Sixteenth Tuesday after Pentecost
It's Bible Study day. Read the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11. No, on second thought, maybe you should not read it. I'll tell it to you.
Ananias and Sapphira are a married couple in the Apostolic church. Last Saturday we talked about how the earliest Jerusalem Christian community shared all property and money in common. (Acts 4:32-37). Ananias and Sapphira had a piece of property which they sold. They gave some of the proceeds to the Apostles but kept some for themselves. The amounts and percentages are not told in the story.
Peter discerned what they had done and rebuked Ananias for not giving all the proceeds to the Apostles. Peter said that Ananias had lied to the Holy Spirit. Ananias fell down and died. Three hours later Sapphira comes in. Peter tells her of her husband's deed and death and similarly rebukes her. She immediately falls down dead. Great fear falls upon the whole church.
These verses are not in the lectionary.
The story is as troubling to modern Christians as it was terrifying to the earliest Church. It all seems very out of character with the rest of the NT. I'm not going to try to soften the story or explain it away. Ananias and Sapphira owned the property. It was theirs. They gave some of the money to the church, but kept some for themselves. That's exactly what all of us do. Ananias appears not specifically to have lied to Peter. He just didn't tell Peter the whole story--which I guess you could say is a form of lying. Ananias and Sapphira may have been worthy of Peter's rebuke, but not of death.
Luke does not attribute their deaths to God. Peter rebuked them, but did not curse them. Sapphira did not lie to Peter but responded to him with the truth when he interrogated her. Their deaths would seem to be from heart attack or stroke.
We could wonder a lot of things. Would Peter have given them a chance for repentance, had they not died immediately? The story does not imply that Peter would have. It's odd that there is no implication that God was involved in their deaths. The story does seem to imply that their confrontation with the truth from the stern words of the Apostle, and in Sapphira's case, the site of her husband's dead body, may have induced their strokes or heart attacks. Could Peter have presented his accusations in a less confrontational way? These might be our questions, but they are not questions that either Luke or the story ask. Luke could have left this story out (like the lectionary does).
You can find a moral in this story, if you like--something like, the consequences of not telling the whole truth can be severe. I'm not finding that moral in the story. If you look at the story very closely (I know--I told you not to), the story may imply that the deaths are directly related to Peter's rebuke, but the story does not precisely say that. Maybe thy both just had heart problems. Or maybe Sapphira's stroke resulted directly from seeing her husband's dead body and not from Peter's rebuke.
Luke doesn't tell us any of that. He simply tells the story.
In yesterday's blog I simply told the story. I'm hoping to hear some reactions from some of you to yesterday's story. I've been thinking about what happened last Saturday in those three or four minutes. Perhaps on Friday I'll share with greater clarity than I have now, how I feel about what happened.
If you have reactions to the Ananias and Sapphira story, I don't want to hear them. Okay, really I do.
Tomorrow's blog will be on Prayer and Spirituality, usually on Thursday. This Thursday there will not be a blog, because I'm having a colonoscopy. I will direct Marianne to keep me away from the computer. No telling what I might write while still under the effects of sedation.
Faithfully,
Christian
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