Practicing Resurrection: 3rd Sunday of Eastertide

April 14, 2024 – 3rd Sunday of Eastertide

Welcome to the third Sunday of Eastertide. We are practicing resurrection for the next several weeks. Really we’re always practicing resurrection as people of God who follow the way of Christ. This Eastertide season we’re focusing on what that means. So, welcome to the conversation.

Scripture of the Day: Acts 3:12-19                           

12 Peter saw his opportunity and addressed the crowd. “People of Israel,” he said, “what is so surprising about this? And why stare at us as though we had made this man walk by our own power or godliness? 13 For it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of all our ancestors—who has brought glory to his servant Jesus by doing this. This is the same Jesus whom you handed over and rejected before Pilate, despite Pilate’s decision to release him. 14 You rejected this holy, righteous one and instead demanded the release of a murderer.15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. And we are witnesses of this fact!

16 “Through faith in the name of Jesus, this man was healed—and you know how crippled he was before. Faith in Jesus’ name has healed him before your very eyes.

17 “Friends, I realize that what you and your leaders did to Jesus was done in ignorance. 18 But God was fulfilling what all the prophets had foretold about the Messiah—that he must suffer these things. 19 Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away.

[Moment of Silence]

Listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking to the Church. Thanks be to God.

Message                                                                                                                 

We followed Peter’s story all through Lent and the first two Sundays of Eastertide, but as you know, we did not learn all of Peter’s story. After what happened between Jesus and Peter after the resurrection, Peter’s confidence blossomed. Perhaps Peter did indeed feel forgiven and restored.

We won’t celebrate Pentecost for a few weeks yet, but today’s text gives us a little preview because this incident was just after Pentecost and the first sermon Peter would have preached and when over 3000 people who were celebrating in Jerusalem became believers and presumably new followers of the Way.

Today’s scripture is one of those weird choices the lectionary creators made when they were pulling together the cycle of three years of passages of the Bible to focus on for worship. This passage from Acts starts in the middle of the story. 

The people Peter is talking with are Jewish crowd at the Temple who were probably there for the same afternoon worship that Peter and John had been there for. Some may even have been the new believers who had joined the disciples after Peter’s Pentecost sermon. Chapter 2 tells us that those new followers made a habit of worshiping at the Temple every day. 

This day had been a little different, though. On this particular day, Peter and John had been stopped by a lame man at the gate begging them for some money. He was there every day apparently. Instead of giving him money, however, Peter had healed him, and the man had walked with them into the Temple, jumping up and down and praising God.

As you can imagine, that caused quite a stir. 1) perhaps all of them had seen this man being brought every day to the gate where he would ask for money as worshipers entered the Temple. 2) they would have noticed he was no longer lame. How could they miss it with all his shouting and leaping about, which is probably why they were crowding around? Looking on with amazement and probably also with puzzlement, they were wondering how had this miracle happened? How did these two men, Peter and John, do this astounding thing? They may have heard or seen Jesus healing people, but now these two followers of his were healing someone!

Never one to miss an opportunity to dive in, Peter began telling them exactly how this miracle had happened. It was a chance to repeat some of what he had told the crowds about Jesus just a few days earlier. I’m guess that this recounting of the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection is why this particular text was included in the lectionary for this third Sunday of Eastertide.

Remember, Peter and John were not Christians in the same way we understand that word today. They were Jewish men, just as Jesus had been Jewish, just like the people who were at the Temple that day were Jewish. Peter addresses them as “People of Israel” and accuses them of being responsible for Jesus’ death. Perhaps some of these had been in the crowd yelling crucify and asking for the release of Barabbas rather than Jesus.  

He urges them to repent of their sins – of the sin of calling for the murder of someone who was innocent, of rejecting the son of God and all that Jesus had been teaching them about who God was and the life God wanted for them. This wasn’t about individual sins, necessarily. Peter was addressing them as one body.  

Tom Long says of this crowd that they were drawn by a miracle that day but that “they misunderstood the source of the healing.” He says, “we have a relentless human hunger to believe that there are people who have tapped into the healing powers of the universe and who can make these powers available for us.” (Thomas G. Long in Feasting on the Word, “Pastoral Perspective,” Year B, Vol 2, Lent Through Eastertide)

I’ve just returned from a retreat held in North Carolina. The retreat was called SpiritFlow, and its focus was to remind us to tap into the flow of the Holy Spirit which is always available to us but which we don’t always recognize or even remember to look for. I led one of the worship times for the group. As a part of that worship experience, we learned about Healing Springs near Blackville, SC.

Their mineral waters flow from nearby artesian wells, and the springs have been a source of folklore spanning centuries. Native Americans who lived near this site believed the waters were sacred because of their healing properties. Today, people continue to tout the water’s health value and will travel long distances to collect gallons at a time.

Stories of the springs’ healing power were popularized during the American Revolution. Legend holds that four British soldiers were severely wounded in a nearby battle at Windy Hill Creek. They, along with two men ordered to bury them when they died, were rescued by Native Americans, who took them to the springs. Six months later, all of the soldiers returned to their post in Charleston, crediting the springs’ water with their miraculous recovery.  (from https://www.scpictureproject.org/barnwell-county/healing-springs.html)

My friend Beth Yarbrough who planned the worship for the retreat had actually gone to the springs and filled a couple of plastic jugs with the water, which apparently flows all the time, and brought that water with her to the retreat. I discovered from Beth and from a little research that I did on my own that people travel for miles to get water from these springs and that some of them swear by the water’s healing properties.

I invited participants in the worship experience I led to come to the altar table to touch the water which had been poured into a bowl, to taste the water for themselves which I poured into little cups, and to take a vial of the water home with them.  

The point, of course, was not to suggest that the water they touched, tasted, and took home would heal them. Just as Peter and John suggested that the healing of the man who was lame pointed to the source of that healing power – the same Jesus who had been crucified and had risen – I reminded those at the retreat that Jesus was the source of water that satisfied all thirstiness, a fresh bubbling spring of eternal life.

There are many things in this day that give false promises of wholeness, of healing, of salvation from all that has been deemed unfulfilling, full of harm, threatening to our way of life or even to our very lives. Ultimately wholeness, healing, salvation comes from God. 

If we are practicing resurrection, we should not be astounded by the idea that with God wholeness is a way of life, not an exception to the rule. Peter asks the crowd that day, “Why are you so surprised?” as if to say the “healing and forgiving power of God [were] as pervasive and present as sunshine and rain.” (Thomas G. Long in Feasting on the Word, “Pastoral Perspective,” Year B, Vol 2, Lent Through Eastertide) 

I don’t know if you remember the conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi people of Rwanda and Burundi. On both sides horrible atrocities were committed. This week I learned of one of the stories of that conflict. It is the story of Maggy Barankitse, a Tutsi woman of Burundi who refused to be a party to the violence associated with this conflict. She believed that love would overcome it. She adopted several Hutu and Tutsi children believing that if they lived together, they would overcome the perceived differences, the hatred between the two peoples. She hid these and several other children when the Tutsi soldiers came to kill them. She offered the soldiers money and refused to give the children up. The soldiers tied her up and forced her to watch as they killed 72 of her family and friends in front of her.  

Maggie not only survived that day but found ways to thrive. She could have been bent on revenge and full of hatred. Instead, she established Maison Shalom, “a new family of sorts where thousands of orphans could study, get medical help and feel loved.”

(https://auroraprize.com/en/faith-moves-mountains) Her efforts have helped over 10,000 orphans – including those of both Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities. She said, “I am convinced that only God’s love is capable of cleansing us and shining a light on our differences.” Out of a traumatic experience, Maggy experience and offered new life. 

Hearing a story like this fills us with wonder and joy, the same kind of wonder and joy the people at the Temple felt when they saw the formerly disabled man leaping about and shouting praise to God. Peter’s response to the crowd and his challenge to us is to let that wonder and joy lead to a deeper self-reflection, to repentance. If we are practicing resurrection, we not only feel wonder and joy when we see God at work in the world, but we feel compelled to join it. 

We have not experienced genocide. We don’t know, precisely, the hatred between two peoples like the Hutu and Tutsis. We do, however, see the damage being done by the divisiveness we’re experiencing in this country. It isn’t just something we hear about in the news. We’ve felt it among those we’ve called friends. It exists in our families. It is even present in this faith community. Both sides of the divide are convinced of their rightness. Neither are willing to give up any of their strongly held positions. Yet, we are called to love one another. God’s desire for us is to be one. That was Jesus prayer for his disciples at that last supper they had together before his death. 

How might we as followers of the One who only ever showed love to others do the same? Can we find ways to reach out to those with whom we disagree to find common ground? I believe we must. Perhaps we need to repent of ways we’ve spoken or thought of those whose opinions are not like ours. Perhaps our love can end the violence that threatens to tear our country apart. Perhaps like Maggy has said, “only God’s love is capable of cleansing us and shining a light on our differences.” Practicing resurrection is impossible without practicing loving our neighbors, or even our enemies. Who knows, it might even heal the world.

Will you pray with me?

God, we see your healing in the world, and we are filled with awe. We don’t understand how ubiquitous it is if only we would open our eyes. Help us to repent and commit to joining with you to seek wholeness for our neighbors, our enemies, and even ourselves. Amen. 

Invitation to New Life                                                                                    

Where have you seen God’s healing power at work? Look around. It’s everywhere.