Acts 3: 12-19
A Verification of Our Easter Faith
Behold the man who used to sit and ask for money at the gate of the temple; all the people were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Behold the man—who left everyone astonished. Behold the man—who is in perfect health in the presence of all of the people in public. Behold the man—who has been cured. Behold the man—who proclaims the Easter faith.
Unlike all the people who were amazed, the Roman authorities were much annoyed. While the Roman people scheme for “how” and “what,” Peter, in today’s passage in verse 19, reminds the people who were amazed by the man—“Repent, therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped.”
What I’d like to focus on is what a sin really means in Peter’s context—within the context of the Roman empire. The crowd of people did not know that such life--conforming to the Roman power arrangement and seeking Roman affirmation--toward the Roman empire was a sin. It just seemed to them like the norm.
However, the danger of such normality within the Roman empire only became evident to them when they saw the Easter guy dancing and leaping and praising God. That man seems like nobody and a beggar on the street; however, he is the one who not only shakes, challenges, and interrupts the power and order of the empire but also cracks and brings a new world and new times of refreshing.
In the passage, Peter reminds us that we are witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. The work of witnesses is not just talking about the idea of resurrection. Rather it is about the walk, the dance, and the leap, and the jump for newness given by the Spirit. So, to become witnesses of the Easter faith is practice. It is engagement with the world that the world may be free and whole. Becoming a witness is an act of refusal, and stop running for the rat race in the real world and probe possibilities beyond what the world says is possible and permissible—going beyond and above what the world says. “It is what it is; this is the way things are.”
We are called to become a notable sign—the sign of Easter power, the sign of a new reality, the sign of a new transformation—that cannot be missed, cannot be disregarded, but make the people astonished and amazed. Yes, a new world and a new time of refreshing is already with us and among us.
Thanks be to God.