Gentle Reader,
The next several weeks are just wild schedule wise. I am in the thick of crafting sermons for a teen camp at the end of July, and I have my first in-person, week-long doctoral class in 18 days. So, from now until August, I will be sharing sermon manuscripts and writing that I originally did in other spaces. Below is the sermon text for May 26, 2024. It still blows my mind that I get to preach, that I get to publicly point others to Jesus. May it ever blow my mind.
And may God bless you.
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I love a good mystery. One of the first short stories I ever wrote was a Sherlock Holmes case. I was seven, so it was about three pages long. I was also unaware of the concept of plagiarism, so don’t judge me too harshly. I just liked sitting with my dad when he turned on PBS to watch Jeremy Brett play the famous detective. I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t make up my own story and insert Holmes and Watson into it.
That story is lost to time. I can’t even begin to tell you what it was about. I’m sure I probably gave Sherlock a dog sidekick. Now that I know it’s not right to rip off other authors, I simply enjoy their work instead of trying to add to it. I’ve read all the Sherlock stories, all the Hercule Poirot books, and a smattering of other gum-shoe adventures. It’s the thrill of the chase for me. The challenge to make sense of the clues before the last chapter reveals all. To bring the criminal to justice. To find that once again good triumphs over evil.
Mysteries tantalize us. They draw us in. They invite us to wrestle until we arrive at a place of understanding. That’s rather like faith.
We began this series several weeks ago with the proposition that our stories, ourselves, only make sense when placed within the context of an overarching, redemptive story. God’s story. As we’ve entered into several different scenes in which the resurrected Jesus interacts with his friends, we’ve learned that in this story, we’re not the main character. God is. Alongside the first believers, we have discovered that our meaning, our identity, our point is not derived from being on center stage. Instead, we are freed up to be a cast of characters who delight in constantly pointing to the one who is both the Author and the Star of the piece.
Last week we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit in a new way on Pentecost. Pastor Billy led us in considering just how amazing it is for God to ensure that all of the people present on that long-ago day in Jerusalem would be able to understand the Gospel message. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ friends spoke languages that they could not possibly have known. Driven by Divine love and grace, the disciples boldly proclaim that the resurrection of Jesus is the central event of all of history. Jesus alone saves! This knowledge puts the disciples in a position to be challenged, changed, and consumed by a new narrative, as they display on this day. Through their example, God challenges and invites us to let go of other stories and to give ourselves over to the story God is writing.
Today we pick up where we left off last week in Acts 2:22-41. It’s still Pentecost. Peter is still preaching. (That man could talk). The crowds are pressing in to listen. They jostle each other. There’s noise and the smell of sweat and something electric in the air. Every word matters.
Hear the word of the Lord:
Listen up, peeps from Israel! Check this out: Jesus, the dude from Nazareth, was totally legit approved by God. He did all these insane miracles, wonders, and signs right in front of you. And come on, you all saw it too, no doubt. Yo, like, God had this whole plan and knew what was gonna go down, but y’all ended up, like, capturing and killing him with all that wickedness and stuff. God brought him back to life and freed him from the grip of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.
David was totally talking about Jesus when he said, “I always have the Lord in view, keeping him by my side so I won’t be shaken. So, like, my heart totally felt all kinds of happiness, and I was, like, super stoked and my tongue couldn’t help but smile. Plus, my whole being is gonna take a chill pill and feel hopeful vibes, you know? Dude, you won’t abandon my soul in the depths of despair, and you definitely won’t let your righteous homie decay. You’ve shown me how to live my best life; your smile brings me ultimate joy.”
Hey fam, listen up! I wanna talk to y’all about David, the OG patriarch. Just so you know, he’s dead and gone, and we still got his tomb here till this day. Just keepin’ it real, you know? So this prophet guy knew that God had promised him, like for real, that someone from his own bloodline would be born and become the ruler, called Christ, sitting on his throne and all that. He knew this in advance and talked about how Jesus would rise from the dead, that his spirit wouldn’t stay trapped in the underworld, and his body wouldn’t decay.
Yo, God straight up brought Jesus back to life, and we all saw it go down. So, like, Jesus got all mighty and stuff, sitting at God’s right hand and all. And the Father was like, “Yo Jesus, here’s the Holy Spirit promise for you.” And then Jesus was like, “Bet”’ and started spreading it around for all of y’all to see and hear. Yo, David didn’t actually go up to heaven and stuff, but he straight up said, “The LORD told my Lord, yo, chill right by me on my right side, until I flex on your haters and they become like an accessory to your swag.”
So, like, everyone in the house of Israel needs to know for sure that God totally made Jesus, the one y’all crucified, the ultimate boss and Savior.
When they heard that, they felt a major shake in their hearts and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Dudes, what’s the move now?” So, like, Peter was all like, “Yo, listen up fam! You need to repent and get baptized in the name of Jesus Christ to have your sins forgiven, and bonus – you’ll also receive the awesome gift of the Holy Spirit! Yeah, you won’t believe it, but God’s got a promise for you, your squad, and even those who are far away. Like, anyone that the big man upstairs decides to bring into the mix.” And he went on to speak and encourage them with many other words, saying, “Yo, you gotta save yourselves from this messed up generation, fam.” So, like, those who were super stoked about what he was preaching got baptized. And guess what? On that very day, around three thousand peeps were all like, “Sign me up, fam!”
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Now that everyone is confused – let me explain. Pentecost isn’t just about some people being able to supernaturally speak foreign languages. This is super important; a sign of God’s grace and God’s desire for all people to know the Gospel. But Pentecost is also about the Holy Spirit giving God’s people the ability to reinterpret or re-understand existing language. It’s like the closing chapter of a mystery novel. All the clues that had been there the whole time are suddenly pieced together in a way that makes you wonder how you missed it. So if you didn’t quite follow along as I read through an AI-generated “Gen Z” translation of this passage while the NRSV was on the screen – good! You’ve got some sense of what Peter’s audience felt that day. Little confused. Little off kilter.
That’s the kind of mental and emotional space that God delights in entering into. God is a Teacher. The Best Teacher. God sees us in our struggle to understand, and comes alongside us to give us guidance. That’s what God does here, for these people.
Confusion is slowly replaced by holy clarity as Peter, empowered by the Spirit, takes them and us back to the psalms. Not that long ago we spent a little over three months in the psalms. We know that on those pages we find the best and worst of humanity. Above all, we find the grace of God woven like a golden thread through the doubts, the questions, the sorrow, the praising, the joy. God uses the art of song and poetry to invite people to come closer to God. So on a day like Pentecost, when the crowd is hearing the Good News of Jesus Christ in their own languages, it’s no surprise that God would use the psalms again. It’s like an invitation wrapped inside another invitation.
Peter specifically takes them through what we call Psalm 16, verses 8-11. I say “we call it that” because the numbers and the breaking things into chunks happened waaaaaay after these things were written. Psalm 16 is one of those David psalms – remember, the ones either written by King David himself or by someone inspired by or wanting to write in the style of David. Peter’s listeners are very familiar with these lines. They’ve grown up listening to them. King David and his story is part of their story.
The first person perspective – “I saw” – indicates the author of the psalm is talking about themselves, or maybe talking in the voice of David. And that’s not necessarily wrong; there are layers to things in Scripture. But Peter whips out the Jesus magnifying glass and examines this clue a little closer. He sees that the author is also, and primarily, talking about Jesus.
How does Peter know this? Well, David’s dead. They know where his tomb is. So when the author talks about the experience of escaping death and decay, it can’t be primarily about David. Death and decay took David. Death and decay cannot and did not take Jesus. The author of the psalm, maybe in a fuzzy way, maybe without fully knowing all the details, is prophesying about the Savior. Peter makes the point clear by restating Psalm 16:10 – Jesus was not abandoned to death. Jesus’ body did not decay.
Peter goes on to reinterpret Psalm 110:1. Part of David’s story, which was part of their story, is that God promised David that someone of his line, his family, would always be on the throne. So here, what had long been understood to be a line celebrating the victory of a newly crowned Davidic king, is more fully understood to be celebrating the victory of Jesus over death and sin. Jesus sits because the work is done. There ain’t nothing more any of us can add to it. Praise God!
This task of reinterpretation, or reunderstanding, that Peter is engaged in is important. Immediately, it’s important for his listeners so that they can come to see clearly all the ways that the Scripture that they had – because they didn’t have the New Testament – all the ways that it pointed to and spoke of Jesus. It’s important for us as well. When we read the Bible, we also have to do it through the Jesus lens. For example, promises that were made to ancient national Israel as a distinct political entity don’t apply to us here today. The Church isn’t a physical nation sitting in a geographic area. A person is not automatically a Christian because they were born in such and such a place. We are a global people, a family of God that spans and transcends all kinds of national borders, languages, cultures, and customs. So we have to do some work. We have to think about what Jesus has done and taught, and with the aid of the Holy Spirit come to discern what timeless principle might be found in the things that don’t apply directly to us.
And it’s okay that everything in the Bible doesn’t apply to us in a one-to-one straightforward transfer. That doesn’t make the Bible any less true or important. We can approach Scripture with humility, with a desire to learn and grow, just as Peter does right here. It is okay for us to admit when we don’t piece the clues together correctly. It is right that we need the wisdom of God to guide us to the mystery’s solution.
I’ve been talking about “us and we.” And “us and we” is appropriate. Jesus is for everyone. But we would be missing something significant about this passage if we didn’t notice that we’re not in it. Everyone involved is Jewish. Peter. The other apostles and friends of Jesus. Those who have come to Jerusalem to celebrate. Gentiles, non-Jewish people like us, haven’t really entered the picture yet. The Church begins as an expression or extension of what God was doing in and through the Jewish people. The Savior is for everyone, but the Savior came first to the Jews, the fulfillment of God’s promise to them.
Why am I pointing this out? Throughout history this passage is one that has been twisted to support anti-Semitism and as an excuse to persecute and murder Jewish people because Peter says, “You killed him.” It’s important to know the rest of the story. In John 10:17-18 Jesus tells his friends, which includes us, that “I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” It looked like some Jewish people pushed for the Roman authorities to murder Jesus, and that they did just that. The reality is that Jesus chose to go to the cross – because, in a mysterious choice of God that we may never fully understand, that step, that agony, was a crucial factor in us coming into redemptive relationship with God. The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus “for the sake of the joy that was set before him” – the restoration of all of creation – “endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” This is Plan A. This is what God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – chose to do to bring about the renewal of creation and the restoration of relationship between humanity and God.
It’s important for us to hold onto this truth as anti-Semitism is once again on the rise in our country. We can have thoughts about what is happening in our world. We can and should mourn the deaths of innocent people caught on both sides of the conflict in Israel. We don’t get to see anyone as less valuable than others. We don’t get to hate anyone.
So why, then, does Peter tell the crowd that they murdered Jesus? We just reminded ourselves that it was the Romans – people like us – who carried out the actual execution. We’re choosing to be careful to avoid anti-Semitism. After all, Peter is Jewish. He doesn’t hate his own people. What’s going on here?
What’s going on is that so many of Peter’s people missed it. And he doesn’t want them to miss it anymore. He wants them to clearly see who Jesus is. Jesus is for everyone, yes, and Jesus is the promised Jewish Messiah. The Savior prophesied of again and again throughout the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. Peter knows this. He knows his audience. He makes it as plain as he possibly can and includes everyone in his story.
Why does he do that? Peter does this because their culture is far more community oriented than ours is. Obviously not every person listening that day wanted Jesus to be crucified. Not every person in Israel’s past had refused to listen to the prophets who called them back to a life of worshiping God. But the collective matters. What one person does impacts the whole. Those who did reject Jesus, who did call for his murder, they were like…a broken ankle, if you will. Affecting the whole body. Something that needed to be addressed and healed. Is the entire community broken? No. Is the entire community impacted by that area of brokenness? Yes.
The good news in the face of this brokenness is that the one person who has truly most impacted the whole of the Jewish community is Jesus. The Eternal God. The Jewish man from Nazareth.
Peter is telling them that the Messiah they’ve been looking for has come.
God has kept God’s promise made in Genesis 3. At the very moment that the world and everything in it fell apart, God pledged to come and restore it. Heal it. The Restorer and Healer’s name is Jesus.
At this point, the noise of the crowd has hushed into silence. Peter has dropped the mic. He’s got nothing to add. And he’s got no reason to lie. His listeners are left to decide how they’re going to respond. “They were cut to the heart” – they are in turmoil. The Holy Spirit touches them, lovingly inflicts the pain of conviction. Someone asks, “What do we do?” In answering, Peter becomes the first to speak on one of the running themes of the book of Acts: repent. Turn away from sin and turn toward God.
He also tells them to be baptized. I think it’s important for us to talk about that for a minute, because we’re not always the best at explaining what baptism is. In his book Outward Sign and Inward Grace, Dr. Rob Staples writes that “baptism witnesses to the truth that what Christ has done for me he now wills to do in me. The act of being baptized does not itself forgive and cleanse me. …the One who was baptized for me by the death of the cross, and in whose name I am baptized – he forgives me from the guilt of sin and delivers me from its power. …Baptism signifies the death of the person I once was – unforgiven and alienated from God. Baptism says farewell to all that. …Baptism makes visible our faith response [of repentance], but is only secondary to its primary function of making visible God’s action toward us.”
Baptism is a means of grace, through which the Unordinary God somehow meets us in something as ordinary as water. It’s also an evidence of repentance, a declaration of allegiance to Christ.
That’s what Peter says they should do. Repent and decide to be forever loyal to Jesus Christ. And not only for their own sakes, but for all who will find themselves, at some point, wondering, “What should we do?”
The events of Pentecost are the fulfillment of God’s promises and purposes for the world, yes, but first for Israel. For the people whom God chose out of all other people to be the ones through whom the Savior would come into the world. God is faithful to do what God says God will do. The fact that Jesus is not in any tomb testifies to that reality. And so Peter guides his people in changing their perspective. He helps them to bring the question and the clues together in such a way that the solution to the mystery is finally plain. Who done it? Jesus. And because Jesus done it, they don’t have to try to do it. They get to accept the gift of freedom. They get to go on and embody the good news of God’s love and grace in every community in which they find themselves, which is a story for another day.
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Jessica Mangano