View Archived Content

Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider

According to an old adage, it takes a thief to catch a thief.   But sometimes it also takes a thief to be able to identify those who are, as a matter of fact, not thieves.  Such was the case some years ago when the convicted Watergate co-conspirator, Charles Colson, wrote that it was precisely his experience as a man involved in a fraud and a cover-up that convinced him of the truth of the New Testament and, particularly, its witness to the resurrection.   Colson was part of the Nixon administration and learned one of the most painful lessons in politics the hard way: viz., crimes and mistakes in government are bad enough but 99 times out of 100, the attempt to cover it up creates far more problems. 

But what was particularly interesting to Colson was another thing he learned along the path that eventually landed him in prison: people involved in a lie, in a fraud, in a cover-up will only suffer so much before they crack and tell the truth.  Very few people are willing to suffer for very long in defense of a lie.   Very few people can stand to see their family members suffer in defense of a lie.   And very, very few people are willing to die for what they know is a lie.

And that insight brings us squarely into the center of the post-resurrection New Testament, including the Acts 5 scene that is the assigned reading for the Sunday after Easter in the Year C Revised Common Lectionary.  Colson said that the experience of watching his co-conspirators one by one crack and tell the real truth about the Watergate crimes and Nixon’s (and their own) involvement in the cover-up revealed to him that the disciples would never have kept up their own story about Jesus rising again from the dead if in fact they had—as liberal critics have long claimed—simply made up that story out of whole cloth in some pathetic little attempt to keep their religion going.  It’s possible that they could have duped a second or third generation into lying about it (and not knowing any better) but they themselves had to be the front line of it all to begin with and they never wavered.

The very same disciples who left Jesus in the lurch when he was arrested and killed found—very soon after those events—a determination and resolve that did not waver even when they were threatened with prison and death.  In fact and as we know, most of the disciples did go all the way to death in defending the gospel and its core piece of hope in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.   Had it been a lie—and had they known it was a lie—they would have wilted like flowers and fled like little children, the same way they did that first time the heat was on when the authorities finally came after their master.  (And note: they fled like frightened kids that terrible night in the garden even though they were themselves not the target of the authorities in Gethsemane.  So wouldn’t you expect them to run away later—as in the Book of Acts—when they were the target?   Yet when that happened, they stood firm!)

As is evident in this text from Acts 5, the disciples turned apostles were themselves well aware of the fact that they did not find this courage and resolve just by digging a little more deeply into their own character.   No, they were able to assign a reason to their witness to the resurrection: it was The Holy Spirit of God that had descended on them and enveloped them on Pentecost.  Never once in the Book of Acts or anywhere else in the New Testament can you detect so much as a whiff of sentiment that the apostles thought they deserved to be praised for their own courage or skills or initiative.  No, they knew full well that it was the Holy Spirit who revealed the truth to them after so many years of being foggy and clueless and that this same powerful Spirit of God was now their living connection to their Living Lord Jesus and the power behind every word of witness they were able to utter.   They knew the source of their strength: it came from that dynamo that had chosen to make their own hearts the Temple of God.

Preaching on this text the Sunday after Easter may be a fine reminder to all of us in the Church of how much we owe not only to those original apostles for bringing the Good News to the world despite fierce opposition and threats on every side but how wonderful the providence of God is in providing the Holy Spirit to every believer in Christ Jesus the Lord ever since as well.   We in the church really are nothing other than receivers of divine goodness at every turn.  We’re not achievers, we’re receivers.   We’re not earning our way to heaven, we’re basking in being brought to heaven already by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Even as the original disciples-cum-apostles knew they had nothing to brag about in terms of the power of their own original witness to Christ, so today—despite all that has changed and all that the Church has done and become in the last two millennia—we have nothing to claim as our own proud achievements, either.   We’re just receivers, but what glorious freedom there is in knowing that great fact!

Illustration Idea

A few years ago one of the larger denominations in Canada found itself on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit filed by First Nations persons who alleged that the form of education the church had once mandated for the Indians in Canada in various boarding schools was coercive and destructive of native culture.  A lot of judges and courts agreed with these suits and so this denomination was bleeding money at a rapid rate.  It seemed likely that at least some church properties would be seized as assets to pay off the monetary awards granted by the courts.   As a result, a few people wondered if the church—or this part of the church—would soon be finished, washed up, a thing of the past.

But then one high-ranking official in that church said something remarkable and true in an interview one day: he said that even if this denomination lost every building it had once owned and had even its properties seized, the church would be fine and would continue so long as there was a voice to preach the Word and so long as they could have access to a little water, a little bread, and a little wine.   A bowl and a table: if the church had just that much, he said, ministry would surely continue.

It was a fitting reminder that the church is finally God’s place animated by God’s Pentecostal Holy Spirit.   Even as the apostles had nothing but that Spirit to animate their witness in the very beginning of it all, so today we could possibly lose so much of the outer trappings of what the church has amassed over time but so long as the Spirit of God was there to help us keep pointing to the resurrection of Jesus, the Church would have as full a presence in the world as it ever has had and as full a presence as it could ever need.