Trinity Sunday: Second Reading, Acts 2:14a, 22-36

Fresh off the Feast of Pentecost, the week has passed and the normal, (well as normal as can be) course has taken us through pandemic, protest and riot. Nothing much is normal these days in our country, and following the colossal incoming of the Holy Spirit to the earliest of Christian communities, I’m sure life changed dramatically from their norms as well. Peter in the second chapter of Acts is preaching the first Christian sermon. And on the heels of the reception of the Spirit with some admittedly fabulous manifestations, the fisherman has gone from coward to proclaimer in  blazingly short order.

Do read all of chapter two perhaps before the weekend. But for our meditation today, I’d like a laser focus on the very brief “prelude.” It is even denoted precisely by seeing it written as Acts 2:14a, “But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them …” From that point he is launched by the Spirit of the Lord into a message that brings conviction (Law) and joyful promise (Gospel) and several thousand enter the fold. So much for bells, whistles and all. The power of the message preached captures the minds of people who, with a couple millenia of legacy passed down, come to rather quick conclusions that this fisherman knows what he’s talking about. We like to prod and move and manipulate (sorry, sometimes we do even that) in order to get people “across the line of faith” as it were. But Peter just laid it out. It begins with the crowd mocking and then, “But Peter … standing.” Peter. Standing. There he is before a hostile crowd. The inference is that Peter is standing against the mockery. Just as his Master had done. If they hate me they will also hate you--that had to be ringing in his ears. And just as his Master had stood against, there was also the element of standing with someone: “standing with the eleven.”

It's great not to be alone in tough moments. Dare I say, it’s one of the things driving the protesters on our city streets this week. They are “standing with.” Whatever your opinion on the issues of our day, I can almost feel the strength Peter received from his brethren. United with him in his witness of a God-raised Savior. They were together. Jesus did not leave one man with the task. He left eleven-soon to be twelve-the new tribal heads of the New Israel. And off they were catapulted into a hostile but immensely needy world.

Today’s protesters want immediate change. They wouldn’t have lasted a week in the launching of the gospel of Christ. The gospel is still being proclaimed by those who will stand today against an increasingly hostile world, every bit as needy as Peter’s.  But you and I don’t proclaim it alone either. We have our “eleven.” I have you. You have me. We have a Savior and He does “approve this message.” Every time. From every voice. Peter stood up and look what happened. What do you say we follow his lead?

God’s Peace to All.