Acts 4:5-12 (2nd sermon) page 1

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After a while, the baker came to suspect that the farmer from whom he bought his butter was serving short weight on his order. So for an entire week he carefully weighed the butter at home, and sure enough his suspicions were confirmed. Irate, he had the farmer arrested.

A hearing was scheduled without delay. [So now you know this story is fictional!] "I assume you use the standard weights when measuring out your goods?" the judge asked the farmer sternly.

"As a matter of fact I don't'" replied the farmer calmly.

"Well, then. How do you do your measuring?"

"You see, your Honour, when the baker began buying butter from me, I decided to buy his bread" explained the farmer. "And I measure out his butter by placing his one-pound loaf of bread on the other side of the scale."
[J John and Mark Stibbe, A Bucket Of Surprises, p 96.]

So who was on trial? The farmer? Or the baker?

In our reading, Peter and John are on trial having healed the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Jerusalem Temple and then preached the resurrection of Jesus to those who gathered in astonishment, excitement and curiosity. Yet they seem to put the establishment on trial by the testimony Peter gives. The joy of Easter and the power of Pentecost have quickly given way to the harsh reality of persecution. Even within this whole incident they have moved with great speed from the thrill of the healing miracle to their arrest. Like Jesus himself, Peter and John have experienced the joy of the ordinary people and the wrath of the leaders.

So there are two sides to the coin: joy and trials, contact and conflict. Yet can this story be a model for our testimony to the Resurrection, too? Peter and John had been companions of Jesus and were apostolic witnesses to the Resurrection. They had been in the Upper Room at Pentecost and been baptised with tongues of fire. It all seems so remote from so much of our Christian experience. We are two thousand years removed from the earthly ministry of Jesus and - it seems at times - two thousand degrees lower in our spiritual temperature than the believers at the first Christian Pentecost.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. But there is a large gulf between the experience of the Early Church and ours. If we examine those two sides of the coin, will we learn anything that helps us in our mission in a very different time and society?

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.