Tag: Peter and John

Love is Risky

Psalm 23:1-2, 6: Abba God is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. God makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters. Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of Abba God for ever.

Introduction

When I was first Christian, I was given the clear idea that being a Christian meant that I would be nice and that people would like me because I was so nice, kind, patient, and happy. I would be compliant and non-obtrusive. I would be meek and mild. I would be all things to all people in a very non-offensive and non-confrontational way. In fact, being offensive and confrontational—being the opposite of any adjective listed above—was synonymous with being “not a Christian.” So, following the logic: happy person = Christian person; grumpy person = Non-Christian person (etc.).

To be honest, I don’t know where this idea comes from. It’s not in the bible really. Yes, Paul says to rejoice and rejoice again, Jesus says not to worry, and there are many exhortations to love our neighbor and offer up service to them in the name and to the glory of God. There are even a couple (some Pauline and some pseudo-Pauline) references to being good, complaint, and prayerful citizens. But, in general, the Christian life is not particularly described as nice, happy, kind, compliant, etc. To be even more honest, I’m not sold on the idea that those we are exhorted to imitate were all that nice or happy. For instance, while Paul brought the gospel proclamation—God’s word of comfort and love—to many, he was a force to reckon with and very open about his suffering while bringing glory to God and the God’s beloved. Jesus—the incarnate Word of God who identified with the oppressed and marginalized—was quite the offensive and confrontational force toward many…how else do you think he ended up on the cross, a state instrument of death?

The reality is that the Christian life will bring us into direct conflict with both religious and civil authorities. Following in the steps of Christ as Christ’s disciples means that, like Christ, we will find ourselves confronting the false idols of our age, exposing decrepit and toxic systems, and coming face to face with structural violence meant to do harm to God’s beloved. In other words, no not everyone will like us and think we are so peachy keen and nice. If that is hard to believe, let’s turn to Luke’s story in Acts about Peter in full on confrontation with the authorities…

Acts 4:5-12

Now it happened that the rulers and the elders and the scribes of Israel were convened in Jerusalem—both Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and as many who were of the kin of the high priest—and after standing [the prisoners] in the middle, they were learning by inquiry, “By what power or in whose name did you, you do this thing?” Then Peter—by means of being filled by the Holy Spirit—said to them…” (Acts 4:5-8a)

Our lectionary drops us off with Peter and John as prisoners before the elders and rulers of the people of Israel in Jerusalem. But, how did they get there? Let’s look.

Last week, we saw Peter and John heal a man who needed healing his whole life. In response to this healing, the people of Israel are amazed and in awe of what Peter and John have done for this man. As these people gather around John and Peter, Peter begins to address the crowd with words of exposure and comfort in the proclamation of Christ raised from the dead. As a result, some Sadducees and the captain of the temple approach Peter and John and arrest them for proclaiming Jesus’s resurrection from the dead to the people.

Now, in our passage, it is the day after the arrest. As Luke tells us, Peter and John are dragged out into the middle of all the leaders (rulers, elders, scribes and the kin of the high priest) of Israel so that they, the rulers and elders, can interrogate John and Peter and find out, By what power or in whose name did you, you do this thing? Peter has a choice here…he could just say something ambiguous about God, but he doesn’t. Instead, Luke tells us, Peter being filled by the Holy Spirit said to them… The Spirit of God inspires and emboldens Peter[1] to speak light to darkness, to expose the errors of judgment and the missed mark. It’s the following speech about divine, liberating action of the oppressed that gets Peter and John in trouble with those who are in power.[2] Regular words about God do not raise eyebrows or provoke to anger; rather, it is the words demonstrating God as against those in power that will. Peter and John knew this would be the case; they’d seen it before with Jesus and it led to his death and this death would come for them, too.[3]

So, Peter, filled with the Spirit, boldly declares to the leaders of Israel and not just to a crowd of bystanders, ‘If we, we are being interrogated about the well-doing of a weak person, by what this man has been saved, let it be known to all of you and all the people of Israel, by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth—whom you, you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—this man has stood in your presence healthy.’ Peters words shatter the glass walls separating the religious and the political, what they proclaimed to the people they now proclaim to the leaders; liberation from oppression comes to liberate the oppressed and also the oppressor.[4] As a result, Peter and John are treated as criminals who thwart the law and break the social arrangement; as Willie James Jennings says in his commentary on Acts 4, “Real preaching and authentic teaching is inextricably bound to real criminality.”[5]

But something else is going on here. This scene is meant to demonstrate the power of the judges over the judged. But a reversal is happening. Rather than the judges asking the questions of the judged, Peter, the judged, turns the table and now the rulers and elders of the people of Israel are the ones being questioned. In one swift and divinely inspired word, Peter puts these judges on trial; they are now the guilty ones,[6] they are now exposed, they are now the ones who must justify their power.[7] The rulers must declare in whose name they act. And things become a bit trickier when Peter makes it clear that he and his friend are the representatives of God therefore implying the rulers and the elders are not. In and through Peter’s speech, the world is exposed as upside-down; Peter and John are caught up in the divine activity as they participate in turning it right-side up according to divine love, life, and liberation in the name of God for God’s beloved.[8]

Conclusion

Acts reminds us, from beginning to end, that the life of a Christian and the life of the Christian church is one that is hard and not easy. To follow Christ demands that we, like all his other disciples (i.e. Peter and John) will become caught up in the waterfall of divine justice for the beloved that is life, love, and liberation. And this necessarily means that we will not be nice, we will be confrontational, we may even be offensives especially to those who are benefiting being nestled comfortably in the power of an upside-down world. Willie James Jennings writes,

“The great illusion of followers of Jesus, especially those who imagine themselves leaders, is that they could live a path different from Jesus and his disciples. They believe somehow that they can be loved or at least liked or at least tolerated or even ignored by those with real power in the world.”[9]

Easter tells us that not only is our past tied up with Christ’s death and resurrection but so is our future. And if both our past and our future is so tied up with Christ, it means that our present is as well. To live into the gift of resurrected life means being lead, by the Spirit, to participate in the divine revolution of love in the world on behalf of God’s beloved. Many will be grateful; many more will not. The Christian walk is hard not because we have to be pious and self-righteous or force ourselves to be perfect and better than everyone else; it’s hard because to love your neighbor in the name of God is hard. In her most systematic text, Thinking About God, Dorothee Sölle writes,

“Love has its price. The cross expresses love to the endangered, threatened life of God in our world. It is no longer a question of a biophilic embracing of life which spares itself the cross. The more we love God, the threatened, endangered, crucified God, the nearer we are to [God], the more endangered we are ourselves. The message of Jesus is that the more you grow in love, the more vulnerable you make yourself.”[10]

Beloved to love is hard because it’s risky; God knows because God loves and risked everything for you, the beloved.

[1] Brittany E. Wilson, “Contextualizing. Masculinity in the Book of Acts: Peter and Paul as Test Cases,” in Reading Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity and Politics, eds., Eric D. Barreto, Matthew L. Skinner, and Steve Walton (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 34. “…Luke indicates that Peter’s rhetorical savvy is not of his own doing, but of divine origin.”

[2] Willie James Jennings, “Acts”, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2017), 45. “Speaking holy words has serious consequences. These are not words that simply speak of God. There is nothing inherently serious, holy, or dangerous in God-talk. The holy words that bring consequences are words tied to the concrete liberating actions of God for broken people. Such holy words bring the speakers into direct confrontation with those in power. Jesus not only spoke such words but he was such a word.”

[3] Jennings, ”Acts,” 45. “The disciples know this confrontation was coming. The struggle against those in power that marked the life and death of Jesus was coming for them as well.”

[4] Jennings, ”Acts,” 45. “The disciples are among common people proclaiming liberation and that violence and death are no longer the ultimate power. Jesus is risen! Therefrom the site of the common, holy words touch two intersecting nerves, the religious and the political.”

[5] Jennings, ”Acts,” 45. “Only criminals touch nerves at this level and receive the consequences [arrest, trial, custody]…”

[6] Jennings, ”Acts,” 47-48. “The judges are in fact builders. This is the great dilemma of the advantaged in this world. They institutionalize life. They are socially ordered and they enact social order. They are inside what they create and they create what they are inside of and from within this circle they often cannot see a divine judgment being brought on them, brought against them. God judges them from the position of the judged.”

[7] Jennings, ”Acts,” 47. “The judged are questioned (the judges are not). The judged must give account of their power and authority to speak, to believe, to suggest a different world order. The judged must show connection to the powerful, to names that are recognized by those in power. Power only sees power. The judged are evaluated (the judges are not). A scale is unleashed against the judged. Their education, social pedigrees, elocution, and baring are all measured against the judges. Now the dividing line is exposed. Now the moment of judgment will begin, but not as the ruling religious and social elite imagine. They misunderstand this moment just like Herod and Pontus Pilate misunderstood it with Jesus.”

[8] Jennings, ”Acts,” 47.

[9] Jennings, ”Acts,” 45. “Peter spoke again…The table is being turned over, an upside down world is being turned right side up in these words of Peter. Peter stands next to the man God has healed not by the power claimed by the elites, by the judges of this world, but only through the Holy Spirit.”

[10] Dorothee Soelle, Thinking About God: An Introduction to Theology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1990), 134.

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Resurrected from the Past; Liberated from What Was: Easter Life!

Psalm 118:22-24 22 The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is God’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. On this day Abba God has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Introduction

The psalmist declares: “There is a sound of exultation and victory in the tents of the righteous: ‘The right hand of Abba God has triumphed!’” (118:15).

Let’s add our triumphant proclamation: Happy Easter! Christ is risen!

Today is a glorious and beautiful day! It is the day where we get to experience the proclamation that Christ is Risen, that death couldn’t hold him, and that life wins! It’s this day, this very morning where we hear the great echoes of God’s maternal roar, sending death backward, reeling, stumbling, and coming to rest in its own tomb, thus, giving love, life, and liberation free reign in the world.

This means, for us, our individual agony and communal limitation, our local turmoil, national chaos, and global tumult find restriction. These can only go so far considering God’s revolution of divine love, life, and liberation in the world on behalf of God’s beloved. No matter how much tumult, chaos, turmoil, limitation, and agony tantrum, rage and stomp about, they find their end in the light of God shining forth from the once sealed tomb daring to contain God’s very Son, the divine child of humanity, our brother! Good news starts today because God sounded God’s divine yawp and sent everything threatening human flourishing and thriving running for the hills, desperate to find protection from that piercing, exposing, and redeeming light of lights!

But there’s a problem I foresee coming: we will leave here today euphoric with warm and celebratory feelings only to arise on Monday as if nothing even happened. Our alarms will summon us from sleep, and we will lumber through the day as if nothing transpired between Friday 5 pm and Monday 8 am. Those who have been summoned to life this morning with Christ by faith will, in 24 hours, be those who roll over and continue to sleep as if enclosed in a tomb.

But what if … What if this ancient, whacky story of divine activity in the world, the overruling of death, the radical reordering of actuality and possibility has meaning for us today? What if it can release us from being buried in the past and captive to what was?

John 20:1-18

Now Mary had remained at the tomb weeping outside. Then, as she was weeping, she stooped low to look inside the tomb, and she beholds two angels in brightness sitting, one toward the head and one toward the feet where Jesus’s body was laid. And they say to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She says, “They took my Lord, and I do not know where they placed him.” After saying these things, she turns around and looks at Jesus standing there, and had not perceived that it is Jesus. Jesus says to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Appearing to her that it is the gardener, she says to him, “Sir, if you carried him away, answer me where you placed him, and I will remove him.” (John 20:11-15)

In John’s gospel, we meet Mary at the tomb. John brings us straight there. There is no lead up as there is in other gospels. At the end of the Gospel of Mark, the two Marys and Salome, as they go to the tomb, are worried they will not access Jesus’s body (preparing it for burial) because the stone will be too heavy for them to move. In Mark’s gospel, there is anxiety and concern. But with John, we are immediately at the tomb in the early, dark hours of the morning (v.1). Thus, John brings us straight into the crisis of Easter morning.[1] We are with Mary, we are in the dark, and we are just as startled by the things we see…The stone is rolled away, and the tomb is open.

Mary sees the tomb is opened, and instead of going further to investigate, she runs back to Peter and John (the beloved disciple). Her message—They removed the Lord from the tomb, and I have not seen where they laid him” (v. 2b)—provokes John and Peter to run to the tomb. John arrives first and stoops low to look (without entering) and sees Jesus’s death linens laid on the ground (v. 5). Then Peter follows John’s lead but enters the tomb, and he gazes at the pieces of fine linen lying there, and he sees the head cloth for the dead which was upon Jesus’s head and is now not lying with the other linens but is separate, having been rolled around into one place (vv. 6-7). Then John enters. Here it is declared, he saw and he believed; his faith in the risen Christ is kindled.[2] For never before had they remembered the writing that it is necessary that he was raised from the dead (v. 9). For John (and Peter) faith in Jesus blossomed that morning into the full faith in Jesus the Christ, the resurrected son of God.[3] They saw, they remembered, and they believed.

Then they leave the tomb and ran back (v.10). But Mary stays at the tomb, weeping outside; then, she stooped low to look inside the tomb. As she does, she is greeted not by death linens and shrouds, but by two dazzling, brightly illuminated angels, sitting where Jesus’s body was initially laid to rest (vv. 11-12). The angels ask her, Woman, why are you weeping? And she explains, they took the body of my Lord, and I do not know where they placed him (v. 13). The text does not tell us anything else about the angels; we are only told that Mary turns away from the tomb and then she sees someone whom she thinks is the gardener, but it’s Jesus (v. 14). Jesus speaks to her and asks, Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking? Still, she does not recognize who he is. [4] She is stuck. Jesus is dead, for Mary. She cannot hear his voice because her focus is on Jesus’s being dead—answer me where you placed him and I will remove him (v. 15). For Mary, Jesus should still be in the tomb. Though she is facing Jesus, she cannot see him[5] because she is captive to what was, she’s buried in Good Friday. She needs to be called out of the tomb of yesterday into the resurrection of today.

And that’s what Jesus does. He calls her, Mary. Her response is one of elation and joy, Rabboni! No one can say your name like the one who loved you to the end. [6] And then Jesus adds this paradoxically cryptic yet perfect statement, “Do not fasten to me, for I have not yet ascended to my parent and your parent, my God and your God.” In other words, this is not a resuscitation of the old idea, of yesterday, of the ordinary and expected, thus the status-quo; it is something completely new, different, unexpected, unknown! [7] To be encountered by God in the event of faith is to be ushered into a new life with the Risen Christ not shuttled back into what was.[8] Mary was not called back into the tomb, but further out and away from it; she was called to lift her eyes and follow the voice of the Risen Christ unto God’s new work in the world where death no longer has the final say, yesterday is no longer a tyrant, and the past can no longer hold captive.

Conclusion

Beloveds, today begins a new era of looking forward into the light of life of the living and not into the darkness of the tomb of the dead. Why are you weeping? The Angels ask Mary. Whom do you seek?” Jesus asks Mary. Today, these questions are for us: why are weeping for what is of yesterday? What and Whom are we seeking? These two questions are one in the same question. In seeking we realize we’ve lost something; in realizing we’ve lost something we weep. In weeping we search for that which we lost. But we tend to go backward, we tend to reach behind us, to stoop low and focus on the death linens and shrouds of the things of yesterday. We are so consumed by our grief of what was and is now no longer that we cannot perceive that the loving voice asking us these questions is the divine, loving, voice of God summoning us out of and away from the tomb holding the dead. For God is not there; Jesus Christ is risen; life is not in the tomb but out in the world. Divine life, light, and love released into the world to bring God’s great revolution of love and liberation to all those who are trapped in captivity to what was and buried in the past.

  • Rather than feel helpless in the face of global tumult, we can speak a new word: a word of peace that is prayerful action. We can dare to feel helpful.
  • Rather than feel hopeless in the face of national chaos, we can speak a new word: a word of mercy that is taking a stand to protect those lives being ignored in derisive debate. We can dare to feel hopeful.
  • Rather than feel pointless in the face of local turmoil, we can speak a new word: a word of solidarity that is active presence with our neighbors. We can dare to believe that there is meaning.
  • Rather than live succumbed to the mythology of our Christian limitation, we can speak a good word of God’s love for the cosmos that is a word of Gospel proclamation in word and deed. We can dare to reclaim God’s story and believe it abounds with great possibility.
  • Rather than becoming numb to our personal agony, we can speak a new word of life that is a word of resurrection (now!). We can dare to live as if death cannot eclipse life.

So, today we stand up and take hold of the love, life, and liberation gifted to us by God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Here we raise our Ebenezer because, Here by God’s great help we’ve come![9] And we go forward and seek God among the living not among the dead. Dorothee Sölle writes, “He who seeks [Jesus] among the dead, accepts as true something that happened to him or seeks him among those who are not yet dead, ourselves. He who seeks [Jesus] among the living, seeks him with God and therefore on this our earth.”[10] Therefore, today I pray we hear our names and the name of our community called and we leave behind the linens of yesterday and the shroud of what was and step toward the one calling, beckoning, and summoning us forward into divine life! Today we celebrate because we have been loosed from the captivity of what was and resurrected from burial in the past. Today we dare to stand in the love of the present and step boldly into the life of the future. Because today God lives!

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 683-684. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “But unlike Mark’s narrative no mention is made of the purpose of Mary’s coming, and therefore there is no reflection on who could roll the stone away from the door of the grave (Mk. 16.3); it is merely reported that she sees that the stone is removed. From that she draws the conclusion (v. 2) that the body has been carried away, and—without looking into the grave?—she hastens, shocked and perplexed, to Peter and the beloved disciple in order to bring this news to them.”

[2] Bultmann, John, 684. The beloved disciple does not step into the grave; Peter does; the beloved disciple then follows and their faith is kindled.

[3] Bultmann, John, 684. What faith? “In this context the faith that is meant can only be faith in the resurrection of Jesus; it can be signified by the abs. πιστεὐειν, because this means faith in Jesus in the full sense, and so includes the resurrection faith. As to the two disciples, it is then simply reported that they return home (v. 10).”

[4] Bultmann, John, 686. She doesn’t recognize the Risen Jesus. Even when he asks her a question.

[5] Bultmann, John, 685-686. The Risen Jesus is standing behind Mary and she only sees him when she turns away from the tomb.

[6] Bultmann, John, 686. “It is possible for Jesus to be present, and yet for a man not to recognize him until his word goes home to him.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 687. “Of a surety, Jesus’ άναβαἰνειν is something definitive, and his promised (πἀλιν) ἔρχεσθαι…is not a return into an ordinary mode of life in this work, such as would permit familiar contact. The fellowship between the risen Jesus and his followers in the future will be experienced only as fellowship with the Lord who has gone to the Father, and therefore it will not be in the forms of earthly associations.”

[8] Bultmann, John, 688. “The real Easter faith therefore is that which believes this [v. 17]; it consists in understanding he offence of the cross; it is not faith in a palpable demonstration of the Risen Lord with the mundane sphere.”

[9] Come Thou Fount, v. 2.

[10] Dorothee Soelle, The Truth is Concrete, trans. Dinah Livingstone (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 60. Originally published as, Die Wahrheit ist konkret, Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1967.

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