NOTES for Act 4:1-37

The statement that the healed man had been healed in the name of Jesus was quite bold. The fact is that, when sacred names were involved, Yahwists in general and Jews in particular had always been quite cautious. In Judaism this caution reached the point that the name Yahweh, for example, was forbidden to be pronounced aloud at all, so that no one would accidentally say it in vain and thereby violate the third commandment of the Decalogue. And if we speak of healing, healing was possible only by God's name. The statement that healing was possible in the name of Jesus in effect meant that His name was being equated with God's name and included among the sacred names. Of course, the name "Jesus" or, more precisely, "Yeshua," includes the name Yahweh, but everyone understood that this was not the point. That is why the representatives of the temple elite were concerned. By speaking of healing in the name of Jesus, the apostles were thereby in effect declaring not only Jesus' messiahship, but also His divinity, however they understood it.

They were publicly declaring that one could appeal to Jesus just as one appeals to God. There was something here to think about. Of course, the concept of the sacred in Yahwism, and therefore in Judaism, was broad enough; it was connected with the concept of theophany, of God's manifestation, and the sacred names themselves were sacred precisely in this sense: invoking them was connected with theophany, with God's manifestation.

Still, no holy thing could replace God as the source and condition of all holiness. To speak of the name of a man, even if that man was the Messiah, as a sacred name was something new and unprecedented. This question required, at the very least, serious discussion. Yahwism, and later Judaism, had a calm enough attitude toward various views and theological theories, and Jewish tradition knows the most unusual and unexpected interpretations of the Torah and theological concepts.

Practice was another matter, especially prayer practice: here Judaism had always been quite conservative and cautious. But such conservative caution was foreign to the apostles. That is understandable: they were not learned rabbis and interpreters of the Torah, but witnesses of what they had seen with their own eyes. God had revealed to them what He had revealed, and for them not to bear witness to the revelation would have meant not listening to God, preferring people to Him. The apostles, of course, could not do that. Conflict with the Temple and the Sanhedrin became unavoidable.

At first glance, what Peter says to the Sanhedrin is nothing but rebuke. He tells them plainly that they have made the greatest mistake of their lives: they crucified the One for whom, in theory, they had been waiting with all their soul, the Messiah. "Their deeds were evil," and therefore they "are already condemned" (see John 3:18-19)... And on a human level it is very easy to understand such accusations from the apostles against the chief priests who killed their Teacher. We ourselves would surely have said even more.

Yet there is something more here. The apostles say this not from themselves. Verse 8 contains very important words: "filled with the Holy Spirit." Peter's answer to the Sanhedrin is not so much an accusation as a witness and a sermon. True good news. A sermon that is not embarrassed to point to the need for repentance. A witness that gives people a chance to choose the light (see John 3:19).

By the way, it is the witness of Peter, the one who himself was given a second chance. In addressing the chief priests, the apostles still, to put it in our terms, do not "write them off." Otherwise, why preach? They do not repeat the mistake of the prophet Jonah (see Jonah 4); they already know that God does not want "to judge the world, but that the world might be saved" (John 3:17).

Still, the stubbornness of the elders and scribes is astonishing. They themselves say plainly that Peter and John have performed an obvious miracle - and immediately forbid them to speak about the One in whose name this miracle was performed. In a sense, this is done for their own peace of mind: if the apostles stop speaking about Jesus, everything will quietly die down and be forgotten - and the scribes themselves will be able to forget that such a Man existed and avoid thinking about what He means for them, what He says to each one.

How familiar to many of us is what happens in the hearts of the scribes and elders sitting in the Sanhedrin. Having seen a miracle, they are closed and unready to receive it like children. Instead of praise, they immediately turn on their reason, calculating how this miracle may harm or help them. And reason at once orders Peter and John to be driven out of the Sanhedrin so they will not hear their conversation. Even now they want to cover an unclean conscience. But the miracle remains a miracle; more than that, outside the window the people are rejoicing, "glorifying God for what had happened."

And what benefit is there in all this? It is much calmer and safer when the people listen quietly, without questioning a single word of yours. These people, the elders, understand perfectly well that a person moved by the Holy Spirit obeys only Him and will not think about their welfare, authority, or "truth." Fearing that the masses may be seized by the Spirit, they try to cut this phenomenon off "at the root," forcing Peter and John to be silent. But the Spirit "breathes" (see John 3:8), and the apostles faithful to the Lord carry His sparks away in their hearts, to share them with those to whom the Lord will send them and who will want to receive Him.

The reaction of the Jerusalem Christian community to the conflict between the apostles and the temple leadership is very interesting and revealing. No one, as we see, doubted that this conflict was a continuation of another conflict, the conflict of the Savior Himself with the religious leaders of the Synagogue and the same temple leadership, which brought Him to the cross. What Jesus had told them was coming true: they, His followers, would be persecuted by their own people. The simplest thing would have been to interpret this conflict as religious, as a conflict between the emerging Christian religion and Judaism. But on closer examination the picture changes somewhat.

First, the conflict occurred over the question of sacred names, more precisely, over whether the name of Jesus could be considered sacred in the same way that, for example, the name Yahweh was considered sacred. This is a question of spiritual practice, of spiritual life, not of religion as such. One decision or another about it could not have had much influence on strictly religious life, except that Christians might have introduced among themselves the practice of invoking the name of Jesus in prayer. But overall it would have changed the life of the Synagogue very little and would most likely have been noticeable only to the Christians themselves.

Nor was this conflict religious in another sense. The fact is that Christians were not aiming at all to create some separate religious tradition: the first and second, and perhaps even third, generations were fully satisfied with Judaism in religious terms. Christians did have their own synagogues, but they were practically no different from all the others. Only the Christians' breaking of bread differed from the strictly Jewish one: they always performed it while invoking the name of Jesus.

Early Christianity was not a religion at all. It was a community of people striving to meet Christ and attain the Kingdom. And this was connected with the essence of the conflict between the apostles and the temple leadership, which defended precisely religion, traditional religious institutions, while itself representing the chief one among them. It was a conflict of the Kingdom and its inhabitants with religion, its rules, and its institutions as such, not a conflict between two religions.

And this conflict did not end with the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, because religious institutions did not disappear with it. On the contrary, Christianity itself in its history gave rise to many Christian religions and religious institutions. Perhaps that is why the Savior's words about the inevitability of persecution by one's own people remain relevant for all time: the Kingdom is greater than any religion, and the inhabitants of the Kingdom will always be strangers among their own people for those who limit themselves to religious boundaries.

The reaction of both the apostles themselves and the early Christian Church to the threats from the Sanhedrin is revealing. They take no measures for their own protection. They simply hand the whole situation over into God's hands. One could, of course, think that they were simply unable to do anything more. But that was not entirely so. Of course, the threat was serious, but there were things they could have tried to change. In any case, they could at least have tried to discuss some plan of possible action.

But no one does anything of the kind. Nothing like it even comes into anyone's mind. What is this: carelessness? Despair? Clearly not: the apostles do not at all look like careless or desperate people. The point is something else: they understand that what the Sanhedrin is trying to attack cannot be defended by human means.

And it does not need such defense. If Christianity were a religion, then of course one could try to defend it by some human powers and means. But the issue is not religion, but life. The life of the Kingdom. A Kingdom which only someone with no understanding at all of what it is would try to defend by human powers and means. The Kingdom does not need human defense. People who live this life are another matter: they do sometimes have to defend their life. But how can you defend your life if it, like the Kingdom itself, is, according to the Savior's word, "not of this world"?

Clearly, in only one way: by not getting in its way. By not getting in the way of its manifesting itself in all fullness. And this means continuing to live the life of the Kingdom to the extent that it is open to the one living it at that specific moment. Paying no attention to everything else. Understanding that in any case and in any situation this is the Christian's main work. And that it becomes all the more central when a Christian is required to betray this life, to renounce it for the sake of anything at all.

At that point, maneuvering and attempts to find a compromise doom a person to complete and unconditional defeat. For the Kingdom can enter a person's life either unconditionally or not at all. And if a person surrounds its presence in his life with some conditions, compromises, and the like, then the Kingdom will not be in that person's life. And Christ will not enter his life either: why put a person who is embarrassed by your company in an awkward position? That is why the apostles do not try to undertake anything in response to the threats of the Sanhedrin. They only ask God to enter this situation and resolve it as He considers best. For Himself and for them.

Before us is an example of the prayer of the first Christians. How open their hearts are to the Lord, how directly they cry out to their Creator. And this is possible because now they belong to Jesus and follow Him, leaving everything unclean aside. There is no wall of sin blocking them from His light. And in our baptism with the Holy Spirit, the Lord gives us the possibility of breaking down this wall with His help, bringing down upon it all the joy and exultation of the Resurrection.

But whatever the case, then comes the path, and it is a path with obstacles, because "the enemy does not sleep." So the apostles, united by the One and into one, bring to the Father what is happening around them, asking for "all boldness" to speak the word of God. And they ask this not despite what He promised: "...do not worry about how or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking in you", but precisely because of it. In the same way, the Word of God is given to us in order to direct our prayer and strengthen faith in His power and mercy.

When the other apostles learn how Peter and John were questioned before the Sanhedrin, they recall David's psalm about the united revolt of the kings of the earth against the Lord and against His Christ. The apostles equate the persecution of their brothers with persecution of Christ Himself, and this is no exaggeration: He created the Church and entrusted it with carrying out His work on earth; He is invisibly present beside His faithful; and it is at Him that the persecutors aim when they pursue the disciples, since they cannot seize Him a second time.

But God is not mocked. The persecutors withdrew this time not because the apostles possessed some special courage—only recently it would have been difficult to say that of Peter. The Lord strengthened them by the power of the Holy Spirit. Whether to receive this power depended on the apostles' own choice. They chose faithfulness, and therefore they would have remained victorious whatever the outcome of the interrogation.

Truly holy is the Lord our God, Sabaoth—the God of hosts! And great is His power when He stretches out His hand (see Acts 4:30)! This expression used by the author—“the hand of God”—was very well known to the prophets. We encounter it repeatedly as a description of the Lord’s power, which fills you from within, guides you, and gives you such boldness that fear and doubt recede. Experiencing the touch of the “hand of God” is a very powerful experience of the descent of the Holy Spirit, so powerful that even the house in which the apostles have gathered is shaken. For God’s power is so great that, as the Apostle Paul would later say, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31). The dead hear His voice and rise. He heals and works miracles. By God’s will, His servants too speak His word with strength and authority proceeding from Him, and work the same miracles and healings as He does (see Acts 4:29-30). They do this for no other reason than that He Himself fills them with Himself (see Acts 4:31). The mind cannot fully comprehend it. And glory be to God.

Today's reading from the Acts of the Holy Apostles begins with astonishing words: "Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul." Is such a thing possible? Can we even imagine it? Our unanimity, or even simply our like-mindedness, usually lasts for such a short time... More than that, it is often in the church community that we "relax" - and all our "home" problems crawl out into the light. It is well known that it is especially hard to maintain peaceful relationships with those closest to us. The same thing happens in the Church.

But the first Christians, it appears, did not have this problem. What is the point here? A special grace? Of course, without grace nothing is possible, but it seems that first of all the point is people's openness to this grace. The Lord is always the same, He is unchanging, and He not only can but wants to grant the same grace of unity to all of us, to our Church, and to our communities.

Brief but weighty lines reveal to us how the Church lived at its earliest dawn. We have no grounds to doubt the reliability of this account, but one can ask: why did this prove impossible later, when the Church spread to every continent? Was it only because its size increased and its structure became more complex, since later, in small communities, it did in fact prove possible to come closer to the early ideal to one degree or another?

The way the early Church lived is explained not by human efforts and good intentions on the part of the newly converted, but by the action of the Holy Spirit. The unity of the first believers was first of all unity in the Spirit, from which followed unity of hearts and thoughts; therefore life together was as natural as breathing. Later, over the centuries, there would be many attempts to overcome people's separation by making their property common, and the overwhelming majority of such attempts would collapse. The reasons for this would vary, but not the least of them would be that the new advocates of common ownership would deny the reality and importance of the spiritual principle, and would put their trust in force and the mechanical redistribution of material property. They would call this the "base," while everything else, which they could not touch, they would call the "superstructure over the base."

But the experience of the first Jerusalem community shows the opposite. What still seems to many to be the "superstructure" is in fact the Foundation.

When reading the description of the early Christian community, today we notice first of all the common ownership of property that characterized it. Yet this was probably only one possible form of Christian communal life at that time. Some episodes in the Book of Acts make it clear that giving all one’s property to the Church was not compulsory; it was the personal, voluntary choice of someone joining the community. What was indispensable, however, was what the author of the book calls “one heart and one soul.” A community can exist without common property, but not without one heart and one soul, even if common property becomes a compulsory norm within it.

Indeed, what does it mean to be of one heart? In the Bible, the heart is the spiritual center of the human person, the spiritual “I,” the genuine center where the person begins, where the breath of life given by God touches human nature. It is here, in the heart, in the depths of the spiritual “I,” that the intentions are born which determine what a person will be before God and other people. The strength and, above all, the degree of awareness of each intention determine how pure and intense a person’s spiritual life will be. If every member of the community does not care for their heart in this sense, they destroy the community. If they do care for it, the community becomes a kind of school of spiritual life, not a theoretical school but a practical one.

Then the community acquires something like a single heart, because the intentions arising from every heart are directed toward one thing. Then “one soul,” or more precisely one shared life, also becomes possible. The Greek word used by the sacred author, like its Hebrew equivalent, denotes the soul as the stream of life in which we dwell and which at the same time flows through us. In this stream, the spiritual joins the natural, while its strength is given by God, who grants us life. As for the quality of the stream of life, whether the spiritual or the natural predominates within it, everything depends on us, on the intentions arising from our heart, from our spiritual “I.”

It depends on us what our life will be, both in spiritual purity and in spiritual intensity. It also depends on us who will be given access to our life. A true community is possible only when the stream of its life is one.

Every current, every individual life entering the common stream, must of course have the corresponding spiritual quality. Otherwise the common stream will become cloudy and dirty or disappear altogether. Yet such a common stream of life, a “common soul,” is an indispensable condition for the community’s existence. Property may or may not be held in common; that depends on the particular conditions and circumstances.

But the soul must necessarily be shared; otherwise the community disappears, even if all outward forms of communal life are preserved. The Christian community in Jerusalem possessed precisely such a common soul, behind which stood one heart. As long as this state of affairs endured, God’s breath moved freely within it and met no obstacle.

Confirming Jesus' words, “The one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do, and will do greater works than these, because I am going to My Father” (John 14:12), we read the lines of today's passage from Acts. Christ has gone to the Father, and the believers in Him who remain on earth work miracles. We all remember the story of the rich young man (see Matt 19:16-26). But that young man did not put the Lord's advice into practice, at least not at the very moment when he received it... When he heard Jesus say that he lacked only one thing—to sell his possessions and follow Him—the young man went away sadly, admitting how difficult such a step was. But what do we see here? Through their preaching the apostles kindle such a fire in people's hearts that they themselves go and sell their possessions, giving the money to those who brought them the news of the Savior and shared Christ's light with them. Those who give feel neither regret nor greed, because Christ Himself does this within them.

Judging by the testimony of the Book of Acts, the early Christian Church was meant to be a community where, among other things, common ownership of property was the norm. Later many Christians, and not only they, tried to follow the early Christian ideal. Some succeeded better, some worse. But what moved all these people? After all, common ownership of property was practiced by representatives of certain religious-philosophical teachings even in pre-Christian times, not to mention Jewish religious brotherhoods like the Essenes. What prompted these very different people to give up their property in favor of the community?

Very often the main motive turned out to be the striving for ascetic life, which moved not only Christian monks of the Middle Ages and the modern period, but also, for example, the followers of Pythagoras, in whose communities common ownership of property was also, if not obligatory, then apparently quite widespread. Here a person was moved first of all by the desire to simplify his life as much as possible, including its economic and social ties. By renouncing property, the person thereby also renounced society, as well as what bound him to society.

Another case is the renunciation of property in the context of an approaching eschatological and apocalyptic perspective, as happened, for example, among the Qumran Essenes. Here the conviction played its role that the world was doomed to destruction because of its impurity, and that only those belonging to the community of the "pure," by whom the Qumranites of course meant themselves, could be saved. Here the donation of property to the community was equivalent to a contribution to the construction of the only saving ark on earth, for which nothing should be spared.

But could the early Christian Church have been guided by ascetic or apocalyptic motives? Probably not, after all. The matter was not abstinence and not the coming end, but the life of the Kingdom. Here there was another, no less powerful stimulus: the experience itself of life in the Kingdom. For the Kingdom is possible only as giving, as the renunciation of one's separateness, as readiness to share everything one has in order to receive everything in return for the small part one gives. Here to give means not to renounce or lose, but to acquire and receive. This is precisely the case where sharing means multiplying. And common ownership of property turns out here not to be the embodiment of an idea, ascetic or eschatological, but the natural continuation in the untransformed world of that life of the Kingdom which someday, after transformation, will become natural and organic for it.