NOTES for Act 5:29

It seems all is clear. Of course, God is capital in our life; He should be obeyed in everything. We can even say all our misfortunes come from disobedience to God, indeed, even the original sin is nothing else, but disobedience. Are we not trying to obey Him? It's true, that it doesn't always succeed... But nothing bad, God will help, and everything will succeed for us!

Stop, and what will succeed for us? These people, who sent Jesus to the cross, and after judged the Apostles, didn't they obey God consciously? Even those people who stoned to death Stephen were absolutely sure that they are accomplishing God's will. Glance at the history of the Church: intolerance, crusades, inquisition – are they not also like obedience to God. And the current terrorism is it not also trying to proclaim itself holy, even if it is Moslem! How to comprehend that what we consider to be God's will, is exactly such? It seems there is a simple answer: verify through the Bible. But here we are, I had been told that both conflicting extremist groups in Northern Ireland justified their murders and explosions by quotations taken from the Bible! It is not only about what is written in the Bible, but also of how we understand it, and this is already of the competence of the Spirit. Let's remember how Jesus rebuked His followers, when they incorrectly wanted to interpret a biblical passage, saying: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of" (Luke 9:55).

Thus, how should we then obey God?

It would seem familiar to us to understand the Cross and the Resurrection as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins. Yes, the author of Acts says this (see Acts 5:31), but right away he also mentions repentance. This is striking. We understand that the Lord came into the world so that we would repent and receive Him and the Father. But the fact that He also rises in order to "give repentance to Israel" (and then to all who live) can escape our attention.

On the other hand, how else could it be? A mission is a mission, and it is carried out by every possible means. Indeed, when we look at the events described in Acts and at the increase of believers in the Church (see, for example, Acts 2:41, 5:14, 17:4), we see that people repent precisely after hearing the message about the crucified and risen Lord. The message that Someone came for your salvation and was killed through your own fault, yet rose in spite of it, strikes a person deeply. And if he listens to this message and truly hears it, acknowledging Jesus as Savior, the Lord does not delay His joy over the hundredth sheep that has been found (see Matt. 18:12-14).

At times one hears debates about Christianity’s future—whether it is still relevant in the modern world, whether it faces oblivion or, on the contrary, a new flourishing. Perhaps analysts who reason about these subjects should heed the words of Gamaliel in today’s reading. Though not himself a Christian, he left it to God—in whom he certainly believed—to decide whether the new teaching would endure. Why, then, did Luke include in his history of the early Church these words belonging to a man who was in many respects opposed to Christianity? Perhaps he saw the immense importance for Christians themselves of this testimony: the destiny of their Church, their community, their work, their ministry, and life itself rests solely in God’s hands and exists only because it is pleasing to Him.

Today's reading shows us the limit that religious consciousness can reach. This limit is marked by Gamaliel's speech (vv. 34-39). Gamaliel belonged to the rabbinic school founded by Hillel, a teacher of the Torah who lived approximately two centuries before the Nativity of Christ. Representatives of this school were never religious formalists, believing that the Torah should be written in the human heart, determining a person's whole life and helping him build a relationship with God. For them the first place belonged not to ritual, but to intimate, mystical communion with God. Hillel is credited with the words: "Where two or three gather in the name of the Torah, there the Shekinah dwells among them" (in Judaism, the Shekinah is the presence of God). It is no surprise that a representative of this very school spoke before the Sanhedrin in support of the apostles.

The situation did not at all seem clear and unambiguous to Gamaliel either, but he was not afraid of what the temple leadership feared: that the new movement that had begun among the people would turn against them (vv. 27-28). His absence of fear and readiness to accept everything that truly comes from God distinguish him from most representatives of the official religious authorities.

Gamaliel cannot say anything definite about the apostles and their preaching, and that is not surprising: he remains a bearer and guardian of a religious tradition, in no way connected either with Jesus or with His disciples. But his spiritual and religious experience tells him that movements of this kind succeed only when they come from God. Therefore he is calm: if the apostles are doing God's work, he has nothing to worry about; if not, then there is no need to be anxious anyway, because in that case it will sooner or later come to nothing.

Such a position appears neutral and watchful, but it could not have been otherwise: Gamaliel remained within religious boundaries, although his faith was sincere and his religiosity consistent. He truly knew nothing either about Jesus or about the apostles, and no religious experience could reveal to him what is revealed only through contact with the Kingdom. At the same time, however, Gamaliel, as we can see, remains absolutely open to God's action and ready to accept everything that comes from God. His position presupposes, above all, absolute honesty before himself and before God. And this is, apparently, the best that religion can give a person. In such a state of spirit a person will neither rush after false prophets and false messiahs, nor grab stones whenever some new religious movement appears. His religion gives him inner peace. That peace, of course, does not replace the Kingdom, but it gives him the possibility of seeing it.

Describing the life of the first Christian community, the sacred writer draws attention to those manifestations of the power of the Kingdom that should have been obvious to everyone. Healings, conversions, the freeing of the possessed from the power of dark forces - all this was well known and described in the Gospels, and in the earliest Christian times, when the Gospels had not yet been written, accounts of these events were passed from mouth to mouth. And now, before the eyes of many, something similar was taking place. The history of the Kingdom in the world continued.

There was something more as well: to leave prison through a locked door was something altogether incredible... but the risen Jesus also passed through locked doors, and they were no obstacle to Him. In the untransformed world such a thing is impossible; in the Kingdom it is entirely possible. The author of the book describes what is happening precisely as something happening in the Kingdom. What is taking place is not the spread of a new religion through Jerusalem and Judea, but the spread of the Kingdom there. It is a spread to which, naturally, each person responds in his own way. The religious authorities are also forced to respond somehow: everything that is happening is becoming too visible.

Visible, and frightening. Frightening because it is uncontrollable and unpredictable. Frightening in the way anything is frightening to any authority simply because it is authority. The religious authorities of Judea were no exception: power is always power first of all, and whether it is secular or religious is a secondary question. What frightens the temple leadership and the whole Sanhedrin most of all is the spread of a new name by which one can be saved. This is understandable: a new sacred name means a new path to God.

What is this new path? Who can make use of it, and how? What does all this mean for the former paths? The apostles and all the members of the new movement are obvious and explicit messianists; they speak constantly about the Messiah, whose name for them is equivalent to the name of God. They speak about the Kingdom. What is this Kingdom? Is there a place in it for the Temple? For the old priesthood? Or will everything in this new Kingdom be new: the Temple, the priesthood, and worship? And what about earthly authority?

All these questions gave no peace to the temple leadership and the spiritual leaders of the traditional Synagogue. If the spiritual leaders of the new movement had first coordinated their activity with the Sanhedrin, or at least notified it, everything would have been different. But they did nothing of the kind. Meanwhile, the Temple and the Sanhedrin watched the new messianists tensely. Who were they: allies or competitors? And the further things went, the more obvious it became both to the Temple and to the traditional Synagogue that these new messianists would not become their allies.