Speaking Differently about God

While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, 2much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead. 3So they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. 4But many of those who heard the word believed; and they numbered about five thousand. Acts 4:1-12, 23-31

I am deeply saddened and angry when I hear from those who have spiritual and religious trauma. I am sad not only because of the wounds they have endured, but because of the god who has been named that justifies such behavior. I am sad and angry at the religious leaders. I am sad and angry because the god that they appeal to is just plain wrong and off the mark.

Religious trauma is not new. Unfortunately, it is a part of every religious tradition because it is used as abusive power, and, in the hands of the wrong people it becomes a twisted understanding that misses the mark of who God truly is. To argue a different God is to do theology, for theology is not merely an abstraction of God, but, as we can see, is a justification for a theologically disordered understanding of God.

As we continue to follow the Spirit’s power unfolding through the book of Acts, we see similar grounds where religious trauma has been engaged by religious authorities who distort who God is. We will see how those religious leaders whose authority upholds and guards distorted systems react to the threat of an alternative. We also see who actually benefits from this theological alternative when a confession of God who, in this Jesus person, offers a more liberating perspective to the religiously traumatized.

Peter and John's central teaching is this, that “in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead.” But why is this so threatening and controversial? And what does it have the power to do? Why does this disrupt and outrage the authorities, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, such that they would imprison them?

Because this was a religious threat-to name the priest, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees was to challenge their authorities as religious leaders. What was of utmost importance was the temple, it was the place where the relationship with Hebrew God, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, was enacted; where God’s presence was guaranteed, where God was contained. The temple life was THE location where a relationship with God was enacted by particular kinds of rituals.

So, to name that “in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead” is to speak of a different power and authority differently and against the temple. It was to name Jesus as the governing person of God’s life among a people; it is not just that the people are included, in a more progressive sense. It has implications for how it is that God creates a community differently because of who God is. It is a dismantling of the established governing understanding and practice that upheld their entire religious order and way of imagining their relationship with God.

The religious authorities were on autopilot serving a system that had severe consequences for marginalized people, and they were being called on it, and now that whole system was suspect.

So, notice the juxtaposition between who is threatened, and who is liberated; the powers that be are threatened and the lowly ones in the established religious order are hearing this as good news; it is because it now means that God is not only available to them, but that they are no longer under the temple power to mediate a relationship with God. And with that is no tax-it is not only a religious ordering, but a political and economic ordering, for the ones who did not have any money had to pay temple taxes, and with the temple taxes came further poverty; so, having a relationship with God was costly, not in some spiritual sense, but in a real sense. This is the power of speaking differently about God. And Jesus is precisely this power that reorients and reorders the disordered systems of a god who has demands.

I invite you to tune in Sunday to hear more. This same power to liberate by naming that “in Jesus is the resurrection of the dead” still holds as threat and liberation today. It is a threat to all leaders and authorities who wish to be god, to subjugate and hold absolute power. It is liberating to those who come to trust that God, this God as understood through the particularity of Jesus, frees persons from any obligation to comply or to conform to established institutional norms. This freedom is a gift. And when people hear it in relationship to God everything changes. No wonder when “many of those who heard the word believed numbered about five thousand”. This Word, this way of God, is a power that frees, and creates a community in God who can celebrate a God whose Spirit is poured out on ALL flesh.

Peace, David