NOTES for Act 5:1-16

Today's reading presents the Kingdom from a somewhat unexpected angle. At first glance, the story of Ananias and Sapphira as described here might seem to testify to God's severity and the harshness of the Kingdom's laws. Indeed, is death not too harsh a punishment for deception (vv. 2–3, 8–10)? Yet a different logic evidently operates in the Kingdom: complete freedom together with complete responsibility. Apparently, in the earliest Christian community, no one was compelled on joining to donate everything they owned to the Church. Each person could evidently decide how much to give (v. 4). If someone gave everything, they did so wholeheartedly, fully aware of their responsibility for what they were doing (Acts 4:34–37). In this case, however, it happened differently. Ananias apparently did not understand very well the degree of freedom and responsibility that life in the Kingdom entails. Perhaps giving to the community seemed to him something like the Temple tithe that every Jew was required to pay. On joining the community, he therefore decided to observe the prescribed rule while allowing himself a few concessions. But it turned out that this was not simply about joining a community; it was nothing less than entering the Kingdom, where there is no place for deceit. The principle proved simple: give what you can, but do so with absolute openness. There are no rules, only the righteousness of the Kingdom, which imposes no limits other than those a person sets for themselves. But that righteousness allows neither deception nor duplicity. Those who deceive God die not because God is cruel. It is simply that someone who has tasted the Kingdom's life can never again do without it. Yet it is equally impossible to remain in the Kingdom without trusting God completely: keeping two sets of books has no place here. That is why Ananias and Sapphira die. There is no middle ground in the Kingdom: here there is either life in all its fullness or death in all its inevitability. In our world, not yet transfigured, it is possible not to live fully, to drag out an existence spiritually more like death than life, and yet not die physically. In the Kingdom this is impossible: here life is complete, and death too is complete. There is no third way.

We human beings are an amazingly inconsistent people. How frightening it can be for us to step beyond the line after which there is no return. How much we want to leave ourselves a backup option, an alternate runway... In everyday life this may work, but spiritually, as today's story about Ananias and Sapphira shows, it does not. And now it is fairly easy to understand what was wrong with Ananias's "worldly wisdom"; how much more in that time, when the will of God was not sought but simply known and seen within oneself, because the Spirit filled them.

This story was practically the first serious attempt by the devil, as we now understand it a completely useless attempt, to take revenge for the Resurrection. He had already tried to destroy the very young Church from the outside through those same Pharisees and scribes so dear to him. Through those whom Christ also accuses of inconsistency. After all, if they had loved and relied on the Lord with all their soul and had been sincere to the end in their faith, including their faith in the words of Moses, then "you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me" (John 5:46). But for them, as for all of us, it is more convenient to choose how and what to believe from what is offered, and what to leave to our own judgment.

Still, God won again. Now the evil one is trying to collapse from within the building founded by his enemy. Yet we know that "the gates of hell shall never prevail" against the Church (see Matt. 16:18), even now, when in many ways it is weaker than the community of the first apostles. And then, in the times described in the first several chapters of Acts, the Lord's power was so clearly upon His faithful that a person who allowed not the Spirit of the Lord but the spirit of the evil one to enter him, while also claiming a share in salvation, simply could not survive. It was so physically impossible for sin to remain before the face of God. Unfortunately, we manage to do that now...

The story of Ananias and Sapphira perplexes some readers of Acts. Indeed, if this is the punishment for any sin, even a relatively small one, can anyone hope for salvation at all? Yet this story offers the clearest illustration of what the Jerusalem community of the first Christians was in spiritual terms. Evidently, many who joined sold everything they owned and donated the money to the community's common fund. But judging by Peter's words to Ananias, this was not a mandatory condition of entry. “Does what is yours not belong to you?” the apostle asks him.

These words show that, on entering the community, each person was free to dispose of their property and determine the size of their own donation. The issue was not that Ananias had failed to give everything he had. It was that he lied, as his wife did a few hours later. “And God punished him for lying,” a pious reader might hasten to conclude. But it turns out not to be so simple. God sees the human heart, and if punishment were the issue, Sapphira would probably have fallen dead on the threshold without saying a word.

Nor would there have been any need to ask Ananias so many questions. This is not about punishment for lying, although beginning life in the community with deception and duplicity is, of course, hardly a good idea. Breaking a commandment is breaking a commandment. But behind the lie in this case is an obvious desire to look better than one really is, to play a role before the community that is not one's true self. That is entirely incompatible with the “one heart and one soul” the author uses to describe relationships in the earliest Jerusalem Christian community. The issue is the depth and conscious character of the intentions that shape a person's life.

It is also the quality of that life itself, the stream that the biblical books call “soul.” To live in the community, the spiritual quality of this life had to be high enough. Moreover, the community's life formed a single stream, “one soul.” A person, wishing to enter this life that is new to him, comes into contact with its stream. His own life instantly disintegrates, flies apart—the disparity between the stream of his life and that of the community is so great.

There, in the community, life is real, while his is imaginary: he does not want to be his real self, preferring to play a role. Such inner disintegration does not always affect a person's physical condition immediately, but if the difference is too great, it can. Then anything may happen, from fainting to instant death.

But there is no question of punishment here. If someone completely unprepared, and well aware of it, tries to climb a mountain summit accessible only to trained climbers, they cannot be unaware of how the attempt may end. If that person eventually falls into the abyss, there is no one to blame but themselves.

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.

The brothers' presence in Solomon's Portico, at the Temple, shows that they observed the Mosaic law and continued the Old Testament tradition, although their opponents accused them of the opposite. Yet it is immediately mentioned that no outsider dared join them, indicating that Christ's disciples were beginning to take shape as a distinct community, separate from the Jews. A twofold process had begun: Christians were separating from Jews while at the same time preserving Old Testament traditions, seen anew in the light of the Gospel.

The opponents again try to suppress the apostles' preaching, with the Sadducees, the “rationalists,” acting alongside the high priest. Persecutors generally care little about the slogans under which they eradicate an unwelcome teaching. Yet it is revealing that even such inveterate opponents as Pharisees and Sadducees can unite and become “friends against” someone. This time, however, envy is named as the reason for the arrest. That already tells us we are dealing not with a disagreement on principle, but with petty hostility. It also means that the accusers are now even more prejudiced than the first time.

The angel freed the prisoners not so that they could hide, but to send them to the Temple to continue preaching. Their preaching continues even during the renewed interrogation before the Sanhedrin. Christ's disciples no longer scatter; the Holy Spirit has enabled them to stand firm.