We Cannot Stop Talking About What We Saw

Peter and John were still preaching in the temple courtyard, and the man who had never walked until that afternoon was still hanging on to Peter's arm, when the guards pushed through.

Behind them marched the priests and the Sadducees. (The Sadducees did not believe dead people ever come back to life, so a sermon about Jesus rising was the last thing they wanted to hear.)

"That's enough!" they snapped, and they locked Peter and John up for the night. But the words had already gone out. The believers now numbered about five thousand men.

The next morning the rulers packed the council room, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas among them, the very men who had handed Jesus over to be killed. Not long before, in Caiaphas's own courtyard, Peter had warmed his hands by a fire and told a servant girl he had never known Jesus.

Now Peter and John stood in the middle, with the healed man beside them. "By what power did you do this?" the rulers demanded. "In whose name?"

Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit, and this time he did not say he never knew Jesus.

"Are you asking us about a kind thing done for a man who couldn't walk?" he said. "Then everyone in Israel should know. This man stands here healed by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. You crucified him. God raised him from the dead."

"Jesus is the stone you builders threw away," Peter went on, "and God has made him the cornerstone. There is no other name under heaven that can save us."

(A cornerstone is the first stone a builder lays, and every wall lines up with it.)

The rulers stared. Fishermen, with no schooling and hands that smelled of nets. Then they recognized them. These two had been with Jesus.

And there stood the man, on his own two feet. (He was more than forty years old, and it is very hard to tell people nothing happened when the something is standing in the middle of your room.)

So the rulers sent everyone out and put their heads together. "What are we going to do with these men?" they grumbled. "All Jerusalem knows about this. We can't say it didn't happen. We'll warn them, so it spreads no further."

They called Peter and John back in. "Not one more word about Jesus. Not to anyone!"

"You decide whether God wants us to obey you or obey him," Peter and John answered. "As for us, we cannot stop talking about what we have seen and heard."

The rulers threatened them some more, but with the whole city praising God, they could find no way to punish them. So they let them go, and the two fishermen went back to their friends.

The council had its warning, but a warning is only words. These same men had already done far worse to Jesus. They had thrown him out, the way builders toss a crooked stone on the rubbish heap, and they had seen him killed and buried. It had not stopped him. He came up out of the grave, and no council room could keep his name locked in.

Every person who believed in him was fitted into a new kind of house, built of living people instead of cut stone, and the building has never stopped. Jesus holds up the corner, the stone the builders threw away.