On Sunday March 14, our yearlong sermon series in the book of Acts continued as we read through the entire fourth chapter of Luke’s text, considering how God might be speaking to us today. As I read through the scripture and prepared for our service, I was often reminded of a movie I recently saw, Judas and the Black Messiah, an absolutely amazing dramatization of the life of Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party in Chicago. If you haven’t heard of it yet, get ready for it to get more and more attention as it was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture (making it the first Best Picture nomination that features all Black producers).
The reason I kept thinking about this movie was because in Acts 4, we see such an emphasis on boldness and how those in power respond to boldness. Peter and John are bold in the way they speak. They’re bold in their public and explicit association with and support of the healed beggar in Acts 3. They’re bold in the face of the Sadducees and the priests. They’re bold even when arrested and threatened.
In Judas and the Black Messiah, we see boldness as we follow Chairman Hampton and his efforts to bring justice to his community in Chicago. This boldness led to the Panthers hosting free breakfast gatherings for the children in their neighborhoods. This boldness led to the Panthers collaborating with other groups like the Young Patriots and the Young Lords, an unexpected and unprecedented collaboration that became known as the Rainbow Coalition. This boldness led to the Panthers speaking boldly against police brutality, political corruption, and vast income disparities.
But no amount of good deeds for their community, no amount of free breakfasts, no amount of cross-cultural collaboration and friendships could outweigh the threat that, largely, white men in power felt when confronted with the boldness of Hampton and the Black Panthers. And so, quickly, they were negatively labeled communist or Marxist or socialist, because those in power who felt threatened knew that words like that could instantly transform perception. The FBI sought to write fake newsletters—as if authored by Hampton—to rile up anger and resentment in the community. Hampton was arrested and sent to prison for allegedly stealing and giving away ice cream to children. The Black Panthers’ headquarters in Chicago was torched and a burned by the police department.
And eventually, Hampton was murdered by the local police in a raid that has long been believed to be orchestrated by the FBI, and specifically, orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover.
Is Hampton really like Peter and John in Acts 4?
I won’t try to make a perfect connection, but the idea of the powerful being threatened by a power that is outside of their control is definitely what this country experienced with the Black Panthers, and it is definitely what Peter and John and the growing church in the first century experienced, at least as we see in Acts. And yet, in the face of growing threats, in the face of arrests and raids and beatings and executions, the boldness of both the Panthers and the church only grew.
For Peter and John, their boldness was not about their own strength or even the strength of their community, but it was about the strength found in the power that they were proclaiming, the power that was getting them in trouble in the first place: the power of Jesus Christ.
Though they were arrested, they were eventually freed. But they didn't know that they’d be freed. They didn’t know if they’d be executed or beaten or kept in jail forever. Peter and John’s boldness did not manifest because they knew they would be released from jail. What they did know, though—what they were absolutely certain of—was that no matter what kind of judgment they faced on this earth, the God that they were teaching and proclaiming, Jesus Christ, had already faced judgment on their behalf. In Acts 4:28, they say, “Whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” In other words, God, you are in control, and rather than feeling complacent in that reality or sitting idly by with that truth, Peter and John were freed to be bold in the face of threats and in the face of earthly judgment.
Jesus Christ faced the powerful. He was arrested. He ended up in the same place that Peter and John ended up in, in Acts 4. He proclaimed the power of God his Father, he healed miraculously—and the religious, the political, the social elites, they were threatened. By the time Peter and John are in this place, Christ has already gone before them. Christ has already stood in the place of the judged.
But for Christ, his judgment led to his death.
And that death that led to his resurrection.
And that resurrection led to his ascension as we saw in the opening of the book of Acts. And that led to the gift of the Holy Spirit being thrust upon God’s people.
Willie James Jennings recognizes this in his commentary on Acts. He says, “[Jesus] got there before [Peter and John] in order to meet them there when they arrived and to guide them precisely from that place of being judged. Jesus never sought to escape the place of judgment. He planned to seize it.”
That is why Peter and John were able to be bold. I believe this is why we are able to be bold today in 2021, too. Jennings encourages his readers to not marvel at the threats Peter and John faced, but to marvel at the actions of the disciples and God’s response.
“[Peter and John] see the threat, they pray, and they ask for boldness. This moment sets the template for the movement, for any movement that is of Jesus. We saw it in the civil rights movement. We see it in movements today. There will always be threats because they are the central currency of this world. Threats reflect the anxieties of the powers and principalities having migrated in the hearts of those who believe that they must control religious and political movements, rendering them innocuous or exploitable. We should never marvel at threats. We should marvel here at the action of God witnessed in this template-setting moment.”
This is what we strive for when we say, “Let’s be bold.” Truly, this is what we strive for as Hope Hell’s Kitchen when we say one of our core values is fearlessness, because our value is not just fearlessness, but it is Spirit-led fearlessness. We strive to lead by example in our community and wherever God calls us, through prayer and through resting on the Holy Spirit. This isn’t fearlessness for our own sake or even simply for the sake of this one church, but it is for the sake of God’s Kingdom as led by the Spirit.
May we enter into this template for our own movement in Hell’s Kitchen. May we pray—and may we pray in community.
“‘And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.’ And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” — Acts 4:29-31