The Acts of Apostles hits a moment of peace and quiet today as Peter gets to show off the power of Christ as he heals Aeneas and raises Tabitha from the dead. But it is only a moment. We’ve been listening for days to the persecution the Jesus movement had to suffer at the hands of men like Saul. In the next instalments of the story we begin to hear of the internal problems they faced over circumcision and dietary laws.
That mixture seems about right for our own experience of Christian community. There is scorn from without. There is division within. And every now and again something wonderful happens and we know why we bother belonging anyway.
On the good days I love my church and would forgive it anything—stupidity, arrogance, hardness. But on the bad days I have to take courage that what I experience I share with Christians down the ages, right back to the first followers. It’s then that I’m most glad for Peter. Not so much when he is raising the dead but when he answers his master’s ‘what about you?’ with that perfect mixture of bravery and recognition: ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life’.