7th Day of Easter, Sunday April 19, Acts 5:17-42

You’ll be recognizing the pattern: religious and institutional powers-that-be are jealous and angry, and try to repress these agents of change. This change is good news for the people – but not for the rich and powerful. They lock up the apostles, but God opens the prison, and they resume doing good and telling truth in public. The council arrests them again, and threaten them – they don’t want to be accused of killing Jesus – but they want to kill the apostles! Who are ‘they’?

Don’t miss what I call ‘the Gamaliel strategy’. One of the bad guys, one of the elite, the leaders, models how to be faithful, or at least less bad, and we could learn a lot from him. ‘If this is of God, you can’t stop it – and it it’s not of God, you won’t have to’. This should be a mantra in any church council meeting responding to some new initiative among or around us. We should be less anxious, less often, to do God’s job for God, of smiting heretics.

The apostles give thanks to have suffered dishonor in the name of Jesus. They returned to doing good and telling truth – again, some more. They’re not seeking martyrdom, or celebrating random suffering – but they are better adjusted to losing faithfully than to winning at any cost. How about us?