April 26 Lectionary passage from Acts

Acts 2:14a, 36-41

This passage contains the end of Peter's Pentecost sermon and the congregation's reaction.

I don't like replacing the Old Testament Lesson with a passage from the New Testament, as happens during Eastertide in this year's lectionary cycle.  I don't like lifting verses out of a longer passage, as this reading does.  I don't like a Pentecost passage being read at Eastertide.  And I don't like hellfire and damnation sermons.

I was schooled in preaching by three of the best:  Tom Long, Wade Huie and Will Ormond.  All three of them would agree on this:  a sermon should be about the Good News of the Gospel.  Preaching that manipulates its hearers with anger, guilt, anxiety and the threat of hell is not Good News preaching.

Peter would have flunked their homiletics courses.  This, the first Christian evangelistic sermon ever preached, was a "come-to-Jesus" sermon in the most literal sense.  The first verse of this reading proves as much:  "God made him Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified" (emphasis mine).  If that doesn't bring a sinner to his or her knees . . .

Remember the context:  Peter is preaching to Jews from all over the Roman Empire, as well as the hometown crew.  His tactic is to lay a guilt trip on the Jews gathered at the Temple for the crime of crucifying the One whom God has made Lord (worthy of praise and adoration) and Christ (Messiah - the Anointed One whom all Jews were awaiting).  NOTE:  none of these Jewish pilgrims actually crucified Jesus.  The Roman government carried out the execution.

Apparently, and contrary to my own professors' opinions, the technique works well.  Luke claims that 3,000 persons joined the new cult that day.

The focus of this passage is the response of those who received Peter's hellfire and brimstone sermon:  "cut to the heart," they asked, "What should we do?"  Peter answers, "Repent and be baptized." 

The converts receive baptism for the forgiveness of sins - a ritual with which pious Jews would be familiar - but with a new twist or two:  the baptism is also in the name of Jesus Christ, AND the mechanism for receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit (something the disciples only that morning had received themselves).

What, exactly are they repenting from?  Knowing the tradition of baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and looking forward to Peter's last quote in this passage ("save yourselves from this wicked generation"), it is the calling to turn away from sin and turn to God - to turn away from a lifestyle of self-serving behavior to a life of serving God.  This would not differ greatly from the baptismal call of the Essene sect, for instance, with the exception that repentance now also meant confessing loyalty to Jesus, raised from the dead, made Lord and Christ by God.

After giving Peter grief for disappointing my preaching professors with his Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" - style sermon, I must admit that there is a passage of Good News here, when Peter says, "for the promise is to you, and to your children, and to those who are far off."

Acts is about the expansion of the Jesus movement, which happens by the Holy Spirit blowing the walls off of religion and exploding our boundaries.  I'm sure that Peter understood himself to mean only Jews of the Diaspora when he uttered this promise, but we understand that the Holy Spirit meant EVERYONE whom the Lord calls to relationship with the Divine.

Today, we still try to erect walls around our religion.  The Church is suffering through such turmoil now when we forget our calling to love, and misconstrue our calling as one of judging right from wrong.  But that privilege belongs solely to God.  And we know that by the way Jesus lived and by what he taught ("first take the log out of your own eye . . .").  In response to our building walls, the Holy Spirit comes along and blows them down:  Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Peter's vision of the animals on the sheet descended from heaven.  Paul's conversion and call to preach to the Gentiles.

Who are those who are "far off" today?  Who are we leaving outside the doors of our worship spaces?  I remember when I was a kid in Tuscaloosa, I heard the story about how my church locked the doors of our sanctuary rather than allow African American college students join us in worship.  Ironically, the college those students attended was founded by the pastor of that same church, the Rev. Charles Stillman for whom the college is named.

By the time we joined First Presbyterian Church, the Holy Spirit had knocked down some walls, and the Stillman College Choir was invited annually to lead worship on Stillman Sunday.  Unfortunately, the church was still virtually lily white most other Sundays. But it was a start.

That was the 1950s and 1960s.  Who are we locking out of the church today?  Which sins are we selecting for attention and which are we overlooking?  Let me be clear: the promise and the call to repentance are inseparable.  One without the other is either cheap grace or hypocritical judgementalism.  But the journey to repentance begins inside the doors, and the doors have to be open and unlocked.