Dropped Dead

Written by Marv Thiessen

Pastor Marv Thiessen

Calgary First Mennonite Church

June 27, 2010

 

DROPPED DEAD

Acts 4:32-5:11

 

What do we do with this story in Acts 5? Tucked into a variety of stories of the success of the early church and the persecution of faithful followers of Jesus is the story of two people who did not exhibit faithful living and who dropped dead right after their sin was discovered. We can look at this story and ask questions about the justice and judgment of God. That was my first inclination as I contemplated preaching on this story. But we can also look at this story and draw lessons about humanity and that can be fruitful for us.

Let’s spend some moments examining the story in order to lay the foundation for our thoughts on those questions. We begin by noting that the story of Ananias and Sapphira is given to us as a contrast to the preceding story. Before we read about Ananias and Sapphira, we read about the way the early Christian church in Jerusalem functioned together in mutual care and unity. The storyteller, Luke, draws special attention to the economic conditions in the church. Christians were taking care of each other economically. They readily gave up claim to their own possessions when it was known that others were in need so that the needy would have enough to live. Christians would sell their property when there was financial shortage in the community and give money from their sales to the church leaders who would distribute the money to those who needed it. Then Luke gives special attention to Barnabas, who sold a field and gave the money to the church leaders, the apostles. Because Luke gives such attention to this act, we may assume that it was a particularly generous act. We may assume that Barnabas gave all the money he gained from his sale to the church.

We know that Luke intends a contrast when he goes on to tell the story of Ananias and Sapphira because the word he uses to start the story is probably best translated, "but." In other words, he says that this is what Barnabas did but here’s what this couple, Ananias and Sapphira, did. They also sold a piece of property but kept part of the money for themselves while they brought the rest to the apostles. This part of the action is not told to us, but they must have either said or implied that they were also giving all the money from their sale to the church. It seems to me that we may assume that they saw what Barnabas did and the positive attention that received and wanted to be known for the same kind of act so they let it be understood that they were as generous as Barnabas. So Ananias came by himself to the apostles and brought money to them, giving the impression that it was the entire proceeds from his sale.

Somehow, Peter recognized that he was not telling the whole truth. Whether God gave Peter special insight or whether the way Ananias acted gave him away or whether Peter could calculate that the sum being given could not equal the sale price of the property that Ananias had sold, Peter knew that he was not hearing the whole truth. Peter’s reaction was to criticize Ananias sharply. There was nothing wrong with Ananias giving only a part of the proceeds of the sale to the church. Peter said the property belonged to Ananias. He could do as he saw fit with the proceeds of the sale. But the deceit in which he had engaged was a terrible wrong. Peter evaluated the action of Ananias as being inspired by Satan and as a lie to the Holy Spirit. This was absolute hypocrisy. Hypocrisy occurs when one teaches others one thing but intentionally lives differently from that teaching or when one attempts to make a good impression on others while actually doing something quite different, with intent, from the impression being made. Ananias was trying to leave the impression that he and Sapphira were very generous, godly people while lying about what he had done and while being intentionally less generous than the impression he was trying to leave. That was hypocritical. Peter told him that he had lied to God.

When Peter made that statement, Ananias immediately dropped dead. We should probably note here that Luke does not tell us that God judged Ananias and caused his death. I think that most people who read this story read this as God’s immediate judgment. And it may well be, but Luke does not say that. When Sapphira came to the gathering of Christians some hours later, Peter asked her to confirm that what Ananias had brought had been the full proceeds of their property sale. Sapphira agreed that it was so. Peter then identified Sapphira with the deceit of Ananias and said that the young men who had buried her husband would carry her out, too. Then, Sapphira immediately dropped dead.

Now, let’s return to the question about the judgment of God. Does this story intend to communicate that God judged Ananias and Sapphira with death? As I pointed out when we examined the story, Luke does not say that. As a result, various conclusions could be drawn. Several commentators I consulted seem to feel that Ananias and Sapphira simply died of the shock of being discovered. Heart attacks could have resulted from their shock. Evidently, some commentators would even say that the whole story is a legend that was intended to give the church a lesson. I think that Luke was too careful a historian to believe that to be the case. I believe he was telling us a story that really happened. Still, he doesn’t tell us what caused the deaths, so it could have been something natural. That would enable most of us to read this story with much less struggle about the acts of God. Most commentators and preachers that I read assume, however, that the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira were the direct result of the judgment of God.

There are certainly clues in the story that would lead us in that direction. The first and most significant clue is that it simply seems very unlikely that both Ananias and Sapphira would drop dead from natural causes when confronted with their deceit and hypocrisy. It may be that Luke’s conclusion also is a clue that Luke considered this to be God’s judgment when he tells us that great fear seized the whole church and others who heard about this. In fact, in verse 13, we understand Luke to say that nobody who wasn’t a committed believer was now willing to join this group of Christians. If the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira would have been from natural causes, this needn’t have caused such great fear. But if the deaths were a judgment from God against people who participated in the life of the church hypocritically, then this great fear makes sense. Another clue lies in the language that Luke uses. This may just be coincidental, but it may be intentional. When Luke says that Ananias kept back part of the money for himself, he uses the same word for "kept" that the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses for the act of Achan in Joshua 7. In that story, Achan and his family were judged by God and sentenced to death because they had kept items from the Israelite plundering of the city of Jericho that God had said had to be given to God. It may be that Luke is demonstrating some kind of parallel between Achan and Ananias. Those clues point us in the direction of concluding that the sudden deaths of Ananias and Sapphira were the judgment of God.

How do we feel about that? Can we accept that God is capable of such an act of judgment? Do we believe this is in agreement with the image of God as presented to us throughout the Bible? I believe these are very important questions. I suspect that for some of us the Bible’s description of God as being a God who loves fully and absolutely makes it hard to accept that God can judge people with death. Yet, both are clearly present in the Bible. Without question, the dominant view of God throughout the Bible is that He loves humanity deeply. But there is also no doubt that the Bible shows God judging humanity and that this judgment sometimes includes death. How do we harmonize these things and understand them in this particular story?

I don’t think we need to elaborate on the love of God. God loves humanity with the deepest love possible. But love does not preclude judgment. N. T. Wright, in his book Surprised by Hope, says that "judgment is necessary—unless we were to conclude, absurdly, that nothing much is wrong or, blasphemously, that God doesn’t mind very much." (179) I expect that we will agree that there is plenty of evil in our world that needs to be cleaned up and that we will agree that God cares about the evil acts of humanity. I believe we can say that God’s deep love for humanity requires him to respond to human evil. Drawing from C. S. Lewis’ work in The Problem of Pain, Reverend Mark Verbruggen, in a sermon on Ananias and Sapphira, encourages us to think of God responding to sin like a surgeon deals with cancer. Destructive tissue has to be removed. When something destructive is going on with humanity, God’s judgment of that is his love at work to bring about better things for humanity. (www.crcna.org/pages/verbruggen_acts5.cfm)

I think that most of us have no difficulty with believing that God judges sin. We recognize that the Bible is clear on this and it makes sense that a perfect and holy God must deal with the rebellious acts of humans. But we are inclined to think that such judgment will occur in the future. As a result, we struggle with the immediacy of that judgment in the story of Ananias and Sapphira. We have a hard time seeing fairness in that judgment. Many humans have been guilty and are guilty of acts every bit as bad or worse than the act of Ananias and Sapphira and they have not been immediately judged. How can it be right that Ananias and Sapphira were judged like this without an opportunity to recognize their sin and repent of it? I think that several ideas are important in responding to this question.

We believe that God is at work to restore the world to its original perfection. That is what the kingdom of God is all about. We await this restoration. Paul writes in Romans 8:20 about creation being liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into glorious freedom. We believe that God is restoring his creation. This restoration will not be completed until Jesus returns and eternity is established but God is involved in our world in restorative ways now, as well. It seems consistent to me that if we think God acts to bring the restoration of the future kingdom into our world at times, then God may also bring the judgment for sin that will reside in the future into our world at times. That’s one idea.

Another idea is that we are to understand this act of judgment in a similar light to the act of judgment on Achan as we considered earlier. That might give us some insight into why God judged the sin of Ananias and Sapphira so drastically when others were not judged in that way. Both stories take place at a time when God was beginning something new with humanity. Achan’s story took place when God was leading Israel into Canaan to begin life under the Law given to Moses. When a human immediately challenged God’s direction and disobeyed, God judged drastically in order to impress on his people the need to be faithful. Ananias and Sapphira’s story took place when God was initiating the church led by the Holy Spirit. When humans immediately challenged God’s direction by lying to the Holy Spirit, God acted decisively in order to impress on his people the need to be faithful. This helps us to understand the reason for this drastic judgment on this one occasion.

That still doesn’t help us with the perceived unfairness in the immediate capital punishment that Ananias and Sapphira experienced. I have one more idea that addresses that concern. I doubt that we know enough about God’s program for eternity to know precisely what happened to Ananias and Sapphira when they died. In connection with that, I was struck by N. T. Wright’s argument in his book, Surprised by Joy, that the Bible expects a post-death state for humans where humans may yet respond positively to God. So, I doubt that we should assume that Ananias and Sapphira were immediately consigned to hell for their sin. We probably don’t have enough clear evidence to know this. But we do know is that God is a perfectly just God. He will not treat humans unfairly. And in that absolute fairness, he is also merciful and gracious. I have no doubt that there is some kind of fair destiny for those who have rejected God. But God, in his justice, makes that decision. I don’t have to assume that that’s what happened to Ananias and Sapphira when they died and then question God’s fairness. I will believe that from an eternal perspective God will treat them with a just mercy.

I find those various ideas about judgment helpful as I contemplate a biblical story where it appears that God acts with drastic judgment. I hope those ideas are helpful to you. But I don’t want our grappling with the justice of God to be the only thing we take from the story of Ananias and Sapphira.

I said at the outset that this story also tells us something about humanity. In Acts to this point, the Christian church has been presented as a remarkably united, caring community living together in integrity. They have the external problem of being persecuted by Jewish religious leaders but the church is living together remarkably well. With this story, Luke demonstrates to us that the church of Christ was not a perfect body. But when it failed to be perfect so quickly, God didn’t write it off. He continued to work with imperfect humans within the church. Two thousand years later, we recognize that not all the people in the church are going to do the right things all of the time. If this early church so enthused and infused by the power of the Holy Spirit managed to mess up its life together, we can expect that to continue. But we can also expect the grace of God to continue to work with his church. So, let’s not write off the church when we observe hypocrisy in the church. Let’s rather recognize that humans will fail and then carry on being the church, encouraging each other on to being faithful to God.

This story also focuses our attention on God’s desire for his people to live with integrity. As we discussed earlier, it appears clear that what Ananias and Sapphira did wrong was to act hypocritically. When we think of the way that Jesus related to humans while on earth, we recognize that the thing he responded to most critically was the hypocrisy of religious leaders. We draw from that a call to be people of integrity, living with intent to conform our actions to what we say we believe as Christians.

I think we should draw another lesson from this story and that is that our economic decisions are important. Ananias and Sapphira are not judged because of their economic decision but their economic desires lead them to a destructively hypocritical decision. I believe that Luke wants us to take note of that. Remember that the gospel of Luke has more stories and teaching about economics than do the other gospels. The writer, Luke, had a special interest in the economics of the kingdom of God. Here, his story includes a lesson about the dangers of economic greed. In an essay about this story, Jorge Domínguez Rojo writes that Luke wants to impart the lesson that "money can kill one who clings to it." (Rojo, "Ananias and Sapphira, an Original Sin in the Church: the Eschatological Dimension of Money" at www.cjd.org/paper/ananias.html) That reminds us of the story Jesus told and Luke recorded in Luke 12 about the rich fool who tried to hold on to his possessions but lost his life. Luke would impress on us the significance of our economic desires and decisions. If we allow greedy economic desires to consume us, we may well move toward destruction. We could apply this statement in all kinds of individual and corporate ways. I’ll leave you to think about applications but encourage you to see an important statement about the desire for economic gain that is so common for us.

I asked at the outset what we would do with this story and now you know what I do with this story. It is a call for us to think about God’s response to sin and to choose for faithfulness as his followers. It is a reminder to us to be people of integrity. It is a reminder to us that decisions we make in response to our economic desires are important. And it serves as a reminder to us that God continues to work his purposes in this world through human beings that are imperfect. And so my last word to you is to encourage you to continue to be the church of God, faithfully participating in his renewing and restoring work in the world. That word is drawn from the lessons gained from this story and from the various stories we have considered from the book of Acts in the Bible over the last few months. I find it exciting to think about the church committing itself to allow God to work through it as He continues to restore our broken world.