Jesus the Author of Life

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, April 14, 2024
Acts 3:12-19

    This year, I had the opportunity to visit the home of Louis Armstrong in Corona, Queens. He lived there with his wife Lucille for almost thirty years before his death in 1971.  The house is preserved as it was, an impressive yet surprisingly middle-class home in a residential area, three bedrooms, two baths, very ‘60s décor.  As the tour guide leads you through the house, he plays small recordings that Louis had made about himself and the house, almost as if Louis knew that people would one day fifty years later be touring his house to learn about his life and the history of jazz in America.  Despite being a relatively humble person, he knew that he would leave a legacy, and he wanted to be sure to help tell his own story through these recordings for future generations.  The tour definitely left an impression on me.
    While you may not be famous, what do you want your legacy to be?  If you could write a book about yourself, or make a recording, what would you want people to know fifty or even one hundred years from now, even if it’s only your own descendants?  And to carry it further, what is the legacy we want to leave behind as Christians in 2024 in regards to our faith in Jesus?  How have we built on the foundation of the apostles and ancestors of our faith to continue to witness and share the good news of Christ today?  How does the power of the first Easter story and the stories we read in the scriptures continue to influence our lives today?
    Peter calls Jesus the Author of life in our first reading from Acts today.  He begins preaching immediately after curing a man who had been lame from birth so that he can walk.  Peter and John are arrested and imprisoned for their preaching in the temple after this, but Acts 4 tells us that despite these risks, about 5000 people believe and begin to follow Christ after witnessing this healing and hearing Peter’s sermon we just read today.  Peter’s testimony about Jesus is powerful; so powerful that we still read about it and retell it today!  Peter is trying to clarify that it’s not Peter himself who has healed the man, but faith in the name of Jesus.  Even after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, people of faith are able to heal in his name.  This is the power of the Author of Life; this is Christ’s long legacy.  Because Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia, we have the power of Christ, the Author of life, still living in us and writing and influencing OUR life stories today!
    A more common title for Christ comes from the gospel of John which is the Word.  Jesus is the Word, we confess.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God,” we hear in John 1.  Peter builds on Christ the Word to say that Christ is the Author of Life who has spoken life itself into being and has written our names in the book of life.  Jesus has known our beginning, middle and end; Jesus knows our story completely.  While people tried to kill this Author of Life, he did not stay dead; Peter tells us in his sermon today.  Death could not hold him, but rather the Christ the Word keeps on speaking and keeps on writing new life and healing into existence again and again and again, thanks be to God!  In our gospel for today, Jesus connects what God has done in the past – “everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms,” to the fulfillment of God’s words in the holy scriptures through his death and resurrection.  And then Jesus gives us, the faithful many generations after, this task – proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations.  “You are witnesses,” Jesus says.  Even though we have not seen like those first disciples see the risen Christ on that first Easter evening, we are witnesses.  We have seen the connections from God’s story told to us in the Old Testament and the New Testament, in the faithful who have gone before us, and in the every day ordinary-ness of our own lives today.  We have seen Christ the living Word in action.  Now we get to join the Author of Life in telling our part of the story, so that future generations might also come to believe that he is the Messiah, our Lord and Savior.
    We have a lot of books in our house, as you may know, and we have a family of readers.  As a parent, I have enjoyed passing along great stories that I enjoyed or even that my parents enjoyed reading as children – Peter Rabbit, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Is Your Mama a Llama?, ALL the Dr. Seuss of course.  Re-reading these well-known stories brings up a lot of happy memories for me.  I also love reading new picture books with my kids that have become family favorites with new shared memories.  
From the time our children were baptized as infants, we have kept a few children’s story bibles on their shelves which we read together or they read on their own.  I am proud that my kids know these Bible stories well and that these stories are included in our bedtime story memories. And it is my prayer when they grow up that the Bible will continue to be a part of their families’ favorites.  Jesus’ call to be a witness is like that; to consider what we have learned and shared as the legacy of our faith and how we can pass faith in this incredible good news to the next generation.  Being a witness includes sharing the powerful story of our faith.  Most of us have chapters of our lives that remain to be written.  Our second reading from 1 John puts it like this:  “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.  What we do know is this:  when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”  Jesus, the Author of Life, the Word of God made flesh, knows what is to come for us that has not yet been revealed for us yet.  But whatever happens, whatever our legacy ends up becoming, we know we will be like Christ, and we will see him as he is in his fullness and glory, thanks be to God.  Go and tell the story!  Amen.