27 April 2025

New Testament Heroes 12 – 27/04/25 – Martin Mowat

Readings: Acts 5:12-32

If you can drag your minds back 4 weeks, we talked about the dramatic deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, a married couple who lied to the apostle Peter about a fairly significant financial gift they were making to support the new and growing church in Jerusalem.

This week we’re going to return to our study of Acts, and the heroes of the early church as it enters a new and scary phase in its development.  

Before we get into talking about our heroes, there’s another hero to whom I’d like to give tribute. He was described by the Guardian as ‘A pope of his time’ and by Cardinal Kevin Farrell as ‘a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, who taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage, and universal love, especially towards the poorest and most marginalised.” 

Even though those of us here this morning come from all sorts of different denominational backgrounds, as Pete Grieg noted on Lectio on Monday, ‘it is possible to honour the passing of someone like Pope Francis, and to learn from his life, without necessarily agreeing with everything he said and did. Politically and theologically, he was often accused of being too conservative on some issues, and too liberal on others. 

Doctrinally, he may have held beliefs at odds with important non-Catholic Christian convictions but ‘Lectio 365’, he said, ‘believes in Christian unity without uniformity, celebrating the lives of heroes of our faith whilst acknowledging that these people were never perfect. Ultimately our vision and passion is Jesus, and that is why we love his church and seek to honour his faithful servants.’

And “celebrating the lives of heroes of our faith” is exactly what this series is all about.  

In Liz’s reading the believers were meeting in Solomon’s Colonnade or Portico.  This was a part of the temple where Jesus would regularly go to teach, and it’s where Peter had very recently healed a lame beggar. It was a natural place for them all to congregate, and they probably felt safe there, but strangely Luke tells us that “no-one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people”.

There must have been something visibly different about them, and perhaps there should be of us too.  As a result, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. Not only that, as we heard, there were numerous miracles of healing wrought by the apostles.

This was the deliberate work of the Holy Spirit, designed both to give them credibility, and to establish their authority. Their preaching and teaching, their subsequent gospel and epistle writing, as well as the book of Revelation, would stand forever as the authoritative source of all Christian doctrine.

It also did something else that was critically important, it demonstrated the power that the Holy Spirit had, and still has today by the way, over anything and anyone else.

But, at the same time these demonstrations of power triggered the persecution of the church by the Sadducees.  They were a select group of high priests, wealthy aristocrats and merchants, apparently known as much for their wealth and corruption as they were for any religious devotion. We’re going to meet them repeatedly as we work through Acts.

They wanted at all costs to maintain good relations with the Romans, in order to be able to continue feathering their nests, but they became jealous, the account says. Jealousy is such an ugly thing, and it brings out the worst in people.  

Those early Christians preached good news, they authenticated it with mighty works, they dispensed mercy, relief and care, but the Sadducees weren’t interested in any of that, they valued their own positions above the healing of bodies and the saving of souls. 

And so, as we heard, they had the apostles locked up with the intention of getting them tried and then punished by the Sanhedrin, which was the full assembly of the elders of Israel, the religious high court, in a similar way to what they had done earlier to Peter.

When the Sadducees had got themselves ready, and sent to the prison for them, they were not to be found. Why? Because they were back in the temple, preaching again.

On one hand we can see that as a bit of a joke, but actually it was deadly serious. The Sadducees must have concluded that if those men weren’t in the prison but in the Temple, God himself had intervened. It was the apostles, now, who had the upper hand.

Did you notice that when the guards were sent to get them from the temple and bring them to the Sanhedrin, they didn’t dare lay a finger on them, and had to use their powers of persuasion instead? 

When the Sanhedrin finally got to challenge them, Peter basically told them to take a running jump, as far as he was concerned, he said, he was acting under a higher authority. 

When they heard this, Luke goes on to tell us, the Sanhedrin were furious and wanted to put them to death.  But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, and he’s my hero today, a teacher of the law who had Saul of Tarsus, later to become the apostle Paul, as one of his students, and who was honoured by all the people, stood up … and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while.  Then he addressed the Sanhedrin: “Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men.  Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing.  After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered.  Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail.   But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” (Acts 5:33-39)

Gamaliel’s my hero today, not just because he secured the release of the apostles, and not just because he recognised the work of the Holy Spirit when all of his colleagues were in denial, but because he had the guts to tell it like it was.

So what does this mean for us today? Might I suggest two things?

Firstly, if we’re going to stand up for what we believe, we can expect opposition, but if we’re going to follow the example of those early Christians, we should do it anyway.

Secondly, it is easy for us to look at our personal situations, or to look at our newspapers and television screens and despair. 

But Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world, and while the world is our physical environment, it’s not our spiritual environment and therefore doesn’t determine our spiritual future.

The things we’re talking about today didn’t come to an end at the end of the book of Acts. Did you know that in the world some 170,000 people come to Christ every day, and that the church is growing faster today than ever? But that attracts opposition, today as it did then and that’s not going to change any time soon. 

Did you know also that miracles do still happen as well, big time? 

The good news is that, as I said last week, “love is stronger than hate”. Politics and politicians are powerless in the face of Christian values. “God so loved the world”, that Easter happened. As Paul so aptly put it in his epistle to the Romans, God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The Holy Spirit is at work today as he was then, nothing on earth has the power to impede him. As Gamaliel told the Sanhedrin, waging war against God is a waste of time and energy, and we do well to recognise the fact.  More than that, we do well to make ourselves available to him.