Acts 2:14-35 recounts the first speech of the book. I will move from an introduction to a verse-by-verse study to a practical application involving a meditation on boundaries and a reflection on creeds.
Introduction
Peter stands and speaks as leader of the church in Jerusalem. He points to Joel 2:28-32, which finds its fulfillment in the group gathered here. This passage refers to signs and wonders (v. 19, 22). It is an interpretative key, adopting the description of the miracles of Jesus in Lk 10:13, 19:37, and integrating it typologically.[1] Among the “500” or the “120” are men, women, young, old, and slaves. The Spirit has come with power upon them to testify. When an act of God occurs, especially when it offers a new revelation or unveiling of who God is, the event will need witnesses. It will need testimony among the people to whom God wants. In this case, God wants the nations to know of this revelation. This passage is one of the most powerful arguments in favor of female preaching. Of course, other passages show the early church struggled with this notion, but we can see here that it did not matter if you were male or female. You had a responsibility to offer testimony to the work of God in Jesus of Nazareth. The addition of slaves suggests that the distinctions society establishes as barriers need to come down among the people of God. The text refers to apocalyptic signs of Day of the Lord, stressing that the Lord shall save everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord. The point of Luke is that this moment is new because of the power demonstrated in it. This outpouring of the Spirit points us to the life-giving, uplifting, empowering, inspiring, creative Spirit. We have met people who bring energy with them wherever they go. The Spirit brings such energy wherever the Spirit goes. If we sense another “spirit” at work, bringing us down, sucking life out of us, and destructive of hope, then we know that this is not the work of the Holy Spirit. The fact that they gathered in one place is a strong suggestion that community provides an important means through which the Spirit energizes. The fact that they communicate, both in terms of listening to the needs and concerns of the crowd and understanding the message they need to give in this moment, provides a way for the creative energies of the Spirit to be at work. These first witnesses endured ridicule as well, exhibiting courage.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32 (Year A Second Sunday of Easter) is a segment of the message Peter delivered on Pentecost. The coming of the Spirit is a sign of the age to come, breaking down barriers of social convention, such as roles of male and female as well as master and slave. The speech is an early defense of the gospel as presented by the first preachers. The first aim of the Christian preacher was to show to his fellow citizens that Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Jewish faith. The Crucifixion seemed to have given the lie to the preaching of Jesus concerning the nearness of the rule of God. The stress is not so much on the content of the gospel as on the evidence of its truth. The supreme argument for the messiahship was the Resurrection. It removed the impression left by a disgraceful death, proved that Jesus was no impostor, and vindicated all his claims. Once the disciples saw this connection between their recent experience of the crucifixion and resurrection on the one hand a scripture on the other, they became the first to proclaim of what God had done in Jesus of Nazareth. To a Jewish audience no other argument would be necessary. If the early church could show to a Jewish audience that scripture prophesied an event, they would have enough reason for believing in its truth and its divine significance. Peter directs this portion of his message to the group who had the greatest responsibility for the rejection, condemnation, and crucifixion of Jesus. If any group needed a message of salvation, it was this community. He calls upon this community to repent and offers it forgiveness and salvation.
Verse-by-verse study
In verses 22-24, Peter enunciates the kerygma of the early Jewish-Christian community: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— 23 this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. 24 But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. He witnesses as to who Jesus was among them, offering an example of the early preaching or kerygma of the church, as one to whom the Father granted deeds of power, wonders, and signs, but whom the Father, as part of a plan to bring the message of salvation to all persons, handed Jesus over to them for crucifixion by the Romans, and who intervened by raising him and freeing him from the power of death. To this Jewish audience he refers to Psalm 16:8-11b, which stresses that the poet lived in communion with God lived with the hope of continuing to participate in life with God. He uses it eschatologically and Christologically, even though the psalm refers to exaltation. However, in verses 29-31, Peter uses this hope of the poet anticipates the resurrection of Jesus,[2] applying the passage to his audience, whom he addresses as brothers, that their patriarch David died and was buried in a tomb that they could visit today. David was acting as a prophet in this psalm, knowing that God had sword with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, foreseeing the resurrection of the Christ, who was not abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh, rather than “soul” as in the psalm, see corruption. He then states clearly in v. 32: This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Luke is teaching the corporeality of the resurrection, distinguishing it from the Hellenistic survival of the soul.[3] 33 Being therefore exalted (ὑψωθεὶς) at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. He expresses no doubt that he is witness to the Father raising this Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is not an isolated event but has a direct relation to the earthly course of the life of Jesus.[4] Exaltation stands alongside the common formula of the resurrection or awakening of Jesus. It denotes institution at the right hand of God and the inauguration of rule.[5]
Not surprisingly, the focus is upon the disciples who gather for prayer. We must not forget the women, who play an important part in Luke in the discovery of the empty tomb and the narration of the appearances. We know that the “mission” that was “launched” was to be crewed by both women and men because Paul names members of both sexes in his various letters. Read Romans 16, for example, where Paul mentions 29 people who have been workers for Christ in the church in Rome. More than a third of the people on the list are women, and one of them, Junia, is even described as an apostle (v. 7). In all four gospels, women are the first to learn of Christ’s resurrection when he appears to them, and they are the very first people to share this news with others. Depending on which gospel you read, the first proclaimer is either Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9-10 and John 20:17-18), Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matthew 28:8-10), or Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and others (Luke 24:9-10). The first time the story of the resurrection is told, a woman proclaims it. There is Anna, who was a prophet (Luke 2:36) along with the four daughters of Philip who also prophesied (Acts 21:9). A “prophet” is a truth-teller delivering God’s message to the world — in other words, a preacher. Priscilla, along with her husband, is someone Paul names as a “co-worker” in Christ, and in Acts 18, Priscilla teaches Apollos, a “learned man, with a thorough knowledge of scripture.” Despite his considerable expertise, Priscilla can explain “the way of God more adequately” to him, and he expresses no dismay at her gender. In many of the passages where she is mentioned, Priscilla’s name is listed before her husband’s, which is noteworthy in a culture that usually placed husband’s names first, suggesting Priscilla, rather than Aquila, was the leader of this couple.[6]’
Practical application
Everybody has a creed, a sense of the basic beliefs out of which we live our lives. In the Christian tradition, the creed connects our present affirmation of faith with something larger than simply our recent era. People who claim to have no creed operate with a creed. Those who urge the church to set aside ancient creeds and believe whatever the recent generation says affirm a “modernist” creed.[7]
The word “creed” is Latin, credo, I believe. Many religions do not have them. Some Christian denominations do not have them. Some people think of them as getting in the way. The root of forming creeds is Judaism found in Deuteronomy 6:4: (“Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might.”) We know this affirmation as the Shema in Judaism. It means “Hear.” What is important about this statement is that it describes a common belief about God and a personal response, so the creed here is both communal (our God) and personal (love the Lord, your God).
Though Christian confessional statements bear a remarkable resemblance to the original Shema, there is one obvious alteration. The earliest Christians altered their story of God’s way in the world considering their personal experience of the appearance of Jesus Christ and his empty tomb. The Christian creed focuses on Jesus. What we believe about him causes us to follow him, to learn from him, to be his disciples.
Creeds are important not just because they articulate our personal experience of the risen Christ, but they also serve to unite the church. When so much else divides the global church and the local church, the story held in common by all Christians and expressed in the creed, brings us together. Christians can and do disagree on any number of issues that are rocking the world but still maintain unity through a common confession of faith.
The creeds also protect believers from the tendency toward radical individualism or simply inventing our own faith. Nothing we created would contain God. The creed does not contain God. Yet they do point the way. Experienced in this way, creeds, like stories, open a new world of faithful exploration. Once we accept the truthfulness of what they are expressing, that can shape our lives in the way one worship song describes so personally.
“And I believe that what I believe
Is what makes me what I am
I did not make it, no it is making me
It is the very truth of God and not
the invention of any man.”
- Rich Mullins
Finally, a creed is that to which I give my heart. The task for us all is to take the creed — words on paper — and allow those words to become a living, breathing reality in our experience. Our faith, embodied by the creeds, is a way to say, “I love you.”[8]
One contemporary creed, written in 1960 by the Masai people in Africa, fully expresses the language of love. It bears the obvious marks of its own culture, yet speaks of the faith held in common by all:
We believe that God made good his
promise by sending his Son, Jesus Christ,
a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe,
born poor in a little village,
who left his home and was always
on safari doing good,
curing people by the power of God,
teaching about God and man,
showing that the meaning of religion
is love.
He was rejected by his people,
tortured and nailed hands and feet
to a cross, and died.
He was buried in the grave,
but the hyenas did not touch him,
and on the third day, he rose from
that grave.
He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.
With its striking folk images, the Masai Creed confesses the faith in a particular and very personal language of love. Clearly, it does not speak the same thing as the Apostles’ Creed, but it does say the same thing.
This text invites to consider that to which we give our hearts.
Belief in the resurrection has been challenged by some biblical scholars and theologians (what else is new?). This text is an opportunity to counter those challenges with a strong, informed affirmation of the resurrection. We have the stories of resurrection, but now we must step back and reflect upon the meaning of those narratives. We must take some time to do some theology. In so doing, our reflections will be both pedagogical and pastoral. Doubts about something as surprising as the resurrection of Jesus is quite normal. Responding to such a witness with faith is unnatural and maybe even miraculous.
[1] Rengstorf, TDNT, VII, 242
[2] Bertram, TDNT, VII, 69.
[3] Schweizer, TDNT, IX, 646-7.
[4]
[5] Bertram, TDNT, VIII, 609.
[6] Kyndall Rae Rothaus, “What Does The Bible Say About Women In Ministry?” Sojourners, June 14, 2021.
[7] Inspired by David Bennett, “The creeds: Why do we need creeds?” Ancient and Future Catholics Web Site, ancient-future.net. Retrieved October 15, 2004.
[8] Inspired by William Sloane Coffin, Credo and Jaroslav Pelikan.
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