Rev’d Peter Balabanski
Easter 2 – Acts 5 27-32, Ps 118 14-29, Rev 1 4-8, John 20 19-31
I once spent a few unplanned hours in a laundromat. I didn’t have a book with me, and the only reading materials I could find were magazines strategically left there by a religious group. Some of them studied characters from the Bible. I read one about Abraham. Other magazines discussed practical life-questions. I read one about how and why we should discipline our children. In each magazine, any questions that came up were answered by reference to passages from the Bible. The Bible was to be read as the final authority on all questions of personal character, and on the many day-to-day decisions people need to make.
These magazines were produced by a conservative group whose leaders keep a tight rein on the lives of each member. Their articles of faith are very clear and fixed. Deviating from them means a visit from the leaders. If they can’t turn you back to the straight and narrow, then it’s very likely that your membership will be terminated.
In traditional, conservative societies, this is quite common. But in 21st century Adelaide, it feels strange. Once we leave school, we don’t often have a sense of how serious it is to risk being an outcast. Our mobility and relaxed social ethics give us hundreds of options for finding a place to belong.
So I wonder if any of us can grasp the extreme bravery of Peter and the other Apostles in today’s reading from Acts. They’ve been building a new community of people who share everything in common and publicly proclaiming their message about Jesus’ resurrection of the dead. We come into the story as they’ve just been arrested for a third time and brought before Jerusalem’s religious authorities.
The threat against them is complete exclusion from the religious and social life of their nation. Can you imagine that? It’s like being forced to wear a yellow Star of David in Nazi Germany. Yet Peter – the one who, just weeks ago, we heard denying Jesus three times – Peter takes the role of spokesman, and defies his lawgivers to their faces again. They’re released after a flogging, and yet every day after that, in the Temple and in their homes, they don’t cease to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah.
It’s a very powerful witness to the truth of what they’ve experienced. A simple person like Peter doesn’t change from being a grief-stricken, frightened liar into a powerful, defiant rebel leader unless something absolutely life-changing has happened. Whatever was the worst thing he feared before – death or social ostracism – it has utterly lost its power over him now.
Death certainly has lost its sting; Peter has seen Jesus overcome it. And for him and the others, it’s made the threat of social ostracism irrelevant. Reading this section of Acts, this new community is growing like a bushfire. Peter fears nothing; he and the others who ran away at the crucifixion are utterly transformed people. No fear; nothing but joy and an overflowing message of hope that will not be silenced. Their message is that once Jesus arrives in our lives, we are resurrection people.
This astonishing change in Peter is not the only transformation we witness today. It happens to the other disciples too – and in the Gospel we witness the moment and the manner of that transformation. We come into the Gospel today to find the disciples hiding together behind locked doors for fear of the same religious authorities. But suddenly Jesus is among them – Peace be with you. That fear? Let it go. Here are the wounds they gave me. Even killing me, they couldn’t stop me coming back to you. And he breathes on them: the breath of resurrected life. Receive the Holy Spirit. Together with this astounding blessing of new life, Jesus gives us a very curious gift: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. A precious gift won at such a cost to him – now it’s entrusted to us even though you could hardly say we were ready for any responsibility – cringing behind a locked door.
Just as Peter spoke for everyone in Acts, Thomas gives many among us a necessary voice. This bold, outspoken character says what needs to be said for us, who’ve not seen and yet have come to believe. Thomas’ faith is born of doubt; something far richer than a faith based in certainty. Jesus doesn’t reject Thomas for his doubt. Jesus invites Thomas to express his doubt, and to belong out of love; not fear. And Thomas’s great heart responds with the most profound confession of Jesus: My Lord and my God! He and the others saw their Lord risen, and that inspired their journeys of proclamation and baptism to the ends of the earth.
Faith based in certainty is stagnant and dead. But a faith where the possibility of doubt is accepted and taken seriously is something else. Today we’ve seen the beginnings of how that was a crucial part of nurturing a living, growing community of faith. We meet a small group of people who would go on to face decades of suffering and ostracism, and even so, they’d spend the rest of their lives spreading the hope they had in Jesus’ resurrection. Uncertain faith in our Risen Lord Jesus – in the strength of his love – still inspires people to share a hope far richer and far more adventurous than any certainty we might ever have dreamt possible. Can you share this with anyone you know; this uncertain faith?
Think about us as a ‘family’ suitable for ‘Social Prescription’ that a medical professional could consider for people needing community.
Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Amen