Judgement Error: “Oops, My Bad”

Here are nobody’s favorite things to feel: humility and compunction. Not everyone likes the experiences of lowering the sense of self; no one likes the heavy feeling of guilt over being in the wrong. The season of Easter is a season of joy, but getting to that joy can involve facing some difficult realities.

The lesson from the Acts of the Apostles that goes with Thursday in Easter week is striking in a couple of ways. First of all, it shows the Apostle, Simon Peter as an entirely transformed person compared with the figure of Peter we know through the arrest and suffering of Jesus before his Passion. The other surprise is how he drives his hearers to a strong reaction. When Jesus is arrested, we see Peter lying to avoid endangering himself. In the events after the resurrection, we find Peter speaking the truth in the strongest way, despite the danger it will bring him. He humbles his hearers and brings them to conviction, naming that they brought suffering and death to God’s Messiah. Look at this part of what Peter spoke to the crowd:

“The God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.”   —Acts 3:13-16

Pay attention to the strong lines of this argument. He reminds them when they appealed for Barabbas, the murderous insurrectionist, to be released, they were convicting the innocent Lord, through whom life came into being. He is saying they protected the one who took a life, and they condemned the one who gave life to all people. It really packs a punch. This argument aroused annoyance and anger in some of the authorities within the temple. To others, it brought humility and compunction. These were the ones who were candidates to receive the joy of the Lord through repentance and reception of the resurrection life of Christ.

To reiterate the transformation in Simon Peter, he who denied even knowing Jesus when all the trouble started for their group, here, is calling out the spiritual reality however unpopular and dangerous. Before, he was denying all association with Jesus. At this stage, he is claiming complete association with Jesus. He and John had brought Christ’s healing to a man lame from birth by saying to him, “Look at us…in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” His feet and ankles were made strong for the first time in his life, he rose and then celebrated the striking miracle “walking and leaping and praising God. (Acts 3:6-8) Peter and John are owning the fact that they are moving and acting in the agency of Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Apostles want all to know the joy that comes through living in the grace of the Risen Christ. They are offering it through a process beginning with honest admission, humility, and repentance. We have come through the penitential season of Lent and are in the joyous season of the Paschal feast. This is the one-two pattern we come to experience over and over again in life, not waiting for a season of the calendar, but realizing the circumstance and need of the day. Transformation, metanoia into life within the kingdom of God, calls often for facing the truth and releasing illusion to accept our true place before God. So, shall we spend all our energy on the mascaraed of keeping up appearances, or shall we re-direct that energy toward something more jubilant such as walking and leaping and praising God?