Voice Box: reshaping the temple (reflections on Acts 5:12-32)

This post is based on the sermon I gave on Sunday, April 19, at Mill Run Xalt. The preaching text was Acts 5:12-32.

A Vibrant Community

Not even two months after the first disciples at the empty tomb were seized with astonishment and fled the empty tomb in fear, a much different atmosphere has descended on Jerusalem. There is life! And it is so abundant, so animated, so exciting, so vibrant. The text tells us that many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. This rag-tag group of out-of-work fisherman who thought that their movement had ended with the political execution of their Rabbi have been revived and are taking it to the streets. And God is doing amazing things through them.

Their words and wonders are creating a buzz. It’s hard to imagine the excitement, but look closely at this and I think you’ll start to feel the same energy. Verses 12 to 14 tell us that they were all together but that none of the rest dared to join them… yet more than ever believers were added. Apparently according to the math of the 1^st century, All + None = More Than Ever. Tradition tells us that the writer of this book, St. Luke, was a doctor. He was no slouch in the classroom. He knew arithmetic, yet even he allowed his normally precise presentation of the life of Jesus and the Apostles to get caught up in the excitement.

It’s a little bit like my son after our first visit to the Columbus Zoo a couple weeks ago. He loves the ‘zwoo.’ We went with my in-laws, who had driven in from Buffalo for the weekend. He loved it! Afterwards, we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: Who went with you to the zoo?

Judah: Who? You and me and mama and me and Grappa Tractor and you and mama and Grappa and Granny Tractor and me. (getting louder and louder with each name in the list).

Me: Where did we go?

Judah: Where? The ZWOOOOO!!!

All + None = More Than Ever. This new community had a life of it’s own that transcends scientific or mathematical description. And if you got too close, be careful, it might just suck you in. The life of this community was so magnetic, so intriguing and inspiring, that people were coming from the towns surrounding Jerusalem. And this new vibrant community was going into the streets – and all were being healed! Can you picture this ball of activity with more and more people coming, being filled with life, and with this community throwing new life into the sick and dying streets of Jerusalem as well!?

A Vulnerable Council

And then… and then… the high priest took action. This is the same Caiaphas who just two months before accused Jesus of blasphemy during a midnight trial, then sent Jesus the next morning to the Roman authority, Pilate. Caiaphas thought he had taken care of this little rebellion. He thought he had strengthened his corner on the religious market for Jews, but here they are again. He was the keeper of Temple worship. In the ancient near Eastern world, a Temple was a place where it was believed that heaven and earth met. And the high priest had a lot of power because he managed that meeting between the human and divine. And the bigger walls he built around that religious system, the more power he had. And now there was a breach in that wall. And it was these out-of-towners who can’t stop talking about Jesus. Just a few verses earlier, in chapter 4, Caiaphas has a run-in with Peter and John after they had been preaching and healing in the temple courts, and he asks them, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’ I’m not sure he cared to hear their answer. What he meant to say was, ‘I am your authority. Stop it!’ They were held overnight in prison and threatened not to do it again. But here they are again, days later, circumventing the high priest’s authority, undermining the authority of the Temple.

The high priest took action. The text says that he and his cronies were filled with jealousy. Jealousy. A much different motivator than the unity and vibrancy of the Apostles’ community. Jealousy causes us to hide and horde; it causes us to turn inward and to become suspicious and cynical. Jealous people are threatened by generous people. And these apostles are being much too generous with this new ministry of teaching and healing in Jesus’ name. The jealous authorities are getting sick on the generosity of the apostles. Jealous people get sick when they think about generous people. A perfect example: The Grinch. I know I’m in the wrong season, but I love Advent and Christmas and everything about it, so as I was thinking about how Caiaphas must be feeling at this time, I saw him in my mind turn into a grumpy, green monster consumed by jealousy.

The high priest, Grinch Caiaphas, is standing in his Temple, looking out on Solomon’s Portico and at the most recent ‘rebellion’ he’ll need to crush to protect the sanctimonious and separatist purity of the Temple.

The next morning, Caiaphas sends the temple police to fetch the apostles so that he can try them. Perhaps he’s hoping to find a reason to hand these guys over to Pilate for Roman-style justice (crucifixion) as well. But then again, the last crucifixion apparently didn’t solve the Jesus problem for him. Who knows what Caiaphas is after? He’s probably losing sleep – jealousy will do that. He’s probably confused. He’s probably fatigued from chasing down this new movement meeting on the ancient porch of his Temple.

The Temple police, however, come back with surprising news. They visited the place where the apostles were put, but they found it to be empty. The guards were there, but the measures that the authorities had taken to squash this movement have been overcome. The stone had been rolled away and inside the prison cell, there is no one. The prison cell is empty.

The Temple police came back with shocking news: ‘He is not here.’

Now Caiaphas is really worried. A friend of mine who has worked most of his career in high-level security told me once that one of their methods for dealing with emergencies is ‘When in worry, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.’ This is the image we have here of this comically helpless temple court. The text says that the priests were perplexed and wondered what might be going on. While the jealous authorities are now reeling in their confusion, they get another report about the prison break, and then they become afraid. Not only have the Templepolice told them of the prison break, but now someone arrived and announced, ‘Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!’

Jealousy, confusion, and fear are driving them. And so they go through the whole thing again – they go get the preaching and healing apostles – this time carefully, they are afraid of being stoned by the people. They thought if they keep messing with these guys, the peasants who were benefiting from the apostles – remember sick people were being healed, poor people were being provided for – these peasants might start a riot. So with jealousy, confusion, and fear – not good ways to make a decision – they bring the apostles back in for more questioning.

A Vibrant Community

While jealousy, confusion, and fear are moving one set of characters through the story, something else altogether is happening on the other side of the stage. Let’s double back and meet up with the apostles again.

Remember, they were dragged from Solomon’s Portico, and placed in prison overnight for the second time. The first time, they spent the night, were questioned the next morning, and then threatened and sent on their way. Maybe they expected that, maybe they thought they would take up the cross this time. They surely weren’t expecting what happened next…

During the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors. The angel told them, ‘That was a close one, watch yourselves better next time. Now go to Bethany and get some rest at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus… or, if you’d prefer, go back to Galilee. Go back to your day jobs. You are fishermen after all.’

No! An angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, brought them out, and said, Go, stand in the temple. Go back into the eye of the storm. Go back to the scene of the crime. It is a drastically different scenario than the priest and his council, ruled by jealousy, confusion, and fear. Instead, the apostles are ruled by the power of God, the courage they have in their experience of new life, the compassion they have in healing the sick. Compassion is a great motivator. I’ve had the privilege of working along side the poor – orphaned children, widows, the vulnerable and sick – in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. When you see extreme need like this, it changes you. Compassion begins to compel you. When you see children in Russian orphanages because their parents tried to kill them, or young kids living alone in a village in Uganda because both parents have died because of 'sick blood', or teenagers – boys and girls – getting recruited into street gangs in El Salvador, it can motivate you. These apostles had seen Jesus hang out with people just like this for three years. And now here they are, surrounded still by great need – the sick on cots and mats in the streets of Jerusalem. And they are compelled to share new life with them.

Power, courage, and compassion push them right back to the Temple. So as the vulnerable council heads out the front door of the Temple to get the apostles for trial, the apostles are coming in the side door, right back to Solomon’s Portico, right back to preaching the whole message about this life. That’s what the angel told them to do. It’s interesting that the angel doesn’t really even know what to call it – and comes up with these words: ‘this life.’ Another translation says ‘tell the people the full message of this new life.’ So new that we don’t even know what to call it yet. Later in Acts, it becomes known as ‘the Way,’ then further north and later on, people start to call them ‘Christians.’ But for now it’s call-it-what-you-will. It’s new and it’s alive, but we don’t even know what to call it yet.

My son, the one who loves the zwoo, also has an insatiable sweet tooth. I’ll never forget the first time he had ice cream. We put the spoon in his mouth and his blue eyes opened so bright and wide that we just started laughing. He said, ‘What is it?’ Then very quickly, before we could even answer his question, he said, ‘More! More!’ He didn’t know what to call it, but he knew that he wanted it – this new life of ice cream, or as he began calling it, cre-cream.

So they did. The apostles went back to preaching and even preaching to the vulnerable council the whole message about this life, which summarizes something like this: ‘He is risen.’

The Temple police say ‘He is not here’ when they go looking for the imprisoned apostles. The apostles respond by saying, ‘He is risen.’ Sounds familiar. He is not here. He is risen.

We cannot underestimate how important the Temple was to the ancient Jews. And even to all ancient near Eastern civilizations, a temple is that place where heaven and earth meet. And there are walls – often stone walls, strong walls – around such a sacred place. But what we see happening in the weeks, months, and years following the death and resurrection of Jesus is that the Temple is taking on a new shape. The Temple once static and stagnant and ruled by jealous, confused, and fearful men is now the Temple active and alive and ruled by the powerful Holy Spirit of God, through courageous and compassionate apostles. At one point, the faithful had to come to the Temple to receive forgiveness and to make sacrifices. Now the Temple is reshaped and redistributed and is going on the road. The new Temple – the new relationship between God and humans – is spilling out into the streets where the sick people are laying around on cots and mats, it’s spreading to the towns around Jerusalem where the hungry and hurting people live. TheTemple is no longer the place where heaven and earth only meet, but now it is the place where heaven and earth overlap, where they collide and collaborate, mesh and mingle. ‘The kingdom of heaven is here.’ He is risen.