Thoughts on Monday’s Text
In Peter’s speech, God’s impartiality has very little to do with God’s loving acceptance of all people. This is not to say that God does not love, but we do not want to turn Peter’s statement in Acts into something particularly Johannine or Pauline. Indeed, one mines Acts in vain to find support for mention of God’s love. One can try to put this into the sphere of God’s love, but that would risk emphasizing a component of God’s acceptance that Acts does not emphasize.
It is important to continue with Peter in verse 35: “but in every nation anyone who fears (God) and does what is right is acceptable to (God).” Taken together with verse 35, Peter’s point is that ethnic identity cannot define who can rightly fear God and work justice (“work dikaiosune” or “do what is right”).
Peter’s realization finds its meaning amid first century life that thrived on ethnically defined distinctions. It was common to define God’s favored in terms of ethnic association and demarcate the “ethical” and the “just” along the same lines. Non-participation in Greek life and culture revealed one as unlearned in divine things and unvirtuous; those who were not yet graced by Roman life, law, and order remained theologically misguided barbarians.
God’s initiative challenges us to live and think as if others’ ways of living — not just of different ethnic groups, but of those less educated or of a different political persuasion — can display the fear of God and working of justice in their own ways and contexts, without thinking they need to be informed about the correct ways to do it by “us” who think we might have the upper hand on understanding God’s ways. We are forced to consider the narrowness and short-sightedness of our own vision and the breadth and depth of God’s.
It is also important to recognize that Peter’s speech does not serve to relativize ethnic identity and manner of life so that they become arbitrary or insignificant. Peter’s speech actually confesses the value of ethnic and social particularity in service to God’s mission in Christ. The “other” need not become like me; likewise, I should feel no compulsion to change. In Peter’s speech, the resurrection brings a new reality where Jew and Gentile as themselves contribute to a diverse witness to God’s mission in Christ.
Jesus is risen indeed! This message gives eternal hope. In this week’s text, however, the resurrection also shakes the present world, bringing a new outlook. As we proclaim the promise of the resurrection, let us also proclaim the power of the resurrection, a power that changes how we evaluate who can fear God and work justice in Jesus’ name.