Deadly!

As the crippled man who had been cured clung to Peter and John, all the people hurried in amazement toward them in the portico called “Solomon’s Portico.” When Peter saw this, he addressed the people, “You children of Israel, why are you amazed at this, and why do you look so intently at us as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence, when he had decided to release him. 

You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong, and the faith that comes through it has given him this perfect health, in the presence of all of you. 

Now I know, brothers and sisters, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did; but God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer. Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment and send you the Christ already appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old. 

For Moses said: A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen in all that he may say to you. Everyone who does not listen to that prophet will be cut off from the people. “Moreover, all the prophets who spoke, from Samuel and those afterwards, also announced these days. You are the children of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your ancestors when he said to Abraham, In your offspring all the families of the earth shall be blessed. For you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning each of you from your evil ways.” (Acts 3:11-26)

Deadly!  If we were Jews hearing this condemnation and these arrogant words allegedly from Peter, we would walk away in anger and disgust. We might raise our fists.  How dare he insist we “repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.”  How dare he (that is, Luke, also the author of Acts of the Apostles) insist all Jews were guilty of Jesus’ murder: “You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death.”  Both Luke and Acts emphasize the consistent rejection of Jesus by “the Jews.”  Luke’s story of Jesus begins with his rejection by those “in the synagogue.”

According to Marcus Borg in his book Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written (2012), “…when Acts was written, ‘the parting of the ways’ between Judaism and early Christianity was more than underway – it has happened…Most likely, Luke and Acts are from the first two decades of the second century.” Borg also said, “Luke does not overlook or negate Jews, but he does emphasize the expansion of early Christ-communities into the Gentile world and full inclusion of Gentiles into what began as a Jewish movement.”

This Easter season is a good time for us all to stop being “crippled” men and women believing “out of ignorance” that Jews “handed Jesus over.”  The “children of Israel” did not kill Jesus.  Jewish leaders working with conspiring Romans killed the Jewish Jesus who spoke out against religious and Roman bigotry and oppression, especially of the poor and “little ones.”

Deacon David Pierce