Acts 5:17-42, The Apostles Are Persecuted

Saturday, April 17, 2021
12:00 AM 11:59 PM 00:00 23:59

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Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today

“‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.’ But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’”

— Acts 5:28-29

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NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, April 17, 2021

by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff

I’ve always been afraid of authority figures. I was the perfect student, terrified to get in trouble. I hated making mistakes and having them called out at work. Any time I was caught doing something “wrong” I was crushed by shame. (Except in my own home—there I was something of a hellion and my parents loved me unconditionally anyway). The idea of deliberately going against a directive from an authority figure would have been unthinkable to me.

I’d like to think that in Nazi Germany I would have stood up for the Jews, the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community, the Catholics…but I wonder if I would have. In this country, being a white, cisgendered, Christian, middle-class, educated person, I don’t have to fear for my life in standing up to authority the way my Black and brown and LGBTQ+ siblings do. But there’s still a little piece of me that hears about my friends who have willingly been arrested (even if it winds up being largely symbolic) for standing up and speaking out and wonders if I would really be willing to do that.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it. Too many of us are just too comfortable to risk. We have the privilege to decide when and how to get involved. Our own lives and livelihoods don’t depend on it the way our oppressed siblings’ do. But God puts before us time and again the example of the early followers of Jesus who spoke truth to power even at the cost of their own lives.

Exhorting God, light a fire under me, burning away my complacency and spurring me to risk standing in solidarity with those for whom such action is not a privileged choice. Amen.

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