This Easter season, we’re going to spend some time reading from the Book of Acts: During our Bible study on Wednesday for those who are able to attend, and also every Sunday at church. You may have noticed that this morning, we actually didn’t have a lesson from the Old Testament. Rather each Sunday until Pentecost, our lectionary proposes as a first reading a passage from the Book of Acts. So what do we know about the Book of Acts? The first thing we need to know is that it certainly has been written by the same author as Luke’s Gospel. Both books start with a dedication to a certain Theophilus, and here in Acts Chapter 1 it says: In the first book (…) I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach,until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. And so now with Acts we get to the second part after the Gospel, we learn what the Apostles have been up to since then, and basically what we notice is that the book of Acts picks up where the Gospel left off: Jesus has been put to death, and rose from the dead and then the disciples are still in Jerusalem and they are announcing the news to everybody in the city, and that is where we are today with this passage from Chapter 5. We only have a short extract, but as the story goes, the Apostles are hanging out in the Temple, and they preach and teach and even heal the sick, to a point that they are arrested by the religious authorities, and what we hear today is part of Peter’s defense when he addresses the Sanhedrin, the Council of the elders, that is detaining him.
It’s really important for us to understand that, that Peter is addressing the same people who had arrested Jesus and put him to death. It’s very clear from what he says to them that we have just heard: The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, who you had killed by hanging him on a tree. It’s a temptation after Easter to quickly forget about everything that happened before, the very harsh and difficult truth that not only Jesus has died but that he was put to death, that he was killed, assassinated. You know we often hear Christians asking what seems like a deep, theological question: Why did Jesus have to die? But the obvious answer is that he died because we have killed him. It’s something that is not easy to accept, and yet, as Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, observes this is what the first Easter proclamation is about: That the one who has been raised up by God is the one we have killed. And people in Jerusalem would have been plenty aware of that. Peter is very blunt with the high priest and the elders, he is even accusatory: Not only they have killed Jesus but they have “hung him on a tree” (on the wood of a cross), which is an allusion to their law in Deuteronomy qualifying this kind of death as a curse. Now about Jesus’s death, we can look for the guilty ones, and unfortunately we know that many Christians have held the Jews accountable and made them pay in the worst way. It is to forget though that Jesus himself was a Jew and that the people who became Christians first were also Jews. Besides, Peter and the Apostles are preaching to all Jerusalem, so the first Easter proclamation asks everyone in the city to acknowledge their own guilt, the authorities and the crowd, the Jews, and the pagans, and I think that in order to ask that of others, Peter also had to acknowledge his own guilt as well. He ran away. He would never have put nails in Jesus’s hands, but because he denied him, he also, somehow, participated in his crucifixion, and he had to to walk the way of repentance and to ask for the forgiveness he is begging the high priest and the Sanhedrin to accept: God exalted [Jesus] at his right hand (…) so that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
And so you know, I think it really says something about Peter, and mainly it says something about God, that Peter would have been able to preach this sermon in front of the high priest. Because, as we have just said, this is the same Peter who, a few weeks ago, sat terrorized next to the fire in the court of the same high priest while Jesus was standing in the house, accused and condemned by the same people. And then Peter had run when he was confronted, not by the high priest, nor by a soldier or even a guard, he ran away when he was suspected by a young servant about maybe being a follower of Christ. And now he is the one confronting all the people. Well, isn’t it amazing he was able to overcome his fear in that way? It says something about the power of the Resurrection, the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of repentance that from a place of fear and weakness and resentment, we can be made brave, truthful and extend God’s forgiveness.
As you were following the news this week, I hope you had a chance to see what happened in the El Paso court room. Yolanda Tinajero, who had her brother killed in a racist attack at a Walmart in 2019, said to the shooter that she “forgave him, and wished she could give him a hug“. And the judge allowed her to do just that, and she did. To tell you the truth, when I first heard about it, it made my whole being cringe. What? Is she delusional? Is it a trauma response and is she a victim of her own emotivity? Then: Does she really mean it, is it only for the show? And even: Is it even helpful to offer forgiveness in this way? Shouldn’t people know when they have done something really wrong? And yet. After thinking about it and sitting with this lesson we have just read, I also started to wonder: Is there another way out? Is there another way out of death, sin and hurt, Is there another way out than forgiveness? Jesus does not seem to think so. Another thing that Rowan Williams notices about Peter’s preaching in Jerusalem is that Peter preaches a Jesus who has been vindicated, justified by God in his Resurrection (he was indeed the holy one, the Messiah, the Son of God) and yet Jesus does not come as a judge to condemn but to ask for conversion and extend forgiveness. So far History has kept repeating itself, the Sanhedrin had Jesus killed and now they’re plotting to do exactly the same thing to the Apostles. The verse right after our passage this morning reads: that when they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. And we know they will kill Stephen soon (Chapter 6). The only way to break the cycle of violence, to prevent history from keeping on repeating itself is to offer forgiveness, to not counter violence by more violence. I think that’s what Jesus is asking his Apostles to do and that’s what this woman did in the court room this past week.It does not mean we don’t acknowledge something terrible has taken place, rather because something terrible has taken place, we acknowledge that there is no other way out than forgiveness.
So how do we do that? How do we extend forgiveness? Three quick observations.
– Following the Risen Christ, we also follow the Christ who has been unjustly condemned and put to death. Having that it mind, I think it can help us to acknowledge that we also bear a responsibility in this. Probably, like Peter, we wouldn’t have deliberately nailed Jesus to the cross, yet we take part in the crucifixion in the same way than others by our indifference, lack of commitment, fears…Realizing that can help us bear more easily the injustices that are done to us. It does not mean that we have to enable people to hurt us, Peter was very direct about the wrong the religious leaders had committed, the also woman said to the shooter: “I want you to see and feel all of us who have been impacted by your actions.”For us, we also need to denounce what’s evil or wrong but/and in the meantime, because of these examples, we can also have enough wisdom in everyday life to accept that our relationships aren’t always balanced the way we want to, that we, too, have to bear a share of unfairness in the way we can be treated because our Lord has accepted the greatest unfairness of all. We also, by patience, gentleness, honesty and courage have to take responsibility for our sins and bear the sins of others.
– Realizing this part of our guilt and accepting to bear some of the guilt of others, can prepare us to receive the Holy Spirit, in the same way that Peter asking Jesus for forgiveness open up the work of the Holy Spirit in him. Once again, it’s amazing that this scared man who ran away can be able to later stand in from of the high priest. There are things that we would never think possible for us to do, but the Holy Spirit empowers us to do them. We sometimes hear that Everything is possible with God, and we think about all the dreams we have that could come true, but I think it’s more about God enabling us to forgive or love in ways we never thought would have been possible, like this woman in the courtroom and other family members of the victims. They are repeating history but in the best way possible, they are not repeating not the cycle of violence but Jesus’s offer of conversion.
– And then there is also this sense that forgiveness is possible when we believe that this life is not all there is, when we believe in the Resurrection and in eternal life. We need to believe that another reality can take place. It’s easier to forgive others when we know that God will bring us justice, not in the sense of revenge, but that we will find again that we have lost. One family in the court room said after that they went to the tomb of their loved one to celebrate not his death but his birthday. I don’t know if they meant by that his actual birthday or the fact that he had entered eternal life, but it certainly says something of this belief that the pain of this life isn’t all there is to it. And with this belief it’s easier, not only to cope, as we often accuse religion of (to be only there to help us cope) it also helps us bring changes. Peter finishes his sermon by saying that all of them Apostles are witnesses, and it’s a term we find 20 times in the Book of Acts. To be a witness does not just mean that they had known Jesus in the flesh, had seen him die and then rise again, being a witness of the Resurrection mainly means that, that we witness to the Risen Christ by asking for forgiveness and by extending forgiveness as he did. These are actually the first words of the Risen Christ to the Apostles in our Gospel today: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit (…) If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them“.