“The rehabilitation of Jesus”: a sermon for the 6th SUNDAY OF EASTER (25 May)

     Have you ever been to a funeral where those in attendance struggled to find anything positive to say about the deceased?  How awkward that would be!  How embarrassing for the family!  I believe that this situation happens a lot more often than we may think.  What happens at the funeral of a convicted criminal?  Do the family members even show up, or is the shame too great?  What about people – south of the border, let’s say – who receive the death penalty?  Does anyone commemorate their passing or strive to find something redemptive in their life-story, something to hang onto that might relieve some of the pain of those who lost a loved one in such horrifying circumstances?  What if the person had been falsely accused and wrongly convicted, resulting in a death sentence and the accompanying stigma, character-assassination and shame that would, presumably, forever haunt their family?

     The rehabilitation of Lena Baker.  In August 2005, The State of Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a for­mal par­don for Lena Baker, the only woman exe­cut­ed in the state during the 20^th cen­tu­ry. The doc­u­ment, signed by all five of the cur­rent board mem­bers, noted that the board’s 1945 deci­sion to deny Baker clemen­cy and allow her exe­cu­tion was ​“a griev­ous error, as this case called out for mer­cy.” Baker, an African American, was exe­cut­ed for the mur­der of Ernest Knight, a white man who had hired her. Baker was tried, con­vict­ed, and sen­tenced to die in one day by an all-white, all-male jury. Baker claimed she shot Knight in self-defence after he locked her in his grist­mill and threat­ened her with a met­al pipe. The par­don notes that Baker ​“could have been charged with vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter, rather than mur­der.” The aver­age sen­tence for vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter is 15 years in prison. Baker’s pic­ture and her last words are cur­rent­ly dis­played near the retired elec­tric chair at a muse­um at Georgia State Prison.

     Rehabilitating Jesus.  It’s important to remember that the situation experienced by the family of Lena Baker was extremely similar to that of the disciples of Jesus in the book of Acts.  Their leader had been publicly executed as a seditious revolutionary, following upon his condemnation as a heretic by the leaders of his own religion.  The crucifixion of Jesus was a deeply shameful event – shameful for Jesus, nailed naked to the cross; shameful for his mother, forced to watch her son slowly expire; shameful for those of his friends who were courageous enough to join Mary at the foot of the cross.  Shameful…and dangerous.  Who wants to be associated with a condemned criminal?  No one who wants to get anywhere in life, no one who wants to climb the social ladder.  No one who wants to be successful or popular.  Only losers remain loyal to those who have been publicly declared to be enemies of the social order, disruptors of both the socio-religious and the imperial status quo.  The members of the early Church were subversive and seditious people in virtue of their persistent loyalty to Jesus of Nazareth, a convicted felon who had dared to challenge the legitimacy of the most powerful institutions of his day.  The most subversive thing that the disciples did following Jesus’ death was to boldly proclaim his resurrection.

     Disruptors.  As G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) has been widely credited with saying, “Jesus promised His disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble” (cf. Jn. 16.20-33).  It’s now time for some trouble.  As Jesus’ character says in the popular TV series The Chosen: “Sometimes you gotta stir up the water.”  The apostles were undertaking an “occupy the Temple” campaign, preaching the resurrection of Jesus in the very place where he had been condemned as a blasphemer!  Indeed, there has always been a revolutionary impulse baked into Christianity.

     What’s in a name?  It is now the turn of the apostles to share Jesus’ experience – the experience of being arrested and held overnight pending trial before the Sanhedrin (Ac. 4.1-5; cf. Lk. 22.47-71).  During his sermon to the crowd following his healing of the lame man, Peter had insisted that the man had been enabled to walk by the invocation of the name of Jesus (Ac. 3.6; cf. Ac. 2.21; cf. Gn. 4.26; 12.8, etc.).  Biblically speaking, invoking someone’s name is a way of summoning their presence and their power (cf. Ps. 124.8; Prov. 18.10).  By invoking the name of Jesus, his power to heal had been made present, just as he had healed the Bethsaida paralytic and the man born blind (cf. Jn. 5, 9).  So, what’s so important about a name?  Glad you asked.

     “The name”.  Mt. Zion in Jerusalem was known as “the place where Yahweh had chosen to ‘put his name’” (cf. 1 Kings 9.3; Dt. 12.5, 21).  This is where Solomon constructed the Temple for Yahweh.  The temple was the place where the God of Israel had chosen to manifest his presence on earth, to receive the prayers and worship of his people, and to bestow upon them the many blessings of his presence, not the least of which was healing (cf. Lev. 13).  The Sadducees were the self-appointed – and Roman-backed – guardians of the Temple complex and the sacrificial system.  The opening question by the “prosecution” as Peter and John’s trial gets underway resembles that put to Jesus by the temple authorities upon his “cleansing” of the temple (Ac. 4.7; cf. Lk. 20.1-2).  “By what power or by what name did you do this?”  Peter’s response echoes the end of his Pentecost sermon (Ac. 4.10; cf. 2.36):

“…let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus…of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead…there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (4.10-12).

     Defendant turned prosecutor.  With his subversive statement, Peter is challenging the authority of the priests and the Supreme Council in several ways –

1) he is proclaiming the resurrection of one whom the Sanhedrin had condemned as a heretic, with the implication that Jesus had been shown to be the Messiah by being raised from death by the power of the God whose Son he had claimed to be – which means that the Sanhedrin is not only guilty of having condemned an innocent man, but is also shown to have been grossly incompetent by failing to recognize Yahweh’s anointed, the Saviour of Israel (cf. Ac. 4.10).

2) by murdering the Messiah, the Sanhedrin had shown that its claim to speak for the God of Israel was completely illegitimate.  Indeed, their claim to be the protectors of the national shrine incriminates them, since Jesus had declared that both they and the Temple itself were ripe for judgment (cf. Lk. 13.31-35; 19.41-48; 21).  They now find themselves to be the guardians of an indefensible institution which has been slated for destruction by the very God whose home the Temple is believed to be.

3) as Jesus had consistently demonstrated throughout his ministry, he was replacing the Temple – he was now the place where people could receive forgiveness and healing (cf. Lk. 17.11-19; cf. Lev. 13).  The name of Jesus now had the power that the Temple had previously been believed to have – as the place where Yahweh had put his name so that his people could there be (certified as having been) healed/saved.  The Greek verb meaning “to save” (sodzo) also means “to heal” (compare Ac. 4.9 & 4.12).  Salvation/healing are now to be found in the name of Jesus, and no longer in the Temple-as-institution of sacrifice and expiation of sin.

     The irrefutable power of the name of Jesus.  Peter’s indictment of their Council, as well as the embarrassing presence of the 40-year-old man taking his first steps, baffles the members of the Sanhedrin and they “remove to their chambers” in order to deliberate as to what they should do (Ac. 4.13-15; cf. Lk. 20.1-8).  This is a replay of the exchange between Jesus and the Temple authorities following upon his actions to “cleanse” the Temple on Palm Sunday.  After asking Jesus by what authority he had overturned the tables, Jesus had “turned the tables” on his opponents and asked them whether they believed that John the Baptist had undertaken his ministry by God’s authority or on his own initiative.  After having discussed the best response to give to Jesus, they had ended up saying that they simply didn’t know the answer.  Here again, faced with the incontrovertible fact of the healing of the lame man, the Sanhedrin doesn’t know what to do.  Their chosen course of action is to simply forbid the apostles from continuing to speak in the name of Jesus (Ac. 4.16-17).  Peter and John boldly reply that they cannot possibly stop speaking about what they have seen and heard, and on top of that, they insist that they must obey God rather than his self-appointed representatives (4.19-20).

     Spirit-inspired scriptural interpretation.  After being released, Peter and John make their way back to, presumably, the upper room (cf. 1.13-14) and relate to the Jesus-community everything that had happened to them during the last 24 hours.  The gathering of disciples then begins to pray together, quoting Ps. 2.1-2 (cf. Ac. 4.25-26) and applying it to those religious and political leaders who had conspired to kill Jesus and who were know threatening them…perhaps with the possibility of suffering a similar fate.  The followers of Jesus see themselves as servants of the One who has been exalted to the right hand of God and rules over all creation as Lord.  They understand themselves to be experiencing exactly what their Master had gone through, and they pray for boldness to continue speaking the word of God, while God stretches out His hand to heal through the name of Jesus (4.30).

     Psalm 2 is a fascinating passage of Scripture, and is quoted frequently in the New Testament.  The one who ruled from Jerusalem was Yahweh’s viceroy on earth, and Yahweh ruled his people through his “anointed king”, and would one day, promised many of the Psalms, rule all the nations through the king of Israel (cf. Ps. 2.8).  Indeed, in Psalm 2, the king of Israel is called “my son” by Yahweh (Ps. 2.7); in 2 Sam. 7.14, God tells David that he will be a father to David’s son Solomon.  So, when Mark calls Jesus the “Son of God”, he’s calling him the King of Israel (Mk. 1.11; cf. Jn. 1.49).  As “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” were being baptized by John in the Jordan (Mk. 1.5), Jesus is baptized (read anointed) as the Son of God, the King of Israel, the Lord of the nations.  Jesus’ message concerns the “kingdom of God” (Mk. 1.15).  In the Psalms, Yahweh is described as King of the world (Pss. 47, 93-99, etc.).  Yahweh, the King of the world, ruled the nations through his “son” enthroned in Zion (Ps. 2.6).  The dream of the Hebrew Scriptures is for Yahweh to establish his reign (kingdom) over the whole world, through his son/viceroy, the King of Israel – one world, one God.  This is the story of the book of Acts.  The witnesses of the resurrection of the King are boldly proclaiming his lordship and eternal kingdom, and will eventually travel far and wide to spread the good news that the world has a new Lord.

     Regime change is rarely an easy, peaceful process.  As the kingdom of God displaces and relativizes the kingdoms of this world – through the activity of Christians – the followers of Jesus will often be in trouble.  The world was fundamentally changed on Easter morning, and we are still living out the ramifications of that earth-shattering event.  May we step out in boldness as we live in such a way that makes it clear that we are “companions of Jesus” the risen Lord and that he continues to establish a new world.  Amen.