Back to the Future:
Crossing the Threshold of the Future Judgment
by Ken Wilson
Would you trust a sacred book that didn't occasionally offend you? I wouldn't. A God who never offended our sense of right & wrong, of true & false, of real & unreal, would surely be a figment of our own imagination: no more than a mental pacifier…..
Troubling texts not only found in OT; also part of NT: Acts 5: 1-11
When disturbed by a text we can do a few different things. Pass it by quickly and move on to something more inspiring; shelve it for future consideration; or plunge into our discomfort and wrestle through, knowing we may or may not reach a satisfactory conclusion.
Here's what I think when I run across a text like this: "Who let this in the Bible! Ananias is giving a pile of cash, and for this he's struck dead? So he inferred he was giving whole sale price….does that deserve the death penalty?
And who is Peter to be pronouncing such judgment! He did worse things and didn't get the ax. Wasn't the point made with Ananias? Why did entrap Saphira with his question? If this is the forgiveness movement where is the forgiveness? Where is the LOVE?"
Of course, what's really bothering me is a little more personal. Could I be next? Our worst nightmare! We're trying to be good, and we slip up once and pow! Bolt from the blue! God zaps us and we're gone!
To wrestle with a text we must be honest about our responses to it. It's in the space between the text and our response to the text that the Holy Spirit is stirring, hovering, flitting to and fro.
But to extract the blessing you can't be blinded by initial responses…. We're witnessing the crash at intersection, but what led up to the crash? What's the bigger picture?
A hint from Luke in lead up to Acts 5. Rich people have been selling a piece of property and bringing proceeds to the church for distribution. "Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement) sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet." (Acts 4:36-37)
Levites took care of temple, where God's holy presence resided. The Levites received tithes brought to temple; here, a Levite is bringing a gift to church; is there something greater than the temple here?
Does sudden outbreak of judgment in Acts 5 remind us of anything that happened before? A few dramatic cases….
Memorable because they are exceptional. Normally people complain God is too slow to judge. People could get away with anything! He lets nations get away with murder! The wicked fat cats prosper. Justice is slow in coming, not quick--that was the wrap on God.
Except these few times, all involving the temple. Remember when ark of covenant being returned to temple after Philisitine captivity…. and poor Uzzah, who wasn't authorized to touch holy things, put out his hand to steady the ark….and died on the spot? (2 Samuel 6: 6-9)
King David so angry, he wouldn't bring the ark back for 3 months. But this wasn't about Uzzah so much as the Ark of the Covenant. Even though it was in Philistine hands, the holy presence of God in the ark wasn't diminished one iota. But still….
Leviticus 10: 1-3
Could something like this be happening in Acts 5? Something greater than the temple is here and not to be trifled with.
These are very first days of church. Luke is selecting events that tell us something essential about this new reality.
The Spirit as been poured out in a new way--on all flesh as in the last days. This outpouring has created a new community.
What is the nature of this new community? Temple once contained Spirit of God and presence so intense only certain allowed near.
Now Spirit is widely available. Does that mean it is in a dilute form? (Similar question with Ark. Did holy presence leave ark under captivity? Was it still potent? Uzzah found out it was.)
Is new community less Holy because Spirit given more broadly?
The holy is something difficult for us to grasp. We've tried to tame the holy, but it will not be tamed. Doesn't mean religious vs. irreligious. Doesn't mean moral vs. immoral. Means separate: set apart. Set apart for a reason: the holy is dangerous.
The response to the holy is not: COOL! It's, WHOA!
Paul said, "From the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made" (Ro. 1: 20)
Nature is a amazing and awe-inspiring, party because it is beyond us, cannot be mastered by us, and therefore, is dangerous. We depend on nature; nature nutures us; but nature also poses dangers to us.
Like sun: warms us, gives us light, but thirty seconds of staring at it sun can blind you. Many things have this danger-potential. Atom.
God has a danger-potential in relation to us.
God's response is not to dilute his presence to eliminate the danger-potential. He LONGS FOR US! He come to us in human form, to enter our world, and to cover us with his holiness. To make us holy so we can stand before him AS HE IS.
By including this disturbing episode, Luke is emphasizing that the Spirit poured out that forms the church is the HOLY Spirit.
It's another case in Acts of Back to the Future. The glorious future has been stretched into present.
From Jewish perspective what makes the future glorious is final arrival of judgment: wrongs righted, innocent vindicated, the evil that clings so closely purified by fire.
"Judgment" is an umbrella term: can mean condemnation, vindication or purification….this burning away process.
As we come to Jesus, we pass thru future judgment; we are declared "not guilty" as he was declared "not guilty" when God raised him from the dead. (Pilate said "Guilty" God overruled Pilate by the resurrection and said, "Vindicated! NOT GUILTY!")
But the evil that clings to us or that we cling to will be burned off us. By the fire of divine love. So we can be in presence of love and live.
1 Cor. 3: 10-17 The fire of divine love will burn away all that is not love in us. By grace of God we will be spared. Our future is secured. We will not be condemned. But we will be purified.
Peter, who witnessed the judgment on Ananias & Saphira later said, "Judgment begins with the household of God." (1 Peter 4: 17)
Part of the future breaking in.
Notice what has been chosen for this awful, exceptional, lesson!
Ananias & Saphira are not murderers. Not adulterers. No heresy mongers or false prophets. They do nothing especially shameful.
They sell a field and donate the proceedings as if they are giving the entire amount, but in fact they have kept a portion behind. Perhaps they saw that wealthy believers who sold fields and gave proceeds were honored in community. They wanted a little piece of that honor
Hey! It's their field to sell. And once sold, it's their money to give!
So they slipped into "elite giver" status when they gave less than that.
It was still a pretty generous gift!
What's big crime? We would call it a white lie. A little religious pretense: Pretending to be & do something they are not.
Dick Beiber once told me, "Ken, it's hard to know who's invested in church and who's not. Some quiet behind-scenes person will be a major contributor and big intercessor and you won't know it. Mean-while, someone who constantly offers his opinions and seems very involved isn't giving a dime. People will serve as leaders and you'll assume they are contributing financially--that's what members are expected to do, surely any leader would do that--but actually, no."
Religious pretense: not some heinous crime, just people being people.
This shocking event--Annanias & Saphira--struck dead when their religious pretense is exposed is a wake up call, isn't it? It never happens again in book of Acts. No examples in rest of NT, thank God. [And not for lack of opportunity: worse cases of religious pretension after this]
The point has been made. And now we know something about how God feels about religious pretense. He flashes hot & angry over it.
In our moralism WE flash hot & angry over the sin of the week.
Whatever sin it is that Christians have decided to get all hot & bothered about. Usually something to do with sex. Rarely anything to do with money. Rarely anything that affects a lot of people.
One of reasons we like to moralize--point out how bad this or that sin is--is that it always makes us feel and look a little more righteous ourselves. It is often a form of religious pretense.
[I've learned that when a pastor does a lot of moralizing from the pulpit he's often guy not keeping his wick dry, as father used to say.]
The church for all it's foolishness and frail humanity, is holy. And our religious pretense is a special offense to holy presence among us.
He flashes hot & angry over it. As though it especially insults him and what he's doing.
Having said this, still find Acts 5 disturbing. It seems over the top to me. Too severe. That's all right. David felt angry when Uzzah was struck down. The holiness of God is not something we ever get comfortable with. It's a fearsome thing.
But what if we left our lingering offense aside for a time? What is this revealing to us that we wouldn't have seen without being disturbed?
To regard ourselves and our relationships in Jesus community as holy. Not common. Holy.
"So from now on we no longer regard anyone from a merely human point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. For if anyone is in Christ, the old has passed away, and the new has come." Paul said. (2Cor. 5:16)
God is doing something new. And because he is, we can no longer regard anyone from a merely human point of view.
We go thru life with others and forget people are marvels! Each one a never-been-before! We gather and we think it's "just church."
We've successfully de-mystified church, haven't we? Generational task of baby boomers: prove there's nothing special about the church.
Jesus is special; the church is just the church, though. Then when we're in charge, figure out how to make it successful. We've made it successful, I suppose. Do we know it's holy?
Fact remains, something happened 2000 years ago. Something new was unleashed. Tomb empty. Those appearances. Spirit poured out in a new way. Knowledge of Israel's holy God spread to nations.
Here we are gathered in his Name, not some other name.
Together we are holy. What God is doing among us is HOLY!
It doesn't mean we are good vs. bad. It doesn't mean we are moral vs. immoral. It doesn’t mean we are better than anyone else. It means we are set apart. We are His, not our own.
Our relationships with each other are not our own. Our relationships are part of our participation with God! Our relationships are HOLY!
They don't belong to us, though we are in them. They are HIS!
What we are together is not our own. It is not merely the sum of who we are and what we do.
There are times when we are tempted to give up on each other.
To respond to each other out of our own point of view, our own preferences, our own take on each other.
But in every relationship, a third party is involved. Who is HOLY. And his participating on our relationship makes IT holy.
In early church, when they gathered on Sundays, people came from a long distance. So their communion was a meal. They each brought food and drink to share. But the wealthy brought better food and drink than the poor. And they got into the habit of eating together before the poor arrived.
And Paul was livid about this. He flashed hot & angry. So he said, "Anyone who doesn't recognize the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself" He wasn't talking about the sacramental nature of the bread. He was talking about the sacramental nature of the church.
This word, by the way, is not for those who are exploring faith.
This is for those who have taken the plunge, have been baptized into the body, by public identification with the head of the body….
This is for those who, like Ananias and Saphira, write the checks, make the body work, who see perhaps, how the sausage is made
and are tempted to forget: this is not our club, this is His body.
We are not allowed to simply operate by our own point of view, preferences, perspectives.
Ananias & Saphira didn't recognize the body.
Their post-mortem advice to us would be: don't make the same mistake. Recognize the body. This is not your club. This is his body.
For all your collective foolishness and frailty, you are together as a body because you have been summoned. The fire of love that binds the Holy Trinity as one, flows between and among you.