Sermon text: Acts 5:29-42
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Hallelujah.
It’s well documented that the martyrdom of Christians continues throughout the world today. Each year, thousands of Christians are killed, murdered, slaughtered for their Christian faith. But also well documented throughout time is the courage and rejoicing that reflects the joy of the apostles as they left their beatings and imprisonment in our first reading this morning. Here’s a suffering, or a martyrdom, that you don’t hear much about. The first international missionaries of the Missouri Synod were sent to India in 1895. Over the years, these missionaries thrived. Their work thrived, with many mission families arriving and spreading out to plant new congregations and schools in southern India. Their base was a compound in a big city in the south of India. There they kept offices and dormitories, chapels, even a cemetery. And every month or two, the missionary families would come from their preaching stations to join together to worship and to recreate. All these years later, you can still walk through part of the compound, but the compound is now badly overgrown, especially the cemetery. But if you were to go there, you could still read the headstones. Many of them were children, very young. Child mortality at the end of the 1800s was everywhere. America and Germany, the sponsors of the missionaries, were much better off than the children in India, and most places were left untouched. Many of those gatherings included a particular liturgical ritual: the naming of the most recent martyrs, and the brokenhearted families. Then the missionaries would gather together for worship. They’d receive the sacrament, and then they’d go home to their separate labors, to their own mission projects. They went home with rejoicing, counted worthy to suffer for Jesus.
On this morning’s text, Acts chapter 5, it tells the story of some of the earliest Christians after Christ’s post-resurrection appearances. On Easter Sunday, the disciples’ first instinct was to hide behind locked doors and rooms. But it didn’t take long for them to gain the confidence to leave those rooms and to go out amongst the people and proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified. After a cloud took Jesus out of their sight at his ascension, they themselves were given the ability to do many wonders and signs, increasing their self-confidence in telling others what had happened in Jerusalem months before. As Peter said in his final summary sentence on his Pentecost sermon, “Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Such preaching resulted in Peter and the other apostles’ arrest, beatings, and eventual death. But knowing that Jesus had risen from the dead, they couldn’t let little things like incarceration or beatings or the threat of death deter them. Such is the power of Christ’s resurrection. If people understand the message and the meaning of the resurrection, perhaps they take Christianity a bit more seriously. For not shrinking from speaking his name — the name that is above all names — brings surprising outcomes when we dare speak the name of Jesus Christ, and we actually really teach and believe the doctrines of our Lord and Savior.
Peter’s words, along with the disciples’ miraculous activity, not only earned the approval of many of his day. His words and their deeds also caught the critical attention of the council of the Jews. Their response was to arrest Peter and John and hold them in custody until their appearance the next day before the elders, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the rulers. Peter and John must have done some soul-searching that night in the prison, somewhat along the lines of the first stanza of William Bathurst’s hymn, which you just sang: “O for a faith that will not shrink, though pressed by many a foe; that will not tremble on the brink of any earthly woe.” Peter’s response to the Jewish leaders the following day made it clear that he and the other apostles were not intimidated by the threats of the religious leaders. But the religious leaders had gathered together and had ordered the disciples to cease speaking and teaching in the name of Jesus. Followers heard of this, and they prayed for boldness for the disciples, for a faith much like is described in the hymn’s second stanza, which you sang: a faith that will not murmur nor complain beneath the chastening rod, but in the hour of grief or pain can lean upon its God. The enemies of Jesus and the apostles arrested them and put them in public prison. And when they were freed from the prison by the angel in the dark of night, they did not flee, but they continued to preach in the temple, incurring another arrest and appearance before the council — which is where the sermon picks up today, with their courageous response to the council: “We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and the forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” Verses 29 through 32. Theirs was a faith described in the hymn’s third stanza: a faith that shines more bright and clear when tempests rage without, that when in danger knows no fear, in darkness feels no doubt.
Now, in light of the speech and the well-respected Jewish leader Gamaliel and his advice, the religious leaders throttled back their hostility and tempered their plan to have the two disciples executed, stoned to death. The disciples did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus Christ. St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Christians at Corinth, “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.” That’s a faith described in the hymn’s fourth stanza: a faith that bears unmoved the world’s dread frown, nor heeds its scornful smile; that sin’s wild ocean cannot drown, nor Satan’s arts beguile. It didn’t take long for the earthly lives of all but one of those early apostles to end up in martyrdom. All were killed except John himself, spared but lived in exile. During the 2,000 years since, millions of Christians have joined them also in suffering and dying for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It continues still today.
But some years ago, the LCMS sponsored a program called the Barnabas program. The Barnabas program was a program where district presidents were sent for a month to stay with missionary families in Nigeria, West Africa, and further south. The district presidents came to deliver encouragement and counsel to the missionaries. The missionaries in turn shared the stories of Lutheran Christian children being kidnapped, run over by pickup trucks at the church picnic that year, and of the congregation’s lay leaders regularly disappearing, never to be heard from again, and of Christian villages living in constant fear but also amazing, amazing courage as Islamic terrorists raided many of their functions and many of their celebrations. Most striking were the burial services, which ended with the deceased’s congregation, led by the pastors, the choirs, the ever-present drums, marching from village to village and the singing of Christian hymns, in full light of day, the public fearlessly calling to and witnessing to their Christian faith. Today, the martyrdom of Christians goes largely unreported. Some years ago, however, a video surfaced that received widespread public attention. It featured a large group of shirtless, dark-skinned men lined up in front of a large body of water. They stood absolutely still, spaced a few feet apart from one another, their hands tied behind their backs, their at-peace but determined faces looking forward and slightly up, their skin glistening with sweat in the hot African sun. And behind each man stood another man, his head covered, fully clothed, the hint of a scorn on his face, with large machetes in their hands. It was clear what was about to happen. This large group of Lutherans were to be martyred. The fifth stanza of the hymn speaks of their kind of Christian faith: a faith that keeps the narrow way till life’s last spark is fled, and with a pure and heavenly ray lights up the dying bed.
We rarely, if ever, think of suffering, or even of dying, for our faith here in the West. Although we too are regularly tempted and challenged by the devil and his minions, who would gladly take our life, our goods, our fame, our child, our wife, and most of all our Christian faith. Evil activity is always going on around us, but we in the West don’t pay much attention to it. Sometimes we even see and feel evidence of it, but it passes quickly. But for us, at least for now, it’s rare that we or our loved ones find ourselves in serious physical danger as a result of our Christian faith. Certainly nothing like those Christians in the Nigerian village. We are tempted to remain quiet and to mind our own business, shying away from voicing our Christian convictions, often even within our own families. And when we do, we are missing opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In the final two sentences of our text this morning, we are reminded that we are missing out on something else. After their beatings, the apostles left the council. They weren’t moaning and groaning because of the physical pain that they suffered, the treatment at the hands of the religious leaders. They were not angry, declaring that the thirty-nine lashes were the last straw, and not panicking, quietly taking their families and leaving Jerusalem instead. The text says, quote, verse 41: “They, the apostles, after being beaten, left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name of Jesus.” And behind their rejoicing was a sense of accomplishment that belongs to everyone who gives witness to Christ as God’s Son and as our Savior. To be sure, not everyone can speak like an angel or preach like Paul, but everyone can tell the story of Christ’s love and that he died for all. Even in their suffering, the enemies of the gospel couldn’t shut the apostles up. Every day they were in the temple, and going from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that Christ is Jesus. Verse 42.
Interestingly, the final verses of the epistle today have three important considerations for the Christian as they contemplate whether they should bear witness or keep silent. The first is the importance of enduring trials to test the genuineness of our faith. That’s spoken about in 1 Peter 1:6 and 7. Second, the satisfaction and joy experienced when one’s faith has been successfully tested by fire. And third, the joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory — 1 Peter 1:9 — experienced by those who love him, believe in him, and witness to him — 1 Peter 1:8.
What remains for us to do is to pray that last stanza, the final hymn: O for a faith that will not shrink. The last stanza: O Lord, give us such a faith as this. And when whatever may come, we’ll taste now the hallowed bliss of our eternal home. Amen. For your sake and mine, our sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.