Blog 5 April: Acts 4:1-12

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Please read this passage before reading this homily. 

The question by the prosecutor is, “By what power or name have you done this?”  The defendants in this case answer, “Are you asking about a good deed done someone?  It seems strange that you prosecutors would be asking about a good deed instead of a crime.”

If this were a grand jury investigation, it would be a waste of time.  On the other hand, it gives Peter and John a chance to proclaim how God raised Jesus Christ from the dead and how divine power in Jesus healed the crippled man.

Sadducees in general did not believe in the resurrection of the dead.  It would have been exceedingly hard for them to accept that Jesus, whose death that they had contrived, was alive and healing people.  The authorities could not deny that a healing had happened to the man who had been crippled, but they might want to deny how it happened..

They did not, however, like the message, so they made a new law or gave a judicial ruling that the disciples should not continue preaching in the name of Jesus.  If the defendants were to obey the judicial ruling, life could go on as usual and people could go on living as though nothing had happened.

On the other hand, something had happened, and the Peter and John would not keep quiet about it.  They had to proclaim and tell what had happened because God had told them to.

What have we seen and heard?  How have we experienced ‘in the name of Jesus”?  What are we supposed to proclaim about what we have witnessed?  We believe in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus the Christ; it is not right that we remain silent as did the prosecutors in this case and not proclaim as did Peter and John.