Eastertide
April 13, 2015

Scripture Reading: Acts 3:12-19

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you. –Acts 3:13-16

Before making the statements above, Peter had healed a lame man. All who saw it knew the man had been lame from birth. I am sure his healing caught the attention of those present. I am not so sure how they felt when Peter told them that they had killed the one who had made this healing possible.

One of the best types of learning we do is gained from our mistakes. No one knew that better than Peter. He has always impressed me as being a shoot now and ask questions later kind of guy. I could see him plowing through the crowd to get a closer view of Jesus standing before the Sanhedrin. But Peter was not so bold when those around him recognized him as one of Jesus’ disciples. Peter then denied knowing Jesus three times. The experience surely stayed with him for the remainder of his life.

I have never thought it particularly helpful to point out the obvious errors of others, particularly when an audience is present. Shame is rarely a positive motivator. On the other hand, the raw emotion, pain, and regret in Peter’s statement might well have offset the taunting nature of the words. Perhaps the listeners had been fringe followers of Christ who were now recognizing that their getting caught up in a crowd’s frenzied calls for “crucify him! Crucify him!” a few weeks earlier was a bad misjudgment indeed. I do not suppose we will ever know how the hearers responded, but we do know that the followers of Jesus multiplied markedly in those first few chapters of Acts.

Prayer: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.