety and she uses that information to make strategies and formulate decisions that we as Ohioans can feel confident about. What is also special about her authority is that she is able to communicate the reasons for her decisions that affect all of us in a way that is understandable and caring.
As I mediated on this weeks message and this idea of authority came to the forefront, I couldn’t help but think of Dr. Acton. She has knowledge, wisdom and decisiveness which are all aspects of authority. Authority is the power and the right to make decisions, give orders and enforce decisions. These are the very qualities that Dr. Acton has yet when it comes to enforcing obedience she does so because she educates those affected by her decisions so that through understanding her reasoning, they are more willingly to comply with what she is asking. Now, you’re probably wondering why this theme of authority seems to be such a big deal when the scripture for today doesn’t even mention authority. The reason is simply the way our scripture has been translated.As I will hopefully show, there are about eight different ways the word I translate as “authority” are found in the many versions of the Bible. But before we tackle that we first have to know the situation in which that word is used.
Here at the beginning of the third chapter of Acts, Peter and John are going to pray at the Temple during the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. This in our language would have been around three a-clock in the afternoon. This we must remember was the same hour that the gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus died upon the cross. Now, as they were walking a man who was lame from birth was asking for alms. He asked Peter and John for alms to which Peter told the man to look at them. The man did so hoping that in doing so he would receive some help. Peter told the man” I have no silver or gold but what I have I give to you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Peter took the man and pulled him up and immediately the mans limbs were strong. The man leapt in the air and entered the Temple walking and leaping and praising God. Of course the people who had walked by this man for years were filled with wonder and amazement and this was exactly the point. With the people’s attention focused on him, Peter begins to address them. What is interesting is what Peter emphasizes because he asks the people why do you wonder at a man who was born lame who suddenly is found leaping around praising God, or why do you stare at James or me just because this man was healed when we walked by. In all humility, Peter admits it was not their piety, their devotion to God, now was it their own power as if now filled with the Holy Spirit that they had turned into some kind of superheroes. No, the healing of this man who had been lame from birth was a minor miracle in comparison to the greatest miracle of the resurrection of Jesus. We get this understanding right from when Peter begins to speak about God and he calls God the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Why is this significant you might wonder? Well, we find the answer in the twenty second chapter of Matthew, the thirty first verse, Jesus in rebuking a Sadducee who refused to believe in the resurrection told him “As for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but the living.”Peter may have remembered this lesson because it is the resurrection of Jesus that he is hoping that the people of the temple will at last believe in.
Peter continued “The God of our fathers, the God of the living not the dead, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous one. This is similar to the title Peter declared Jesus to be in the sixth chapter of John where he declared Jesus to be the Holy One Of God. Peter continues saying “You asked for a murderer, (referring to Barrabas) to be granted to you and you killed the Author of Life. It is the Greek word “archegos”, translated here as the word “Author”, that causes translators so many headaches. It has been translated not only as author but also leader, source, ruler and prince some of which seem to be similar but some do not.Yet, I believe, that this is an important term for us to understand.Last week we saw that because of the resurrection we now know that Jesus is king over everyone. He is king because he was willing to become a slave and come to earth as one of us and die the most humiliating death. Now, he lives and his name is exalted above every other name and every knee shall bow before him. We are Christ’s slaves of righteousness because his love for us constrains us in shackles of love.
Today, in similar fashion, I want to explore further this title Peter had for Jesus, Authority of Life. This title seems fitting for one who had defeated death, doesn’t it? Well, there is more to this title than just that. In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we learn why the term “authority” is the most appropriate translation of the Greek word “archegos”. Let us remember that to be an authority is to be one who has the power and right to give orders, to make decisions and to enforce obedience. Now, listen to what Jesus teaches us in the fifth chapter of John starting with the twenty first verse “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will…..whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. They do not come into judgment but have passed from death to life. I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” Jesus is the Authority of Life because he is the one has been given the ability to make the decisions, to give the orders and enforce their obedience through the action of judgment in matters pertaining to life. You see, the Father has given the Son the right to do the very same actions that the Father does most importantly the ability to raise the dead and give them life.Yet, if you listen carefully to what Jesus tells us it is not just the physically dead to which this raising of the dead and the giving to them life, occurs. It is those who hear the word of Jesus and believe in the Heavenly Father, these are the ones who do not come into judgment but have passed from death to life. So, what this is saying is those who have have not heard the word of Jesus, those who have refused the word of Jesus and those who will not place their faith in their Heavenly Father, these people, according to what Jesus himself tells us, are in fact dead.This is the concern of Peter as he addresses those gathered around him that day in the Temple because they are in fact very dead.
One of the side things that was shared by Dr. Actons this week was something written by Victor Frankl. He is a survivor of the Holocausts and wrote a famous book based on his experiences entitled “Man’s Search for Meaning”. One thing he learned in the death chambers was that in order to have a hope that is sustainable a person must have a realistic grasp of where they were at at the moment. Without knowing the grim reality of where they were at many set unrealistic hopes that were unachievable and when their hopes were found to be unachievable this set the bearers of hope to a more hopeless place than where they had originally began. Now, I was intrigued by this idea because I believe that a lot of people think of either themselves, or their family members or their friend and their relationship with God as being somewhere between being a very good person or that this friend or family member is a very bad person. This is, I believe, is a very wrong way to view reality at least knowing what Jesus tells us about people. The reality is that people are either dead or people are alive. They either have heard the voice of Jesus and have placed their faith in their Heavenly Father or they have not. The reason that we have this understanding is when we have a good/ bad sense of reality then we care about the people in our life we quite naturally went them to be better people. Not surprising, Jesus understood this and taught us about it. Found in the seventh chapter of Matthew, Jesus gives two common ways that people try and reform the wayward people in their life. The first method is to be judgmental, to try and remove from another person’s life all the stuff that prevents the light and love of God from getting through. The only problem as Jesus points out is that we have the very same stuff in our life that also needs removed first before we can even first think bout helping anyone else.
So, ok, if trying to pick out all the negative stuff that keeps the light of God from getting through, if this won’t work because we have too much stuff in our own lives that keeps the light from getting through then how about we give them some of God’s light through scriptural advice. That will work won’t it? The problem is that anytime we do this it is really hard to not be condescending when we do it. When we use scripture to help someone we come off as the smart one helping out the not so smart one. And if they are in darkness then it is doubtful they will even be able to understand what is trying to tell them. People of the receiving end of such scriptural advice often get irritated much like hungry pigs being fed a bushel of pearls. The pearls may be precious to us but to them they are just rocks that do not satisfy their hunger.
So what are we to do? We are to ask, seek and knock on the door of heaven and plead on the goodness of our Heavenly Father. What are we to ask our Heavenly Father to do, what is it that we are to seek from his hand, what is it that would be so important that we would bang on the door of the house of God just so we might have an audience with him? The answer is life. You see the first two approaches deal with a wrong way to view reality, as a continuum between very bad to very good with the idea to change people being to move them closer to very good. Jesus knew reality as either dead or alive and only God can take one who is dead and lift them up to new life. Instead of trying to remove the negative elements of life which block the light of God and instead of trying to bring the light of God to others through scripture we are to ask, seek and knock on the house of God that he might place his life, his light in a person that we know is far from him. If you remember the parable of the Prodigal Son, the reason for the party for the lost son at the end of the story is that as his Father exclaimed, his son was dead but now he is alive. The party was not because the son had been bad and now he was a good boy. Praying for others to have God in essence resurrect them from the place of death in their life follows the reasoning of the Prodigal Son.
This is why the title that Peter used for Jesus that day in the Temple, that Jesus was the Authority of Life is so important. As the early church moved from Jerusalem to Judaea, to Samaria and on out to the ends of the world each member of the body of Christ had to understand how it was that people were transformed. They were not going to be transformed by judgmental people pointing out all the negatives about the people they encountered. They were not going to be transformed by using snippets of scripture and advice, pearls of wisdom because this too simply would not work. What would work is that the early church would be a church that prayed, they would be a house of prayer. They would ask God, and seek God and knock on the doors of the house of God so that his light and his life might come upon the people God would lead them to. This is how people would at last fulfill the hope of all the law and the prophets that people might love their neighbor as themselves, to see in others people just like them who wanted to be loved more than they wanted to be judged; people who desired to be met right where they we at not feeling as people others had condescend to in order to share their wisdom.
We can never forget that becoming people of love is not some side project to bringing people to experience the eternal life that Jesus offers. The first letter of John, the third chapter explains it so well “We know we that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers and sisters. Whoever does not love abides in death” These verses, I have to admit, disturb me very much. We live in a society where hating others is not only acceptable it is a common way of life. I shudder when I see professing Christians get caught up in this culture of hatred and I wonder if they know that in doing so they are putting their eternal security in danger. You see, in our story of Peter at the Temple, we cannot forget that Peter is addressing the very people who chose a murderer over his best friend, crying out Barabbas! Barrabas! These are the people who wanted Jesus killed because he would not satisfy their longings of revolt against the Roman army. Yet here we find Peter, at the very same hour Jesus his beloved teacher died upon the cross forgiving the very people whose hands shed the blood of Jesus. Peter tells them that they had acted out of ignorance. Peter instead of spewing out a string of hatred and anger as many often find acceptable instead pleads with his audience to repent to come home because their heavenly Father’s arms were open and waiting for their return.Peter offered them hope that their sins would be blotted out forgotten forever, and they would experience a great time of refreshing, a time when all would be made new, alive. As Peter told them, Jesus was indeed the prophet spoken about by Moses in the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, who would be raised up from the people of Israel. They were to listen to every word Jesus had spoke because the prophecies of Jesus had all come true. Three times Jesus had predicted that he would die upon the cross and then three days later he would be resurrected and this most certainly happened. So, knowing this there was no reason for them to not hear the words of Jesus, and believe that he was sent by God the Father and move from death to life.As Peter told them, God had told Abraham that through the offspring of Abraham all the world would be blessed. This blessing is not only that God would forgive the sins of their past as we are told in the first two verses of Psalm thirty two, but God also desires to bless the all the families of earth, giving them eternal life so that they no longer live under the fear of judgment but can now live in the present with a living hope.
This is what Peter desired for everyone to experience, the one who is the Authority of Life, the one called Jesus. It is this life of Jesus that poured out from heaven and healed the lame man giving a clear witness that this life was there for anyone in need of healing, wholeness and life. This life as Peter demonstrated is a life of love and concern for everyone even those we consider to be our enemies. We must every day take an inventory of our hearts and ask ourselves if there is anyone that we would refuse to share the gospel with solely because of the hatred in our hearts. If we find this is the case then we must get on our knees, repent once again and ask God to fill us with his love and his life. We must attune our ears to hear the word of Jesus, his command to love and place our faith in our Heavenly Father who sent Jesus to us. We must also consider praying for those who like the prodigal son find themselves in a far country, far from the Heavenly Father who loves them. We must ask, seek and knock on the door of our Heavenly Father and ask him to give them the very best good gift from above, the gift of life. This is the way the lost are found, the far off come home, the enemies of God are transformed into his servants. This is the power and work of Jesus, the one Peter knew and the one we should know as the Authority of Life. Amen
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