Eastertide
March 28, 2016

Scripture Reading: Acts 5:27-32

When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.’ But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority. –Acts 5:27-29

What does the phrase We must obey God rather than any human authority mean to you? It calls to my mind the image of Dietrich Bonhoeffer standing in absolute humility, rather than humiliation, awaiting his death by hanging after resisting Hitler’s oppression. The picture of Martin Luther King Jr. also comes to mind. He is peering out of the bars from the Birmingham jail where he was imprisoned for seeking a non-violent end to racial injustice. It is from there he wrote his letter from the Birmingham Jail which states in part, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Both of these men understood the injustice of the events in their worlds at their times and willingly invested their lives in rectifying such oppression.

The phrase We must obey God rather than any human authority is not representative of any movement that implores human authority to enforce one faith’s beliefs on everyone else. Indeed, the United States of American was formed based on the need to support free religious expression and not to support any governmentally defined religious beliefs. The US Constitution’s first amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….

The challenge in a democratically governed country is for all people to come together and discern the values that they do share to establish ways of providing for the Common Good while respecting the rights of people of faith to follow their tenets of belief. The process by its very definition is messy and of necessity requires compromise. Jesus probably said it best. We are to ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ (Mark 12:17)

Prayer: Lord, it is so very difficult to do justice when we disagree on the definition of justice. Help us discern your justice while continuing to work together to meet the Common Good of all the people of our nation and world. Amen.

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.