Third Sunday of Easter
Living as Marked People
Acts 3.12-19; 1 John 3.1-7; Luke 24.36b-48
Somewhere within recent years attitudes have changed. Not so long ago wearing clergy gear led to a certain respectful familiarity from strangers. Not so nowadays. Clergy attire now seems, at best, to make other people uncomfortable in the workaday world; and at worse, to provoke open hostility or suspicion. Queuing through security to get on a plane makes the point powerfully – a couple of generations ago an obvious cleric on a plane was a reassurance; now it’s more likely to prompt suspicion and added checking.
Of course it’s not just about clergy, similar responses are met by others who let their faith be known. To be known as a Christian and a teacher now makes you prey to accusations of undue influence. A Christian doctor or nurse or social worker must not signify that fact in their professional practice for fear of having their ‘value-free’ competence questioned. Displaying a cross on your uniform, van or work tools can lead to disciplinary action.
Headlines arising from such things have become commonplace. And yes, we shouldn’t over-react; these things can be amplified and sensationalised to make ‘a good story’ out of little. And yet ... And yet ... everyone here this morning knows something has shifted. The easy acceptance of Christian faith expressed as a public good just isn’t that easy any longer.
It’s not an exaggeration to apply those words from 1 John to ourselves. In a way that is tangible and yet subtle, the world refuses to know us as Christians. I don’t go along with those who claim this as persecution – our news in recent months has had too many stories of killings, torments, and cruelty to allow that. Ours is a very different experience and we mustn’t taint out prayers for those who suffer so by exaggerating our own social circumstances. All I mean to say is that we have become familiar with a shift in how we are regarded in wider society as people of faith. Where once there was an assumed respect and appreciation, there is now certain wariness, at the least.
Being known as a Christian is not something that is accommodated socially as it once was. And I think that the response of the writer of 1 John would be, ‘Well, what did you expect?’ His argument is straightforward: we are God’s children and our hope rests on our everyday growing up to become more and more like Christ. Christ’s purity (in John’s language) is a given and we are to become more like him. You might say, as is so often said of children, that we are already a chip off the old block and our destiny is to become ever more such. This means acting in ways that are Christ’s ways: ‘Let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.’
The character of our actions and thoughts must be the sinlessness of Christ – and we all know where that purity of intent led him. We cannot expect anything else. So the world’s failure to recognise us, or to give us the due regard we long for, is but a shadow of the indifference, hostility or even hatred we can expect. We can be so casual about faith; but 1 John is talking of ultimate things that shape our eternal destiny. What we do and why we do it, matters. Let the purity of life that is in Christ be your purity of life – and this way of living is going to mark you out.
Being marked out is something we all find amazingly difficult. We are social animals; it is part of our very being to do as others do. It makes us feel good; it makes us feel safe; it allows us to belong. We mimic each other because it stops us being marked out negatively. Think about it – what else is fashion but mimicry? What else are the million and one social conventions we abide by but mimicry?
Have you noticed that the signs in public toilets that used to order ‘Now wash you hands’ have in some places been replaced by something like ‘Most people wash their hands before leaving.’ The appeal to what most people do is much more effective than the direct order. Mimicry rules! Living in ways different from the crowd comes hard to us – but that is just what John is taking about. Mimic Christ not the world.
‘We will be like him,’ asserts 1 John. But becoming like him – growing into his likeness – will often put us out of what’s socially acceptable. Isn’t there something of that in Peter’s response to the crowd’s amazement at the healing of the lame man? Peter is convinced that it is only in the power of the risen Jesus that this healing has been achieved. The crowd are astonished and amazed at the healing – and many of them are incredulous about Peter’s reasoning about how this has happened (and that eventually leads to his and John’s arrest). Peter’s argument treads a line between social mimicry and social difference.
Peter is a faithful and serious Jew – as were all the first Christians. And he appeals to the inheritance of faith he shares with his hearers – ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors’ (Acts 3.13). This is the faith he has in common with the crowd. This is what we share, he says; in this we mimic one another, if you like. This is our shared take on what it is to be a part of God’s faithful people. But then he says the startling thing that marks him and the other Jesus followers out – this Jesus who was crucified is ‘the Holy and Righteous One;’ the Messiah. Of this I am sure, he says, because God has raised him from the dead. That resurrection power is the very thing that has led to the healing of the lame man. Some believed what Peter said (and so the Jerusalem church grew to about five thousand people, says Luke) but there were many more in the bustling city who did not believe – who saw Peter and the others as deviants and heretics. Their behaviour and their words marked them out.
The only way Peter can account for the people’s response to Jesus – and indeed their response to his own words, is for him to attribute it to their ignorance. If only they had fully appreciated and understood was God was doing in Jesus, things would have been different. Yet, even now, he believes, repentance can change all that. Turn to God in what he has done in Jesus and everything will change. Some were affronted at the thought, no doubt. Others said it was a silly new idea, and simply turned away. Some were angry at what they heard as a threat to their lives and their outlook, they rejoiced in Peter and John’s arrest, longing for them to get their comeuppance. Peter dared to address them as ‘Fellow Israelites’ but fellowship is the last thing they felt towards him. For most, bonds of common feeling were not what Peter’s words conjured up. They felt got at.
And this antagonism is going to get worse – much worse – as the number of those who do believe in Christ increases and they are dispersed into communities across the known world. If you hear a hint of vexation, exasperation or even vengeance creeping into the way the story is told, what you are picking up on is the way attitudes hardened over the generations. All too soon it became impossible to be a devout Jew and a Christian. The cross and resurrection becomes an absolute stumbling block, or a sure and certain foundation.
Peter remains a devout Jew, but within a few generations antagonism got ever deeper and as the story was told and retold a certain anti-Jewish tone enters its telling. There is no irony in Peter addressing the crowd as ‘friends’ (v.17) – he expects to call forth from their shared values an understanding of the reality of Christ. But not so many years later the divide will be all but impenetrable – the appeal to ‘what most people do’ will put everyone on one side of the line or the other. Mimicry or difference becomes murderous – as indeed it was for Jesus.
Hear the risen Christ’s, ‘Peace be with you’ as Luke records it, in the light of that antagonism and hostility. Sure Luke knows the joy the first Easter provoked, but he also knows that the young church soon came to find itself to be an alienated minority. And we know that when it was no longer that minority it too began to draw heavy and even violent lines of difference. In trying and difficult circumstances resurrection peace is hard to live. Fears and doubts do come to the fore. Peace seems but a ghostly chimera. Opening minds – even our own – becomes such a hard task. Dare I stand out as a chip off the old block of Christ? Dare I live Christ’s life in the middle of the ordinary things of living? Even down to the very mundane things of eating – like a piece of broiled fish? Saying, ‘Yes,’ means being marked out; it means standing out from the crowd. It means living life in Christ’s way – as only that righteousness will do according to John.
Father,
sometimes I think that Easter
was something that happened
only to Jesus a long time ago
because he had been so good and perfect;
but then it dawns on me
that Easter is a gift
which you give away to your world
so that people of all nations can be reborn
and I this very day can come back to life
to serve you in love and hope.
Bishop David Jenkins
Of course it’s not just about clergy, similar responses are met by others who let their faith be known. To be known as a Christian and a teacher now makes you prey to accusations of undue influence. A Christian doctor or nurse or social worker must not signify that fact in their professional practice for fear of having their ‘value-free’ competence questioned. Displaying a cross on your uniform, van or work tools can lead to disciplinary action.
Headlines arising from such things have become commonplace. And yes, we shouldn’t over-react; these things can be amplified and sensationalised to make ‘a good story’ out of little. And yet ... And yet ... everyone here this morning knows something has shifted. The easy acceptance of Christian faith expressed as a public good just isn’t that easy any longer.
It’s not an exaggeration to apply those words from 1 John to ourselves. In a way that is tangible and yet subtle, the world refuses to know us as Christians. I don’t go along with those who claim this as persecution – our news in recent months has had too many stories of killings, torments, and cruelty to allow that. Ours is a very different experience and we mustn’t taint out prayers for those who suffer so by exaggerating our own social circumstances. All I mean to say is that we have become familiar with a shift in how we are regarded in wider society as people of faith. Where once there was an assumed respect and appreciation, there is now certain wariness, at the least.
Being known as a Christian is not something that is accommodated socially as it once was. And I think that the response of the writer of 1 John would be, ‘Well, what did you expect?’ His argument is straightforward: we are God’s children and our hope rests on our everyday growing up to become more and more like Christ. Christ’s purity (in John’s language) is a given and we are to become more like him. You might say, as is so often said of children, that we are already a chip off the old block and our destiny is to become ever more such. This means acting in ways that are Christ’s ways: ‘Let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.’
The character of our actions and thoughts must be the sinlessness of Christ – and we all know where that purity of intent led him. We cannot expect anything else. So the world’s failure to recognise us, or to give us the due regard we long for, is but a shadow of the indifference, hostility or even hatred we can expect. We can be so casual about faith; but 1 John is talking of ultimate things that shape our eternal destiny. What we do and why we do it, matters. Let the purity of life that is in Christ be your purity of life – and this way of living is going to mark you out.
Being marked out is something we all find amazingly difficult. We are social animals; it is part of our very being to do as others do. It makes us feel good; it makes us feel safe; it allows us to belong. We mimic each other because it stops us being marked out negatively. Think about it – what else is fashion but mimicry? What else are the million and one social conventions we abide by but mimicry?
Have you noticed that the signs in public toilets that used to order ‘Now wash you hands’ have in some places been replaced by something like ‘Most people wash their hands before leaving.’ The appeal to what most people do is much more effective than the direct order. Mimicry rules! Living in ways different from the crowd comes hard to us – but that is just what John is taking about. Mimic Christ not the world.
‘We will be like him,’ asserts 1 John. But becoming like him – growing into his likeness – will often put us out of what’s socially acceptable. Isn’t there something of that in Peter’s response to the crowd’s amazement at the healing of the lame man? Peter is convinced that it is only in the power of the risen Jesus that this healing has been achieved. The crowd are astonished and amazed at the healing – and many of them are incredulous about Peter’s reasoning about how this has happened (and that eventually leads to his and John’s arrest). Peter’s argument treads a line between social mimicry and social difference.
Peter is a faithful and serious Jew – as were all the first Christians. And he appeals to the inheritance of faith he shares with his hearers – ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors’ (Acts 3.13). This is the faith he has in common with the crowd. This is what we share, he says; in this we mimic one another, if you like. This is our shared take on what it is to be a part of God’s faithful people. But then he says the startling thing that marks him and the other Jesus followers out – this Jesus who was crucified is ‘the Holy and Righteous One;’ the Messiah. Of this I am sure, he says, because God has raised him from the dead. That resurrection power is the very thing that has led to the healing of the lame man. Some believed what Peter said (and so the Jerusalem church grew to about five thousand people, says Luke) but there were many more in the bustling city who did not believe – who saw Peter and the others as deviants and heretics. Their behaviour and their words marked them out.
The only way Peter can account for the people’s response to Jesus – and indeed their response to his own words, is for him to attribute it to their ignorance. If only they had fully appreciated and understood was God was doing in Jesus, things would have been different. Yet, even now, he believes, repentance can change all that. Turn to God in what he has done in Jesus and everything will change. Some were affronted at the thought, no doubt. Others said it was a silly new idea, and simply turned away. Some were angry at what they heard as a threat to their lives and their outlook, they rejoiced in Peter and John’s arrest, longing for them to get their comeuppance. Peter dared to address them as ‘Fellow Israelites’ but fellowship is the last thing they felt towards him. For most, bonds of common feeling were not what Peter’s words conjured up. They felt got at.
And this antagonism is going to get worse – much worse – as the number of those who do believe in Christ increases and they are dispersed into communities across the known world. If you hear a hint of vexation, exasperation or even vengeance creeping into the way the story is told, what you are picking up on is the way attitudes hardened over the generations. All too soon it became impossible to be a devout Jew and a Christian. The cross and resurrection becomes an absolute stumbling block, or a sure and certain foundation.
Peter remains a devout Jew, but within a few generations antagonism got ever deeper and as the story was told and retold a certain anti-Jewish tone enters its telling. There is no irony in Peter addressing the crowd as ‘friends’ (v.17) – he expects to call forth from their shared values an understanding of the reality of Christ. But not so many years later the divide will be all but impenetrable – the appeal to ‘what most people do’ will put everyone on one side of the line or the other. Mimicry or difference becomes murderous – as indeed it was for Jesus.
Hear the risen Christ’s, ‘Peace be with you’ as Luke records it, in the light of that antagonism and hostility. Sure Luke knows the joy the first Easter provoked, but he also knows that the young church soon came to find itself to be an alienated minority. And we know that when it was no longer that minority it too began to draw heavy and even violent lines of difference. In trying and difficult circumstances resurrection peace is hard to live. Fears and doubts do come to the fore. Peace seems but a ghostly chimera. Opening minds – even our own – becomes such a hard task. Dare I stand out as a chip off the old block of Christ? Dare I live Christ’s life in the middle of the ordinary things of living? Even down to the very mundane things of eating – like a piece of broiled fish? Saying, ‘Yes,’ means being marked out; it means standing out from the crowd. It means living life in Christ’s way – as only that righteousness will do according to John.
Father,
sometimes I think that Easter
was something that happened
only to Jesus a long time ago
because he had been so good and perfect;
but then it dawns on me
that Easter is a gift
which you give away to your world
so that people of all nations can be reborn
and I this very day can come back to life
to serve you in love and hope.
Bishop David Jenkins
