Easter 2 Year C 2025: Acts 5:27-32

There is a type of extremist who identify themselves as Sovereign Citizens. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, sovereign citizens believe they are not under the jurisdiction of the federal government and consider themselves exempt from U.S. law. They use a variety of conspiracy theories and falsehoods to justify their beliefs and their activities, some of which are illegal or violent. Their rejection of legal documentation such as Social Security Numbers, drivers’ licenses, vehicle registration, and other forms of government identification lead to frequent interactions with law enforcement. As you might imagine, if you insist you don’t need to register your vehicle you might get pulled over. And then if you insist you don’t need a driver’s license, you now have additional legal problems. Sovereign citizens tend to be aggressive and combative to law enforcement when they do interact, and then as soon as they’re in the legal system they file incoherent motion after incoherent motion. The roots of the movement are racist and anti-semitic, although the movement has mostly shed the white supremacist ideology that initially dominated it, so that contemporary sovereign citizens hold varying racial ideologies and include a variety of people.

But at its core, sovereign citizen ideology is built around selfishness. They are people who pick and choose which advantages of society they like to take advantage of - like roads - while declaring their absolution from any of the responsibilities - like being properly licensed. They’re an extreme example of what happens when people think they can live in a world where they are only answerable to themselves.

We, as Christians, believe we are, above all, answerable to God. Peter and the apostles said, “we must obey God rather than any human authority.” It’s important that they say “we”. Not “I”. Today, we’re only five chapters into the Acts of the Apostles. Jesus ascended in chapter one, and the Holy Spirit descended upon the Church in chapter two. That is to say: this is early in the life of the church. It has always been “we”, not “I”. We are the church together. We do our best to discern the will of God and to follow that will together.

Structurally, as a denomination, one of the ways Episcopalians try to practice “we” is as simple as General Convention - the governing body of the church. Every three years representatives from every diocese in The Episcopal Church come together to discuss and discern where the Spirit is calling us, together. We agree together what it is to be Episcopalians. Our clergy aren’t placed in the way in which other denominations practice. While the bishop approves candidates, he doesn’t singlehandedly decide who is best for the parish. As we recently experienced, there is a search committee who comes together and discerns who would be the best fit to serve the parish.

As a parish, St. Matthew’s does our best to practice this by not making unilateral decisions. For example, we have a vestry who makes financial decisions for the parish. And our outreach committee discerns ways in which the parish can serve and interact with those outside our walls.

The best example of how the church actively listens for the Spirit together is in vocational discernment. It is something I wish we did better for folks outside of discerning for Holy Orders. If you want to become clergy in The Episcopal Church, there is a several step process, two steps of which involve different groups of people affirming that they hear God’s call to you. Unlike other fields, you can’t just say, “I think I’d like to be a priest” and apply to seminary and go without diocesan approval. You have to have the support of the requisite groups who, as Father Steve says, “hold you up to the light to see if they can see the watermark of Jesus on you”. It can be frustrating and it can seem unreasonably long and complicated. But on the other side of the process, we have clergy who are as certain as one can be that this is the call that God has put on their lives.

All of these are ways in which we, as groups, try to discern God’s will for us. Since we can’t sit down and chat with God, we do a better job of determining what we’re called to do by coming together. First of all, it gets everyone on the same page as much as possible. Secondly, it helps protect the church from one person claiming to receive special messages from God or having an authority that no one else senses.

None of these examples, in and of themselves, put us at odds with “human authority” in the way in which the apostles are facing in our reading from Acts. But they can. If we discern that what God is calling us to do is different from what society or what the government considers acceptable, then we are obligated to follow what it is that God would have us do. Sometimes we are called to advocate within the boundaries of places like the legislature. Sometimes we are called to protest. Sometimes we are called to shake things up. Have you ever seen a picture of protesting people being arrested in their habits or clericals or some visual sign of their faith? Those are pictures worth a thousand words. You are left with no questions about why they are making the statement they are making, and how important they feel it is to witness in this way.

In the blessings and woes in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.” (6:22-23) Rejoice is what Paul and Silas did in Acts 16, following their own arrest on account of Jesus: “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” (16:25) While we don’t know exactly what it was that Paul and Silas were singing, it would seem out of character for them to be weeping and gnashing teeth. I would imagine they would be singing psalms. And even the psalms of lamentation all (with exactly one exception) end with praise to the Lord. Paul and Silas know the importance of not just witnessing, but of showing that they are doing so in the joy of proclaiming our resurrected Lord.

We are called to discern, together, what it is that we are to do in order to proclaim Jesus in our time. It can be hard. It can be embarrassing. It can be uncomfortable. That’s another reason why we do it together; to, in the words of the letter to the Hebrews, “provoke one another to love and good works”. To help one another stay strong and confident in our knowledge that we are following God’s call on our lives and our mission. Amen.