Second Sunday of Easter
March 30, 2008
Text: Acts 2:14a, 22-32
During the seven Sundays of Easter, all our First Readings come from the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Acts is an Easter book. Nowhere else in the New Testament does the centrality of the Risen Jesus come through more clearly than in Acts. For the next six Sundays, we will use this Easter book for our sermons.
Our reading today, from the second chapter of Acts, is a portion of Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. Since the resurrection of Jesus fifty days ago, Peter and the disciples have come to understand the scriptures that Jesus must rise from the dead. The crowd has just heard Jesus’ followers speaking in their own languages about Jesus and the mighty deeds God has done through Him. In his sermon, Peter wants to explain who Jesus is. The listening Jews are familiar with the stories circulating about Jesus’ healings and miracles, but there are lots of miracle-workers, magicians and sages in first century Jerusalem.
What makes Jesus so different? The answer is clear – His resurrection. This man, Peter says, “who was crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men,” God raised from the dead. Death could not hold him, because God is more powerful than all the forces of death.
It is notable in Peter’s sermon that he connects the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ with the Old Testament. This connection obviously is important to the Jews. However, it is also important to us, because the identity of our Risen Lord cannot be fully understood except in connection with the Old Testament.
Quoting from Psalm 16, Peter recites these words of David, the psalmist, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption.” The Psalm states that God would not abandon his Holy One to death. But David died, and all the Jews present know where he is buried in Jerusalem. The Psalm therefore, is speaking not of David, but rather it is prophesying the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
For both Jews and us Gentiles, Jesus is not some new figure, who suddenly drops out of the blue. Rather, his life, death and resurrection form the final and full interpretation of all that has gone before in Israel’s history. Jesus is the one who fulfills the plan and promises of God given in the past history of Israel. His death on the cross was not an accident perpetuated by sinful human beings. Rather it was fore-known and fore-planned by God as the way to atone for the sins of the world. The fact that Jesus was raised from the dead is not a myth. The witnesses of the resurrection did not dream up that the spirit of a dead Jesus was somehow still with them. Rather the resurrection is an historical event that was fulfilled by God, foretold by “David” and witnessed by those who met the risen Christ alive.
If we preserve that historical connection of Jesus with the Old Testament history and listen to the witness of the apostles in the New Testament, we are prevented from distorting who Jesus is. We cannot reduce him to a myth, or to an imaginary ideal. We cannot say that He is a peasant revolutionary, a traveling sage, or mystic visionary among many. We cannot make him into just some great miracle-worker, or doer of good deeds, as some would like him to be. No! The Risen Jesus is the flesh and blood descendant of Abraham and David, who walked the dusty roads of Palestine in the first century A.D., who healed the sick and raised the dead, who announced the arrival of the Kingdom of God, who was crucified on a Roman cross, and who on the first day of the week was raised from the dead. All of what happened in Jesus’ life and all of what He did was done by the power of God working in and through him. He was the Son of God.
Our faith is not based simply on propositions – on statements such as “God is love,” or “Christ died for our sins,” or “The Bible is the Word of God.” We believe all these things. However, the content of them is spelled out in the history that is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
What is the manner of love that God has for us? We find it only if we read the story of Jesus. What are our sins and how and why did Christ die for them? Only the story of Jesus can tell us. Why is the Bible the Word of God? The history of God acting through the mighty acts of Jesus and in his death and resurrection is recorded in the Bible.
The content of the Christian faith is that of a story, a story of real history. Our Christian faith rests on the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
Peter’s sermon on Pentecost includes the powerful message that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ were not accidents of history. They were the fulfillment of God’s plans and promises for the world. Through the story of Jesus – his deeds of power, words and signs, his death on the cross, and his glorious resurrection from the dead witnessed by many – God affirmed to be true that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. God has not abandoned His faithful One to death. His story is our story. Believing in the Risen Son of God, we have His hope and promise of resurrection and new life.