It's a Wonderful Afterlife
Scripture Reading: Acts 4:5-12
I imagine that most of you, if not all, have seen the classic Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s pretty much inescapable at Christmastime. If by chance you haven’t seen it, or if it’s been a while since you last saw it, here is a brief synopsis.
The movie stars Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a man who sacrifices his youthful dreams of exploring the world and making a name for himself as an architect to run his family’s small building-and-loan business. The building and loan is the only thing standing in the way of the wealthy and avaricious Mr. Potter, who owns the bank and most of the property in town.
When George’s uncle misplaces a large deposit at the same time that a bank examiner is reviewing the business’s records, George becomes desperate. Using a life insurance policy as collateral, he seeks a loan from Mr. Potter, who tells him with gleeful menace that he’s worth more dead than alive. Now despondent, George walks to the middle of a bridge and stares at the icy water below. Just as he’s about to jump, he hears a splash.
George’s guardian angel jumps into the water before George can, confident that George will rescue him. At George’s absolute lowest point, after his prayer for deliverance was met with a punch in the face, and at the moment he is about to take his own life, he encounters a messenger from God. God, or in this case, God’s agent, literally dives down into George’s despair.
I’m going to stop there because I want to draw a parallel here between the experience of the fictional George Bailey at his lowest with the very real disciple of Jesus, Peter, whom we also recently saw at his lowest.
How do we reconcile the Peter of Good Friday with the Peter in Acts 4 who boldly proclaims Jesus Christ? How do we square faithless Peter with fearless Peter?
Today’s reading from Acts 4 is the first time we’ve heard anything about Peter specifically since before the resurrection. The last time we heard from Peter was in the readings from Good Friday. After Jesus had been arrested and taken for interrogation to the home of Caiaphas, the high priest, Peter followed at a distance. It was there in the courtyard of the high priest’s house that Peter denied knowing Jesus not once, not twice, but three times. That means that before today’s reading, the last words we had heard from Peter’s lips were, “I tell you I do not know the man!” The Gospels tell us that after denying his teacher, as Jesus had told him he would do, Peter went out and wept bitterly.
How then do we reconcile the Peter of Good Friday with the Peter that we encounter today in the Book of Acts, a Peter who boldly proclaims Jesus Christ? How do we square faithless Peter with fearless Peter?
Let’s begin by returning to the passage from Mark that we read on Easter Sunday. If you remember, the women went to the tomb expecting to anoint the dead body of Jesus, but his body was not there. The angel who was there told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. He also gave them instructions. “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you” (Mk. 16:7).
Did you hear it? Go, tell his disciples and Peter. The angel could’ve simply said, “Go tell the disciples.” After all, Peter is one of the disciples, but he singles out Peter for special attention. Those two little words—and Peter—tell us all we need to know about where Peter’s mind is at. They tell us that the angel knows that Peter in particular needs to hear the good news that his denial of Jesus will not be the last word.
How eager is Peter to hear the good news? To see, let’s turn to Luke’s account of the resurrection. In Luke, when the women visit the disciples and tell them of the empty tomb, they dismiss it. Luke writes, “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe it” (Lk. 24:11). All except one, that is.
Luke continues, “But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened” (Lk. 24:12).
Peter was a broken man, a man who lived with the shame of having done the very thing that he had promised Jesus he would never do. “Even though I must die with you,” he had declared, “I will not deny you” (Matt. 26:35), which was soon followed by, “I do not know the man.” The denial followed so swiftly after the vow that it would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.
Peter was for all intents and purposes dead, his denial of Jesus having killed the man he imagined himself to be. Think what that must have done to his sense of self! He must have been shattered. The Peter who had instantly left his fishing boat to answer Jesus’s call was a distant memory. The Peter who, with great spiritual insight, had declared that Jesus was the Messiah, was no more. The Peter who had vowed never to deny Jesus was now a phantom. In his place was Peter the denier. Peter the coward. Peter the faithless.
All that’s left of Peter between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is a hollow man. A broken man. A man who will seemingly live out the remainder of his days in the shadow of his failure and shame.
Imagine having to drop all of the comforting lies you tell about yourself—even to yourself. Imagine confronting yourself at your worst. What if rather than an endless series of achievements and highlights our social media posts were honest reflections of who we actually are?
Or what if we had to take an inventory of all of the ways that we have denied Jesus? Forget three times! We’re not talking single digits here. We’d need a calculator to add up all the denials. And not just a regular calculator either, but one of those scientific calculators that calculates square roots and has extra digits!
But the resurrection of Jesus from the dead forever changes the calculus of sin and death. The “wages of sin equal death,” Paul writes, but with the resurrection God has added another element to that equation. “The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).
That gift of eternal life that is given to believers in Christ through his death and resurrection is not a gift that we must wait until after death to unwrap. We get a sneak peak right now in this life. You see, eternal life, as the Bible speaks of it, is a life lived in Jesus Christ. A life lived with Jesus in eternity—absolutely—but also a life lived with Jesus even now through his Holy Spirit.
And that brings us—finally!—to the passage at hand, Acts 4. The main topic of the Book of Acts is the early church—how it came into being and how it grew and spread throughout the known world. The formation and growth of the church was due to the empowering work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of individual believers and in the collective life of the church.
A prime example of that empowering, enlivening work is that former fisherman and faithless disciple and denier of Christ, Simon Peter. Here in Acts 4 we see Peter like we haven’t seen him since before the resurrection—bold, confident, and courageous, even. He is at the moment a prisoner of the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. His crime? Proclaiming Jesus Christ.
We’re entering into the middle of the story, a story that began back in chapter 3. When Peter and John were entering the temple, they encountered a man who was lame from birth. He had been carried into the temple, as he was each day, so that he could beg for alms. When he addressed Peter and John, Peter said to him directly, “Look at us.” Thinking he was about to receive some money, the man fixed his gaze on them. But Peter said to him, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk” (Acts. 3:6).
At that moment the man, lame since birth, took hold of Peter’s hand and stood upon his own two feet for the first time in his life. Feeling strength fill his legs, he leaped for joy and walked into the temple under his own power praising God.
For his part, Peter seized the opportunity of the crowd that had witnessed the event. He began proclaiming with passion and power that this miracle was the work of Jesus Christ. “You Israelites,” he began, “why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” (Acts 3:12).
And yet despite Peter’s failings, God remains faithful to him, and despite our failings, God remains faithful to us.
Peter continues that bold proclamation even now in the presence of the religious authorities who have over him the power of life or death. One of those authorities just happens to be Caiaphas, the same high priest in whose courtyard Peter had denied knowing Jesus. But now, filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter unapologetically proclaims the gospel before Caiaphas and all the authorities: “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.”
How is this the same man who denied Jesus? How is this man, who is unafraid to speak truth to power, the same man who was afraid to say to a servant girl that he knew Jesus?
The answer is, it’s not. Biologically speaking, yes, of course, it’s the same man, but theologically—no, this is a different Peter. This Peter has been raised to new life with Jesus. This man is no longer captive to his fears because he has witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, a resurrection in which he also participates and in which we also participate.
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead means that in the eyes of God none of us are defined by our worst selves.
Peter is at once both exceptional and ordinary. He’s exceptional in that he is the leader of the disciples. We know more about him than any of the others. And as we’ve already covered, he also falls spectacularly. But he is ordinary in that every single one of us can relate to him in his failings—in his cowardice, his fearfulness, his faithlessness—because we too have all denied Christ in one way or another.
And yet despite Peter’s failings, God remains faithful to him, and despite our failings, God remains faithful to us. God remains faithful even in our worst and weakest moments. Christ dies for Peter who denies him, for Judas who betrays him, for all the disciples who abandon him, for the Jewish authorities who arrest him, for Pilate who sentences him, for the Roman soldiers who crucify him, and for the crowds who gather around the cross to deride him.
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead means that in the eyes of God none of us are defined by our worst selves. We have been given new life in him who was raised from the dead for us. To the believer in Jesus Christ, life after death does not wait for death. Through his resurrection, we catch a glimpse of the afterlife even now. And it’s a wonderful afterlife.