Our scripture from this past Sunday says this: The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. Acts 4:13.
I told you on Sunday that the Pharisees are using Greek that most of us can understand, even if you don’t know Greek: agrammatos idiōtēs: Illiterate idiots. Folks who translated it from Greek to English soften these words a bit and call them ordinary and uneducated instead of the original: illiterate idiots. But the point remains the same…they were nobodies. They had no special power, status, learning, or skill.
We can feel powerless when we see the struggles our nation is experiencing and the divisions that run right down our society. We can ask, what can one believer in the RGV do that will change the story? Or one pastor?
Let’s look at what Peter and John, those original “agrammatos idiōtēs” did. First, it’s worth remembering that Peter and John lived in a divided, often terrifying world. Their nation was occupied by Rome, there were soldiers on all the walls and in all the towns. The religious leaders of the day were responsible for the arrest and murder of Jesus, the Savior, their leader. Now, they had been thrown in jail. It’s not our situation, but it’s a terrifying one. And Peter and John would have looked at their nation with breaking hearts, knowing this was not the situation that God dreamed of for their people.
So let’s look at that second part- they weren’t just nobodies, they were agrammatos idiōtēs that had been with Jesus. For days and months and years they made it their whole focus to be with Jesus, to learn from him, to change, and grow. And when the Holy Spirit came, they found Jesus was with them all the time. Their story changed. They became leaders and teachers, healers and speakers. They found bravery and power as Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, moved in them. They began to help the story chance for others: the beggar who was healed, the thousands who came to faith.
We can follow their example: they stayed close to Jesus (they were on their way to pray when this scripture takes place) and they deal with the hurt that is right in front of them, offering mercy and healing to a crippled man and words of hope to the crowds. Their response to all of it was to deepen their own focus on Jesus and listen for what Jesus would have each of them do. On the calling he’d given to them. We can do that, everyday, in our lives. We can pour love, mercy, healing and hope into a time that has been struck with disease, separation, anger, and confusion. In fact, I believe acts of love, peace and healing by everyday believers are precisely what changes the world. When we do what Jesus has put in front of us.
I love what George McDonald says about this idea of following Jesus, staying close to Jesus, in our daily lives:
“But I do not know how to awake and arise!”
I will tell you:--Get up, and do something the master tells you; so make yourself his disciple at once. Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said, Do it, or once abstained because he said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe in him, if you do not anything he tells you. If you can think of nothing he ever said as having had an atom of influence on your doing or not doing, you have too good ground to consider yourself no disciple of his.
Let us, above all, stay close to Jesus. And then, to do at least one thing, or abstain from one thing, every day, because Jesus is asking us to. It may not immediately change our nation. But it will change our homes, our church, and our community.
