Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary
We shall focus this week on the First Reading, Acts 3:12-19 (20-21), Peter’s second sermon in Acts. Texts from the Acts of the Apostles stand in for OT readings in Eastertide. They present key events in the emerging community of Jews—and later, Gentiles—who affirmed Jesus’ resurrection and understood it as the inauguration of God’s long-promised restoration of all things (see vv 20-21). We recommend including these latter verses. They are actually essential for establishing the central claim of Peter’s sermon, as well as contemporary sermons based on this text: that the healing the crowds have just witnessed (3:1-11) stands as a sign, not only that Jesus, God’s Messiah, is the living source of transformational power, but that God’s restoration of all things has begun (vv 20-21).
We have before us, not a verbatim record of what Peter said, but (as with other speeches in Luke-Acts) the essence of his message. Launching a contemporary sermon from an ancient one is a delicate exercise. One might imagine that faithfulness to the text means simply preaching Peter’s sermon, applying its claims, line by line, to our contemporary audience. Yet, to do so would be to unleash rhetorical mayhem. Rhetorically speaking, a message arises out of the interaction of four elements: a specific situation, a particular speaker and subject matter, and a specific audience. In Peter’s situation, each of these elements is thoroughly Jewish. A man lame from birth and reduced to begging at the Temple gate is healed in Jesus’ name when Peter and John encounter him. Excited crowds gather. Peter, a Jewish follower of the recently crucified Jewish rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, (whom Peter declares raised by God) confronts fellow Jewish worshipers of the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” with an uncomfortable truth. They failed to recognize Jesus, in whose powerful name this man was healed, as God’s promised Messiah. Thus they played an undeniable role in having God’s agent of restoration handed over to Roman authorities and executed by crucifixion. The rhetorical situation is, from start to finish, shaped by Jewish debate concerning Jesus’ identity.
To parrot the claim that “Jews crucified Jesus” in our pulpits constitutes homiletical malpractice. Such a statement wrests out of context a claim meaningful within a specific, post-resurrection Jewish controversy. Peter’s claim functioned strategically to prepare listeners for threefold good news. First, they and their leaders acted “in ignorance.” Second, God subverted, or overrode, their repudiation of Jesus, working out their redemption precisely through the death their error brought about. Third, they need only repent of their mistaken assessment of Jesus and trust in the name of the Risen Lord to become beneficiaries and agents of God’s restoration of all things, now under way.
So what can we emulate in today’s sermonic text? First, we can speak the hard truth of our own time and place: that we, as well as our listeners, are often guilty of faithless resignation to the status quo, thus becoming accomplices in spreading not Easter hope, but fear and despair. Second, we can activate for listeners the sweeping horizon of memory and hope established in scripture, as Peter did (vv 13, 20-26; cf Isaiah 65:17-25). Third, we can share stories of lives once broken and beggared by life-limiting circumstance that have been transformed, framing these stories within the vast horizon of God’s promised restoration of all things. Finally, we can urge listeners to refuse resignation, to turn from despair to hope, and to trust that the Risen Lord—living and active—can work in and through them to bring about life-giving, liberating change. This is the essence of Eastertide preaching.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 