3rd Sunday of Easter C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2010

The Jewish Sanhedrin, mentioned in tonight’s First Reading from the Acts of Apostles, was effectively the government of Israel at the time of Jesus and the early Church. It was a council of seventy men – priests, aristocrats and lawyers, presided over by the High Priest who exercised supreme religious power and, under the Roman Governor, supreme social and political power.

Just as the High Priest and the Sanhedrin had had Jesus executed, so they sought to suppress his followers whom they regarded as constituting a dissident and destabilising sect.

As we heard in tonight’s Reading,Peter and the apostles took little notice of them, and publicly disobeyed their clear orders. Theirs was a case of conscientious disobedience, a case of active resistance to orders – though it was strictly non-violent.

When brought before the Sanhedrin, Peter was quite unambiguous, defending his own disobedience as a truly conscientious decision: obedience to God  comes before obedience to men, and accusing them of executing Jesus, as he put it,  by hanging him on a tree.

Peter was firm, clear and assertive, but quite calm and without bitterness. He challenged their actions, but he respected their persons. He cared for them and assured them that the Jesus whom they had killed offered them neither recrimination nor condemnation, but forgiveness. Peter invited them to reconsider, to admit their sin and, then, to accept the forgiveness so graciously available to them.

Peter spoke from his own sad experience. He had sinned, too. His own self-interest had led him to disown, under oath, the Jesus whom he loved. He knew the power of fear. But Peter had encountered again the Jesus whom he had disowned – after he had been raised from death. As we heard in tonight’s Gospel, he had personally experienced, not the condemnation that his action deserved, but the gratuitous, gentle offer of forgiveness.

He had looked at himself. He had owned his sin. He had seen the contradictions in his own heart. In doing so, he had come to know the wonderful experience of accepting forgiveness – unconditional forgiveness – and of being trusted once again by the Lord he loved. That experience had totally changed his life. He could not keep silent about the wonder of forgiveness or about the Risen Jesus whose pre-eminent concern was to offer the world his Peace.

However, to experience the wonder of forgiveness, people need to be able to face the reality of their sinfulness. So, arraigned before the Sanhedrin, Peter could not be silent  about the Jesus who offered forgiveness, even to those who had deliberately executed him. But for his hearers to know the liberating power of forgiveness, they needed to recognise their sin, to admit it, and to trust.

Unfortunately, it seemed too much for them. Their status, their self-importance, even their mistaken sense of responsibility, blinded them to themselves and kept them locked-in to their sin.

The tragedy of the sin of the world, and its power to blind respected and otherwise responsible people!! That power of sin to blind is still alive in our world in all social and political institutions; and, as we know only too painfully, it is still alive in our Church.