Acts 5:27-41

Easter 2 - Year C 

Acts 5:27-41

Any current religious organization has an investment in the past being continued into the future. This keeps current leaders in place. Should there be a challenge to the past that has arrived in the present (a burning-bush focused Moses, a manger and empty grave way of Jesus, or your own experience) it must be dealt with by insisting only current religious rule will help us simply survive.

A quick look will reveal that no religious organization lasts forever. Bidden or not, G*D will not be constrained by survivalist rules.

While not everyone needs to be able to articulate a future appreciative of the past, but not bound by it, everyone is capable of playing the role of St. Gamaliel (Feast Day, August 3) to encourage careful thinking. Knowing your history (here tracing Theudas and Judas the Galilean and bringing to mind others) remind us to look again lest we end up denying G*D and making martyrs - a deadly duo to resistant souls both individual and religio-institutional.

Where today would you counsel listening for G*D? You might try asking “What’s behind this piece of news?” and “What more than eye can see is going on here?” These aid us in not falling prey to lowest-common-denominator responses or entrenching our penchant to deny G*D room to move beyond our past understandings of G*D. Go ahead, be a Gamaliel — if you can’t join the resistance, the movement of a new day, at least allow the possibility that more is going on than a simple narrative of prevailing power.