Biblical Words [712]
The resurrection of Jesus releases new power, opens old scriptures, and
cancels old sins.
Acts 3:12-19
The witness of the apostles to the resurrection of
Jesus continues.
We hear the speech of Peter addressed to Israelites in the temple, after Peter
and John have healed a man lame from birth.
In healing the man they used the name of the risen Jesus of
The speech opens in a challenging manner: “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this…?” Why are you surprised? We are living in a time when God is doing amazing things for an undeserving people.
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 (verse 13,
The details mentioned here follow the passion
narrative of Luke’s Gospel (23:1-5, 13-25).
While the Israelites had handed Jesus over to death, God had raised him
to life, and Peter and John are witnesses to that. Because Jesus is risen, his name has power to effect good among those who confess
him, and thus the lame man walks and leaps in the temple (as reported in 3:8).
The turning point in the speech is more
conciliatory:
And now, friends, I know that you acted in
ignorance, as did also your rulers. In
this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his
Messiah would suffer (verses 17-18).
A much larger destiny than local Jerusalemite
politics was at work in the events leading to Jesus’ death. Those who were implicated in that death, or
were only consenting bystanders, are not accountable for it. Even those who were on the streets of
This reading in Acts is at first sight one of the
more “anti-Jewish” passages in the New Testament, in the sense that it indicts
the “Israelites” for killing Jesus.
However, this passage, as well as the others in the early chapters in
Acts, makes particularly clear that Jesus is no longer dead.
The resurrection makes the death of Jesus as well as
his new life, an act of God. The resurrection message is not about
assigning guilt for a death; it is about life, and living again. All the emphasis is on forgiveness – for all,
not just those in the crowd on Good Friday.
The resurrection faith proclaims life, not
guilt!
Psalm 4.
The Psalm reading has some difficulties of text and
language in its opening verses, making a comparison of translations
useful.
The Greek translators read the opening something like this:
“When I called, the God of my righteousness answered
me. In distress, you made room for
me. Pity me, and hear my prayer.”
The translators read the same consonants as the
later traditional Hebrew text, but vocalized them differently, giving a
statement of past fact at the beginning instead of a plea to be heard (
This translation issue is of small importance – until the psalm is read as an early
post-Easter lection. The earliest
Jesus followers found in this psalm the words of the risen Jesus, praying for and addressed to the people who had
rejected him.
Thus, these early (Greek-speaking) Christians would
have heard the psalm in the following way:
When I called, the God of my righteousness heard
me.
Then, in the Greek version, the risen Lord speaks to those who have not recognized him:
“How long, O you sons of men,
(This follows, but modifies, the translation of the
Septuagint in The Orthodox Study Bible [St. Athanasius Academy,
Reading along in this way, the new believers continued
to hear from their resurrected Lord.
He continued to speak in the scriptures about repentance and forgiveness
as the meaning of his resurrection.
I John 3:1-7
The readings from the Epistles continue in the First
Letter of John, an extended meditation on the believers’ union with the Son of God. That union
is given to all believers and marks their lives with Jesus’ holy
qualities.
·
As
the world did not know Jesus, so it does not know us children of God who are
united with him (verse 1).
·
As
he was pure, so all who hope in him purify themselves (verse 3).
·
As
there was no sin in him, so “no one who abides in him sins” (verses 5-6).
·
As
he is righteous, so those who do right are righteous (verse 7).
As usual in Johannine passages, there is a
tantalizing mixture of description of ideal conditions with exhortation to
become what you are. You are
children of God, therefore you obviously [should] live like children of
God.
This is a cogent homily for those who have recently
heard the message of the resurrection:
They are summoned to a life in union with this risen Lord.
Luke 24:36
The Gospel reading is the passage in Luke in which
the risen Jesus, at the end of Easter day, appears to the eleven disciples (or
ten when John tells this episode, because doubting Thomas is absent,
This is the passage that most insists that the risen
Jesus had a real flesh and bone body
with nail holes in his hands and feet.
(Note, John never says anything about feet—only hands and a pierced
side. Luke mentions feet, while other
Gospels have no such story.) Besides
offering to let them touch his body, Jesus asks for something to eat, and they
happen to have a piece of broiled fish, which they watch him eat (verses
39-43).
There is here a certain rigorous forcing of the
fleshiness of the incarnation. (The same
emphasis is in John’s prologue statement in
The other main purpose of this appearance of the
risen Jesus is to guide the disciples in the reading of the scriptures. “Everything
written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be
fulfilled” (verse 44,
Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer
and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness
of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from
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