Just before the scene of today’s reading from Acts, St. Luke narrates how the Apostles were miraculously freed from prison, and went straight back to the Temple to carry on preaching. There is definitely a comic side to this, as the solemn and self-righteous religious authorities are so thoroughly wrong-footed by this bunch of despised Galileans.
So now the High Priest, oozing both moral indignation and outraged dignity, makes his opening statement: We strictly charged you not to teach in this name (5:28). For her first few centuries, and very frequently since, official persecution has been the norm for the Church. In our own day, as we often read, Christians are the most persecuted group in the world. In this country also we have what comes close to open persecution: through social pressure and subtle discrimination; but increasingly also through laws, which make it more and more difficult for Christians to live out their faith freely. And yet: freedom from Jesus and from his law is always illusory. He is only for our good. Remove him, and we soon revert to the culture of death we see all around us.
Yet here – says the High Priest - you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching. Later St. Paul will wonderfully express the burning necessity that drives him to preach the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor 9:16 etc.) The Apostles cannot possibly withhold the Good News with which they have been entrusted! And we naturally cry: would that this zeal for evangelisation be rekindled in our own day! Would that God might raise up new and convincing witnesses who can fill our whole world afresh with the life-transforming news that Jesus has risen from the dead, and that he is Lord!
You intend to bring this man’s blood upon us! It seems here almost as if the roles are being reversed, and the Sanhedrin are now the ones on trial. But there is hypocrisy and insincerity as well as apparent self-pity here. As all the Gospels bear witness: these are the men who plotted against Jesus from the beginning. These are the ones who stirred up the mob to demand his death, and these are the ones who coerced Pilate into lending his authority to that (and see, of course, also Mt 27:25).
But Peter and the Apostles answered: We must obey God rather than men (v. 30). Here St. Peter states a fundamental moral principle. It’s true that Christians will always want to be good and law-abiding citizens. But we are never morally obliged to sin, or in any way to disobey God’s law, whether this is known to us through revelation, or through our own informed conscience. Often, in order to remain faithful to this principle, we will need all the gifts of the Holy Spirit: not only wisdom and insight, but also a good deal of courage and strength. We see these gifts exemplified so often in the martyrs! Our own St. John Ogilvie, to take just one, died specifically for refusing to obey men rather than God. The principle is exemplified also in great heroes of the faith, like St. Athanasius. Five times he was exiled - often he was in hiding - as the political authorities sought his life. Athanasius also had to withstand the opprobrium of the vast majority of his fellow Bishops, all of whom had succumbed to the Arian heresy.
St. Peter continues: The God of our fathers raised Jesus. That is: the God of the Old Testament, the God who created heaven and earth, the God who made a Covenant with Israel: this God was at work in Jesus, and this God raised Jesus from the dead. And although this only happened at most some few months previously, St. Peter is clear that this is God’s greatest work, and his definitive intervention in human history. Everything else was merely preparation for it. And everything has changed because of it. The effects and scope of the death and resurrection of Jesus cannot be over-estimated. He is God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s way, God’s life, given to us. Apart from Jesus, we are left in our sins. And one implication is that the Old Testament Priesthood is now redundant. The High Priest no longer has a role, and all his religious authority has now passed to the Apostles.
He exalted him to his right hand as Leader and Saviour. Leader first of all. We have the same word used of Jesus in the Letter to the Hebrews (cf. Hb 2:10, 12:2). Jesus is our Leader, or Pioneer, or fore-runner. So he goes ahead of us: first of all in living a fully human life without sin, practising patience and humility and love to the end. But above all Jesus goes ahead of us in his death and in resurrection. Here we see how the Nicene doctrine, defined 1700 years ago, alone makes sense of the Gospel. For as St. Athanasius insisted: only God can reconcile us to God; only God can bring us to God; only God can confer on us the divinising Holy Spirit. So God in Jesus became one with us, in order that we might be made one with him. The Son of God became a Son of Man, in order that we might become sons of God. God in Jesus shared our death, so that we might share his resurrection from death. As our 1st Easter Preface puts it: “Dying he destroyed our death, rising he restores our life”.
But as well as calling Jesus our Leader, Peter also here calls him our Saviour. And we find the whole New Testament insisting that Christ’s death was not just an act of solidarity with our death: it was also a saving and redeeming sacrifice. The death of Jesus was a Priestly offering, which sanctifies, cleanses, sets free, cancels sin, does away with all debt. So as St. Paul presents the primary Gospel message – what he himself had received - Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor 15:3). Or as we read in St. John, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (Jn 1:29). And as the doctrine of Nicaea implies: it is because of the identity of the one sacrificed, that this sacrificial death has infinite power.
To give repentance and forgiveness of sins through him (v. 32). Every single one of the great Apostolic speeches in Acts ends with this conclusion. We must acknowledge our sins, repent of them, and – however black they have been - we will find forgiveness in Christ.
Our scene today ends with the Apostles being scourged, and leaving in gladness, and in renewed commitment to their task. Their suffering and humiliation is a sign that these men are indeed united with Jesus. Their joy is a sign that they are indeed filled with the Holy Spirit. And the power of their testimony is a sign that their message is true, and God is truly with them.