On
Monday I mowed my front yard, and then yesterday I spent several hours in back. It was almost the first yard work I’d done since
the rains began to fall, because for a long time it was too wet, and then I was
too busy. It felt good to be out there
again, to see what was going on beneath the winter’s growth of weeds, and I began
to get excited for what this year’s gardening will bring. But at the same time I had the feeling of
crossing a threshold from which there would be no turning back, because once I
start to mowing and weeding, it’s only one step from there to digging, and from
digging to planting, and then I’m committed to another seven or eight months of
watering and weeding and pruning and harvesting, until the winter comes and I get
to rest until it’s time to do it all again.
There’s
a popular saying 12-Step circles that defines “insanity” as “doing the same
thing over and over and expecting different results.” Which is kind of how I
think of the High Priest Annas in the book of Acts. In our first reading this morning, the High
Priest has brought Peter and the apostles before his council. But Peter and John have been here before, in
the preceding chapter, after they publicly healed a man who had not walked
since birth, and then went around
telling everyone they had done this in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the
Messiah. On that occasion they were dragged before the
council and warned to stop talking that way, and yet here they are again today. Because they have not stopped preaching and
healing the sick, and more and more of the people of Jerusalem are coming
to believe what they say about Jesus.
And for the
High Priest it's suspiciously like trying to stir the people up to hold him responsible
for Jesus’ death. It's all part of what is feeling more and more like a recurring
nightmare. After all, Peter and his
friends are in the same place where not so long ago Jesus himself stood, and Annas
charged him with blasphemy. From there
they took Jesus and accused him of sedition before the Roman governor, who had
him crucified, and, by all rights, that should have been the end of him. But like a weed that keeps sprouting back no
matter how many times you pull it, Jesus of Nazareth won’t go away. And still the High Priest keeps repeating the
same tactics of coercion and intimidation and the thinly-veiled threat of violence.
Of
course, Peter has his own bad memories of the High Priest, and of the night that Jesus was
arrested. While all the others ran away,
Peter had the courage to follow the crowd to Annas’ house and even to enter the
courtyard and find a place around the fire.
But there his courage failed, and he denied that he knew Jesus three
times before the cock crowed. And yet now
he is back again, and this time he denies nothing, and makes no attempt to
conceal who he is. So while the High
Priest and his council keep doing the same thing over and over again, Peter’s
behavior has changed completely. So why
is that? What has happened to Peter and
his friends that they are able to stand up boldly and speak forthrightly, where
before they were dissembling and slinking around in the shadows?
Well,
Peter answers that question himself. What happened is something that the High
Priest himself helped set in motion, though he did not know it—a awareness that grew
in the disciples of Jesus as they watched him falsely accused, and unjustly
condemned, and cruelly put to death. They
saw how deep the world’s sickness runs—how mindlessly it goes through its habitually
violent motions, how impervious it is to the imagination of something new. They saw with disgust how their own dreams of
quickly and painlessly setting things right were tainted with envy and lust for
power. But God did not abandon them
there, in their guilt and horror and self-loathing.
“The God of our ancestors,” says Peter, “raised up Jesus, whom you had
killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader
and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of
sins.” Now Peter and his friends cannot help
but tell others about the resurrection of Jesus, because they finally understand
what will really change the world.
And
we are not the only ones who know this, Peter says, but God’s Holy Spirit does,
too. In other words, the apostles are
not simply going around bragging about a visionary experience they alone were
privileged to have. Because the Holy Spirit is the one who speaks through the prophets,
revealing and empowering God’s will for the whole nation, and indeed, all
creation. So what Peter is saying is that
in the crucified and risen Christ God has revealed, to anyone who’s open to
understand, God purpose for everyone, to restore us to sanity, and freedom, and
peace.
This
revelation is what the Church since ancient times has called “the Paschal
mystery.” “Mystery”, in this context, doesn’t
mean the same thing that it does to us today.
It is not a riddle to which we have no answer, or a crime that remained
unsolved, but more like the opposite of that.
In the ancient world a “mystery” was a kind of ritual drama through
which the participants were able to know what is secret, and see what is hidden—the
purposes of God. And for the apostles
the death and resurrection of Jesus was this kind of mystery. Except it was not confined to the inner
precincts of a temple, and it was not for the benefit of a few chosen
initiates. It played in public, in the
real world, on the stage of history where everyone could see it. In spite of that, none of the participants
in this ritual drama had any idea they were acting out a mystery, except Jesus himself. But now Peter and his friends know it too,
thanks to the witness of the Holy Spirit.
The
apostles were more concerned with sharing the divine mystery of the resurrection
of the crucified than with establishing precisely the facts of what happened. We know this because the gospels have no
problem telling different versions of their most important story, whose details
don’t always agree. And the same is true
of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Acts
of the Apostles separates it from the resurrection by a span of fifty days, to reveal
the mystery as a progression of distinct events unfolding through time. But the Gospel of John connects the gift of
the Holy Spirit directly with the appearance of the risen Christ, in a unitive
revelation.
Jesus
breathed on his disciples, says John, and said to them, "Receive the Holy
Spirit.” And this breathing is more than
a pun on the word for Spirit, which in Hebrew and Greek is the same as the word
for breath. It is a reference, I think,
to the Second Chapter of Genesis, where God breathes life into the man he has
formed from the soil. Jesus goes on to
say, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the
sins of any, they are retained.” And in
these few words the hidden purpose of God comes to light, because in that same
chapter of Genesis we read there was a tree in Garden of Eden, whose fruit gave
the knowledge of good and evil, which was forbidden to eat. And we all know what happened next, how Adam
and Eve ate that fruit and brought death into the world.
But
Christ’s resurrection begins the new creation of humankind, in which death is
robbed of its power. And with the gift
of the Holy Spirit, the knowledge of good and evil is no longer a fatal trap. We still have the choice to retain other’s
sins, to repeat the old pattern of holding grudges and making scapegoats and
condemning them to punishment—otherwise we would not be free. But we also have the power to do something
new, a power that comes from the breath of the risen Christ, from the body that
bears the wounds of the cross in his feet and hands and side. He died that death and yet God gave him back
alive as the bringer of peace. With the gift of the Spirit to help us to choose wisely, he sends
us as he was sent. We who, though
guilty, are released from the threat of punishment and the fear of death, are
sent to create a new world from the forgiveness of the crucified.
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