By Steve Hall
People with a message to share will repeat it over and over again as their audience changes. And Peter’s message was both clear and concise. “Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Tuesday in the Octave of Easter
Acts 2:36-41
John 20:11-18
Peter’s speech to the people on the day of Pentecost may well have been missed by Luke; so you might wonder how he could have recorded it in the book we call The Acts of the Apostles. The most probable answer is simple. People with a message to share will repeat it over and over again as their audience changes. And Peter’s message was both clear and concise:
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Obviously, that’s not the totality of what Peter had to say. A bit of explanation, elaboration, and detail would have been included, but the core of his message would remain the same.
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
So I have to ask: is that the heart of our message today?
When you read or hear of the Church being active in the present day, the account presented will most likely center on ritual practice, doctrinal teaching, moral issues, social practices, and the like. As a consequence, I am led to wonder if we are being distracted by the teachings of our own faith. The problem is that none of these issues is an important religious matter in and of itself. Why? Because they are consequences of one singular truth:
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Discussions (or arguments) on religious matters are varied. Non-believers will often indicate by their statements that they are troubled by such things as the “contradictions” in Scripture, the similarity across religions of certain moral elements, the behavior of believers, the “archaic” nature of ritual, the dissonance between moral teaching and “reality.” These are secondary.
Peter had it right. Ritual practice, doctrinal teaching, moral issues, and social practices — none of these were the heart of the matter. All else would flow from that one truth which Peter so boldly proclaimed. Sure! But in fact, there is only one place to start, only one reality that can change hearts, only one truth that can stand alone as an anchor for all that logically follows from it.
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
We know this is true, so why does the world associate us with consequences that only make sense in its light?