Out of Control!

Acts 4, Psalm 23, 1st John 3, John 10

One of the themes running through the readings this morning is control—quite interesting, as we prepare to make our small but essential contribution towards deciding who will be in control of the country for the next few years. It probably won’t make any difference who I vote for, but I’ll do it anyway.

Some of the more hysterical commentary has been amusing, to say the least: ‘If you vote for them, everything will go out of control! Do they mean ‘out of control’, or ‘out of our control’?

When the Temple authorities heard about what Peter, James and John had done, and what they were saying about it, they moved quickly in an attempt to regain control. It was as if an alarm had gone off somewhere: UNAUTHORISED SPIRITUAL ACITIVITY!

Imagine! God is working in the Temple without our imprimatur—we can’t allow that. There were, of course,  two or three different fears in the minds of the authorities. One was the entirely legitimate fear of civil disorder followed by a Roman crackdown, another was the rather less respectable fear of being sidelined and upstaged by the ‘un-entitled’, and the third was probably a simple fear of the unknown.

What can we learn from this, with the privilege of hind-sight and an uncomfortable feeling that we are not exactly the ‘un-entitled’. Possibly, that new life often comes from outside our previous experience, that many things are beyond our control, and that the unknown is not always to be feared.

Repent and be Baptised

Acts 3

Peter's words to the crowds, in explanation after a miraculous healing, were, "Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out..." We're still responding, 2,000 years later.

We still get baptised, we still confess, we still hear words of forgiveness and make them our own. We still do this in spite of the fact that we are 'in Christ', and scripture assures us that 'no one who abides in him sins'. Are our various sins evidence that St. John got this bit wrong, or evidence that we're don't quite 'abide in him'?

It's worth reflecting on who might have heard Peter's speech, and what their thoughts might have been. Quite possibly, some of those present had been among the crowds who cried out for Jesus' execution and Barabbas' release. To them, the idea that God had raised Jesus would be worrying to say the least. Nobody who made a practice of going to the Temple would have wanted to find that they had condemned somebody whom God found innocent. And, if God's reversal of human judgement could involve raising someone from death, what other reversals might be about to follow?

Other listeners might have wondered how much it all affected them. If they'd not been in the mob that called for Jesus' death, what did they have to repent of? The more reflective might have considered the possibility that, as part of the society that condemned an innocent man, they could not shake off part of the responsibility. Perhaps that is where our repenting, confessing and forgiving belongs. Our sins may be our own, or society's or humanity's. They may be the sins of our church or the sins of our country, but it is still up to us to lay them before God and invite forgiveness into the world, in the faith that God does not allow his word of forgiveness to lie dead and buried.