May 5: Overturning Authority

Now when they (the high priests) saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus. (Act 4:13)

As it was with Jesus – so it is with his followers. When they heal people the crowds are amazed, and the priests get upset. And we could simply chalk this up to a straight forward text… the Jewish priests prefer not to have “Jesus-followers” healing people and attracting attention. But…

I just seldom want to leave it as straight forward reading when there are strange little additions at play… additions like this line of the text – “and (the priests) realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men.”

Why say something like that? If the text is simply about Jews verses Jesus-followers… or hierarchy trying to keep the power and divine access to themselves, then it is hardly worthy of note that they aren’t educated men. That would simply be extraneous information.

However, it is worth noting that fact if there is one more thing at play here - a class struggle… a struggle between those of privileged learning and those who are manual laborers, blue collar workers, trades-people … those whose work and social standing doesn’t give them access to education.

Here in this little phrase, “realized they were uneducated,” we see one of the great tensions of the life of faith and the church. For whatever reason faith and religion has a tendency towards professionalism – certain people trained to have the technical knowledge, sense of history, intuition and spiritual awareness to be authorities on scripture and the life of faith. Everyone else? They are supposed to sit and learn and do as the authorities tell them.

This was not simply a problem in biblical times – it’s a problem for us today. The problem works both ways as well… it’s a problem when the “educated” think they have some authority on God and the religious life that the “uneducated” do not have. It’s also a problem when the supposedly “uneducated” cede such authority, and responsibility, to the religious professionals.

We can back to the amazing unpredicatableness of God – that in Jesus Christ God called no religious professionals (even Paul later on was truly a tent maker by trade, though he had received an elite education) but called those we might know as the working poor to be his disciples… and apostles. I read a great book a couple years ago that followed liberation theology to the point of saying that we probably ought to spend a lot more time listening to the working poor (and the disenfranchised people of the world) and how they interpret scripture – than we do to the so called religious professions (you know – people like me!).

That those whose lives interacts with all the ups and the downs of living – that those whose lives understand on the deepest levels injustice, brokenness, and poverty have a keen and necessary insight into God and God’s word that no one of privilege can replicate. You cannot learn faith or faithfulness from a book… or a teacher… or through any vicarious learning. You have to live it.

I think buried in this text (with just a tease of evidence poking out to draw the eye) is the realization of the truth of that line of thinking. The priests don’t even know what to do with Peter and John here. They see them for what they are… uneducated… Jesus-followers… workers of miracles! And somehow, unspoken, the priests know that in this situation that they have no real resort – just a lame attempt to get Peter and John to stop preaching. Because all of their learning – divorced from the ups and downs of every day life - is powerless in the face of these two people who have put their lives on the line what they believe. And they believe it with such conviction that they will not be silenced. Authority goes out the window… or at least the authority of credentials and degrees – instead what gives Peter and John authority is the good news that follows in their wake: the way their lives transform the world in the name of Jesus Christ.


Who do you grant authority in your life… and whose voice are you silencing?
How are you claiming your own authority… how are you an author of theology?
In what ways are you seeking to ground your faith in the ups and downs of life?


Liberating God,
Free us from our need to be told what to believe that we may encounter in the living of our lives the living God of life. Help us to hear the voices on all sides of us to gain a clearer – fuller picture of the life you have in store for us.
Amen.