Opinión sobre un recurso

Felix Brito

Aunque "Feasting on the Word" es un recurso en inglés, me gustaría saber si alguien aquí lo ha comprado y lo ha revisado, como para dar una opinión.  Cualquier información será apreciada. Gracias y bendiciones.

DAL

"Feasting on the Word" es una serie que aun no la he empezado a usar como se debe, pero puedo decir que promete ser de mucha utilidad.  Según el formato, da 4 perspectivas de los versículos bajo consideración: Perspectiva Teologica, Perspectiva Pastoral, Perspectiva Exegetica y Perspectiva Homiletica.  Aquí está una sección completa de Hechos 2:14a, 22-32.  No es un comentario en sí, si no articulos por diferentes autores sobre los versículos que se siguen usando el leccionario en ingles, "The Revised Common Lectionary" (RCL).  Dependiendo de los recursos en ingles que tengas, te saldrá mas barato comprar la actualización a Anglican Silver para que puedas tener este y otros recursos a un mejor precio.

Sample:

Acts 2:14a, 22–32

Theological Perspective

The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of Christian faith. Paul says that without the resurrection, both his preaching and our faith are in vain (1 Cor. 15:14). For the early Christian community, everything depended on the resurrection, for it was the foundation of their proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. So, as Paul says, if he was not raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain.
A distinction must be made here between resuscitation and resurrection. Lazarus was resuscitated; his body was reanimated for a period of time, only to die again. However, Jesus was resurrected and still lives! Jesus was raised from the dead; and his resurrection becomes for Christians the opportunity for a new and transformed life in God, and life in the age to come.
The Gospels tell us that there were some questions as to what really happened to the body of Jesus; some even suggested that it was stolen (see Matt. 28:11–15). The shorter ending of Mark leaves the whole story in question, not only because do we not know what happened after the resurrection, but also because those who were at the tomb fled in fear and terror.
Peter asserts that it was God who raised Jesus from the dead (v. 24). This assertion by Peter becomes the proclamation of the community and foundation of Christian faith. Jesus was handed over to those who were outside of the law (the Romans) and crucified, “But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power” (v. 24).
That God raised Jesus from the dead is essential to the community’s proclamation because it stresses a continuity of events. The Jesus who was from Nazareth, who lived and taught in the region of Galilee, and who was crucified and buried in Jerusalem, is the same Jesus who was resurrected and appeared to the community. It was important for the community to show that there was continuity between the pre-Easter Jesus of Galilee and the post-Easter Jesus, because there were those who charged otherwise. Both the docetists and the gnostics argued that Jesus did not have a physical body and could not have actually died, that his death was merely an appearance, a kind of first-century bodily illusion.
However, the Gospels are clear that Jesus was a physical human being; in fact, it was precisely his humanness that brought contention among the Pharisees. Consistently in Luke the Pharisees charged that Jesus ate and drank with sinners. Beyond this, John makes a point of having the resurrected Jesus not just appear to the community, but eat and break bread with them. This is to show that the Jesus who was physically with the community pre-Easter is the same Jesus who is with the community post-Easter. This continuity is essential to the community’s proclamation, because it shows that it was God who raised Jesus from the dead. Because God raised Jesus from the dead, Jesus’ resurrection becomes the confirmation of his earthly life. In Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, God confirmed Jesus’ earthly ministry: his works and deeds, his teaching and authority. In raising Jesus from the dead, God confirmed that Jesus was sent by God to perform miracles—to heal the sick, give sight to the blind, raise the dead—and to teach with authority.
This confirmation would also extend to the ministry of the disciples, as exhibited by Peter and John in Acts 4. Not only did God confirm Jesus’ ministry; God also vindicated Jesus’ innocence of the charges against him. The Pharisees said that Jesus cast out demons by the ruler of demons (Matt. 9:34). Jesus was charged at trial with blasphemy and was executed by the Romans as a state criminal. By raising Jesus from the dead, God proved that these and other charges were false. God also proved that Jesus was not just a prophet (a good man, a kind of noble teacher) but was indeed the Christ, the anointed of God.
In this confirmation by God we begin to see the early development of the church’s Christology.
Because God raised Jesus from the dead, we begin to see the movement from the pre-Easter Jesus of Nazareth to the post-Easter Christ. Prior to the event of the crucifixion, Jesus was a Galilean who preached, taught, and performed miracles. After the resurrection, he is referred to in the Acts and the Epistles as the Christ. The early community saw in Jesus the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament and the fulfillment of Israel’s calling by God to be a holy people wherein God would establish God’s reign forever. Thus the proclamation of Jesus as the Christ is the church’s own assertion that Jesus is the promised of God, the one in whom these promises are fulfilled, and the one in whom resides the promise of a new age to come.
In this sermon of Peter we can also see the early formulations of what would become the church’s early creedal statements. Peter says in verse 25 that David had spoken of Jesus and in verse 30 that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise that the Messiah would be a descendent of David and sit upon his throne. Thus Jesus’ death and resurrection fulfilled the Scriptures.
C. H. Dodd shows this with reference to the preaching of Paul. Dodd outlines what he calls the Pauline kerygma: that Jesus was the seed of David, died and resurrected according to the Scriptures, and exalted at the right hand of God.1 This kerygma can also be seen in the early affirmations of Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr,2 and it carries forward into the later more familiar Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. While these are the creedal affirmations more familiar to modern Christians, these affirmations have their origins in the sermon of Peter and the early proclamations of the community.

REGINALD D. BROADNAX

Pastoral Perspective

“When did God become more than a name to you?” This is one of the “Quaker Questions” often used as an icebreaker in church groups. A corollary question would be, “When did Jesus become more than just a name to you?” The name may be one you grew up hearing as part of your daily life, or perhaps it was only mentioned in the midst of all the secular festivities of Christmas and Easter. Whether by gradual understanding or a lightning-bolt moment, somewhere along the way your spirit awakened to the truth that Jesus is more than the name of someone who lived a couple thousand years ago.
It is one thing to hear the names bandied about in conversation, but quite another to understand that God and Jesus are far more than just names. Indeed, when Moses asked God to provide a name, God was hesitant. God did not wish to be condensed into one small word. In truth, God cannot be defined merely by a few consonants and vowels. At some point in our lives, God becomes personal.
In the second half of Acts 2, Peter speaks to a crowd of people gathered in the holy city of Jerusalem. It is the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised before his death arrives full-force in tongues of fire and in the tongues of all the languages represented by the multitude of folks in earshot and beyond. Pentecost was one of the pilgrimage festivals, so Jews from many nations had gathered from as far away as 1,000 miles. Thus many of the Jews to whom Peter spoke had not been eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and death. They may never have even heard of Jesus of Nazareth. Others had been in Jerusalem at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection, but they struggled with the consequences of these life-altering events. To them, Jesus was a name, but so far, no more than that.
“All of you listen up!” Peter says. “This Jesus, whom you crucified, is more than just a name. He is more than a prophet and a good man. He is the Messiah, the Holy One proclaimed by David and our other prophets. This is the Savior for whom we have been waiting for generations. Every single one of you is a witness to this truth. Whether you saw Jesus with your own eyes or are now hearing the good news for the very first time, you are a witness to what I am telling you today.”
Let Jesus be more than just a name to you, Peter says. Let Christ be your Savior. Hear with your heart as well as with your ears. Then you can proclaim Jesus as Lord and know the joy of Christ’s amazing, saving grace.
For multitudes gathered in that Pentecost crowd, it was like seeing a sunrise for the very first time—not just seeing the sun rise but feeling the sun’s warm, glorious beams break through the chill darkness of the night.
The people were stirred to the depths of their souls. The Bible says that “Peter’s words pierced their hearts” (Acts 2:37 ESV). The good news broke through the barriers of language and culture and religion and social stature and pierced the people to their very hearts, just as the good news is meant to do.
Three thousand people were baptized that day. We do not know the exact count of the crowd, but the percentage of folks whose lives were changed forever was enormous. The number of new believers was more than enough to slow the flow of the Jordan River and make everyone around stop and take notice.
Peter’s impromptu sermon is the first of nearly thirty such speeches found in the book of Acts. It kicks off the church like a bottle of fine champagne cracking the stern of a ship on its inaugural launch. Full steam ahead! There is no going back now, at least not without this good news to share. The Jews from Egypt and Mesopotamia and Crete and Arabia and Rome and many other far-off places took the message of Christ with them when they left Jerusalem to return to their homes.
So the church began, not confined to one city but spreading far and wide with a message that startled everyone who heard it. Who knows how many lives were changed along the way and how many more once the word got out?
One of the greatest gifts children give us is the ability to see the world through fresh eyes. Everyday wonders we have long since taken for granted become fresh and new again. A dandelion is no longer a weed; it is a cluster of fairies we can send dancing on a breeze with one quick puff. A crack in the sidewalk is not a nuisance plotting to trip us: it is a whole world waiting to be discovered. The gentle lick of a puppy’s tongue on our cheek is not disgusting; it is cause for giggles of delight. The wonder and joy of every experience is not diminished by repetition, as many parents are reminded when their child utters the words “read it again” for the hundredth time.
Unfortunately, as we grow up, we lose that sense of wonder and awe. Even our faith is at risk of becoming ho-hum. Perhaps Peter’s pronouncement in Acts is not only a “listen up” call to the people in that crowd, but a “wake up” call to those of us hearing the good news for the first, tenth, one-thousandth time. Every time we hear and receive the good news of Jesus Christ, it is Pentecost, all over again. We are set on fire with the thrill of it, just as the disciples were lit up by the flame of the Holy Spirit on that very first Pentecost celebration.
The question to ask, therefore, is not simply, “When did God become more than just a name to you?” but rather, “How is God more than just a name to you now, in this moment, at this time in your life?” It is a timeless question that bears asking time and time again.

KATHLEEN LONG BOSTROM

Exegetical Perspective

The lection (along with vv. 14–21 and 33–36, 38–39) is typical of Lukan speeches, illustrating how the NT writers used their Scripture to interpret what had happened in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As in rabbinic circles, Luke presents a midrash on the quoted text, providing a proof text for his christological claims.
The lection ignores the context of the Pentecost story and how Jesus’ resurrection is connected to the question “ ‘What does this mean?’ ” in verse 12. In fact, the lection leaves out the “therefore” of verse 36, the very point of the previous verses—that Jesus’ resurrection proves he is both “Lord and Messiah [Christ].” From his exalted status “at the right hand” of God, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit, which ties in again with the Pentecost story. The Pentecost phenomena happen because of what has happened to Jesus: God has resurrected and exalted him, and he has sent the Spirit.
Verse 22 signals a shift in audience from Jews “from every nation under heaven” (v. 5) to Israelites, and the opening lines end with an indictment of those responsible for Jesus’ death. First, Peter emphasizes how appalling the rejection of Jesus was, by reminding his audience of the “deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him.” The performance of “wonders and signs” is a favorite motif employed by Luke to demonstrate the authority of his protagonists (v. 43; 4:30; 5:12, etc.; cf. Luke 24:19).
Second, Peter emphasizes the shame of killing Israel’s Messiah, a title that emerges in the midrash on the psalm of David. Jesus was the long-awaited descendant of David whom God had promised to enthrone (v. 31; 2 Sam. 7:12). Readers should avoid the stigmatization of Jews in general as “Christ killers” latent in verse 23. Luke spreads the responsibility to include the Jews in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ death, the Roman authorities (the actual executioners), and, for that matter, God, in that Jesus’ crucifixion is part of God’s plan. How one construes human freedom along with divine “foreknowledge,” of course, presents a classic theological conundrum (as does God’s sending Jesus to be tortured and killed), but the trajectory of the passage is toward Jesus’ resurrection and exaltation.
Peter proclaims that “God raised him up” (v. 24) and then employs a midrash of Psalm 16:8–11 to show that Jesus’ resurrection is prefigured in Scripture and that Jesus’ body did not undergo the normal physical decomposition. Luke reads the psalm as David’s prediction of Jesus’ words praising God for being at his “right hand” and not “abandoning” him to Hades or letting him “experience corruption” (v. 27). Peter argues that David could not be speaking of himself in the psalm, since everyone knows that he is long dead and buried (v. 29). To put it more crudely, his body rotted. Not so with the resurrected Jesus (more explicitly in 13:35–37, again citing Ps. 16:10). The word “corruption” comes from the Greek text of the OT (for “Pit,” misunderstanding the Hebrew root) and refers to the disintegration of the physical body after death. Luke quotes the last verse again in verse 31, changing it to the third person and replacing “your Holy One” with “his flesh,” thereby emphasizing physicality even more.
The claim in verse 31 raises some thorny problems. The Hebrew text has the word Sheol (LXX “Hades”). As recent studies suggest, Sheol was not the destination of everyone when they die; instead, it was “almost always the destination of those who die violently, unjustly, in punishment, or with a broken heart.” Thus the psalmist is not claiming that he will never die; rather, “he is expressing his faith that, ‘You [God] will not let your faithful servant die an untimely, evil death.’ ”1 However, that is precisely the kind of death that Jesus suffered—untimely, evil, violent, and with a broken heart. Perhaps Luke’s claim here reflects his version of the crucifixion, where Jesus’ cry of dereliction is replaced by the trusting words “ ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’ ” (Luke 23:46). Moreover, on the cross Jesus trusts that “today” he will be “in Paradise” (not Sheol!).
Luke’s reading of Psalm 16 thus seems to insist that Jesus was not abandoned by God and to emphasize the physical integrity of his resurrected body (Luke 24:39–43). For Luke, Jesus died and was buried, but he did not “descend into hell,” to cite the later creed. Thus Luke’s position here goes against the basic Reformed view that Jesus’ agony and abandonment by God on the cross was a descent into hell.
The point of using Psalm 16 is to ground Luke’s claim that Jesus is “both Lord and Messiah” (v. 36). It is puzzling why the lectionary omits the very conclusion to which Luke’s midrash moves. Again, the Pentecost context disappears, even though the conclusion of Peter’s speech provides the answer to the question raised in verse 12: the risen and exalted Christ is the agent who “pours out” the “Holy Spirit,” the manifestation of which the people “see and hear” (v. 33).
Peter’s accusation against those who crucified Jesus leads to an agonized sense of guilt and a desperate plea—“What shall we do?” (v. 37; cf. Luke 3:10)—and then to Peter’s call for repentance and baptism. In fact, the speech moves from judgment to the promise by which the people may be forgiven of their sins and receive the Holy Spirit (v. 38), thus connecting the two parts of the speech. The result is a mass conversion that would make any revival pastor proud (v. 41). An inchoate Trinity lurks in verse 36 (cf. vv. 33 and 17), but doctrine is not Luke’s purpose. Rather, it is to demonstrate once again that movement of the Spirit that drives his narrative, both his Gospel and Acts—and, in his view, all of history.

THOMAS W. MANN

Homiletical Perspective

This choice of texts from the longer account of Peter’s speech at Pentecost focuses on his announcement that Jesus, God’s prophet whom Peter’s audience crucified, even though they had the deed itself performed by “those outside the law” (namely, Roman officials, v. 23), had been resurrected to life by the power of God. In this Second Sunday of Easter, the congregation is still in the celebratory mood of the wonder of Jesus’ resurrection. Five Sundays hence, at Pentecost, we may all worry about the mysterious actions of tongues-speaking, although it seems rather clear that these spoken tongues are perfectly and astonishingly understandable by anyone and everyone who happens on the scene, no matter what language each one speaks. There is no need of any interpreter here, unlike the need Paul will refer to in 1 Corinthians 14.
The larger problem here for the modern preacher has to do with the accusations of murder leveled at the Judeans who are listening to Peter, himself a Judean. Peter addresses his compatriots and accuses them of “crucifying and killing” Jesus, who has turned out to be God’s Messiah, direct descendant of David, the very one all of them had long expected. This incipient anti-Jewishness has caused no end of horror in the subsequent growth of the Christian tradition, culminating in the monstrous Holocaust of the 6,000,000 at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War. What are we to do with this difficulty, rooted deeply in the founding of our tradition?
At the very least, we cannot avoid it, pretending that the rise of Christianity was not accompanied by widespread notorious calumnies and overt violence against the Jews. We must never forget that it was not until the Second Vatican Council of 1965 that the phrase “Christ-killers” with reference to the Jews was expunged from official Roman Catholic doctrine. Nor have many of our Bible translations been helpful for us, continuing to offer readings that portray all Jews as enemies of an emerging Christianity. For example, chapter 4 of Acts presents “priests, the captain of the temple, the Sadducees” (4:1) and later in the account “their rulers, elders, and scribes,” led by “Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander” (4:5–6), a phalanx of religious authorities who harshly question Peter and John, presenting implacable antagonism toward these two Judeans who are convinced that Jesus is the resurrected Messiah of Israel. The authorities attempt to silence the pair and then threaten them with severe punishment (4:21) before letting them go. However, Peter and John go right on to proclaim what they had earlier said, that “Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against [God’s] holy servant Jesus” (4:27) and had him murdered.
This near-universal claim that “the Jews” (see especially many places in the Gospel of John) were the killers of Christ is a terrible problem. Preachers who would use these texts need to work hard to clarify just who is being portrayed in these narratives. Not all Jews conspired to kill Jesus. After all, the earliest followers of Jesus were nearly all Jews, as of course Jesus himself was. The struggle in the emergent church was an intra-Jewish struggle, not a struggle between Jews and “Christians.” It can safely be said that there were no “Christians” in the very earliest communities of the followers of Jesus; there were only Messianist Jews, convinced that Jesus was the risen Messiah of Israel. Such clarification can help a congregation move beyond an anti-Jewish bias and toward a repudiation of the idea of modern Judaism as a kind of “almost-Christian” heresy. Modern Judaism is a whole religion, still expecting the Messiah of Israel, while modern Christians believe that their Messiah has come.
That belief in Jesus as the Messiah is what Peter determines to convince his brothers and sisters of in this speech at Pentecost. The kind of proof he offers of this belief raises another problem for a modern congregation. His use of Psalms 15 and 109, both from the Greek translation, the Septuagint, assumes four first-century shared presuppositions: (1) the Psalms were written by David, the second king of Israel; (2) David was God’s “anointed” (Ps. 2); (3) God had promised to David an eternal dynasty through his descendants (2 Sam. 7); (4) things spoken of in the Psalms would therefore refer either to David himself or to his descendant, the Messiah. Peter argues from these presuppositions that since David is clearly dead, his tomb available for visitation at any time (2:29), then references such as “God’s Holy One never seeing corruption” (Ps. 16:10) and “not being abandoned to Hades” are in fact references to the “resurrection of the Messiah,” whom Peter believes to be Jesus, David’s descendant.
All four of these 2,000-year-old literary presuppositions have been seriously disputed by modern biblical criticism. This is not to say that no one any longer finds such arguments persuasive, but it is to say that many moderns may have difficulties with them. Nevertheless, the result of Peter’s speech about the resurrection of Jesus is that “they were cut to the heart” and implored Peter to tell them what now they were to do, in the light of this new information about Jesus (v. 37). He calls for their repentance and baptism, and 3,000 responded. Peter’s sermon was a successful one, using the materials of his day to make his claims, proclaiming the power of the resurrection in the face of great skepticism.
Might that not be the lesson for the modern preacher? We need to use the tools of our day to announce the power and wonder of Jesus’ resurrected life that has changed everything about us. In our world of death-dealing violence, of haves and have-nots, of those in and those out, the pretty people and the nobodies, we need to announce the fact that death holds no sway over us anymore. That means that hierarchies have no meaning, those who would dominate others have lost their power; in Jesus all things are truly made new.

JOHN C. HOLBERT

Mann, T. W. (2010). Exegetical Perspective on Acts 2:14a, 22–32. In D. L. Bartlett & B. B. Taylor (Eds.), Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year A (Vol. 2, pp. 376–381). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.