Reading
Anyone who reads the passage is immediately aware of the “sin”
of Ananias and Sapphira. That is, in Peter’s words they ‘lied to the Holy
Spirit’. And it is no surprise that in the Gospel of Luke that we see that “sin”
against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven (Luke 12:10). And we could judge
from words of Peter that the very ‘lie’ against the Holy Spirit could be reason
enough for their punishment. But, if we relate the lying only to the level of
deception for money, I think we are trivializing the judgment that befell them.
The judgment goes beyond that, it is; ‘against the Holy Spirit’ that the whole
action is centered. Before we come to this event, we read, that the whole
community “were of one heart and soul … everything they owned was held in
common” (Acts 4:32). Following this we see that Barnabas, who was also part of
the community, brings to the apostles the proceedings of the sale of his
property in its entirety. This was the context in which the fateful Ananias and
Sapphira event takes place. Therefore, the whole event is centered around the
community that was of ‘one heart and soul’. This community was witnessing to
the “resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 4:33), through the power of the Holy
Spirit. Against this community that was functioning in and through the power of
the Holy Spirit, is the action of Ananias and Sapphira should be judged.
In this context of Acts-community, Holy Spirit was not yet
understood in terms of “Trinity” by the community (“Trinity” or Trinitarian
theological construct comes only during the Church councils during the 4th
century[1]).
For the early community, Holy Spirit is the “promise” (Acts 1: 4-5) and ‘power …
to witness,’ (Acts 1: 7-8) about the resurrected Jesus Christ to the world. This
community was the very presence of Holy Spirit, as Zizek explains the Holy
Spirit as, “community of believers linked by agape.”[2]
This community is the living presence of God’s spirit as testimony to the
world. This, presence of God, is characterized by the words of Jesus, as
saying, “for where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them”
(Mt 18:20). This is the assurance of the presence of God in Spirit with the
community that gathers in the name of Jesus. But, what kind of community holds
this presence of God.
For Jesus, a community that can hold the presence of God is
the one that holds no hierarchy, or even to the point, that it even reverses
and nullifies it. Jesus said “whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave
of all” (Mk 10:44ff; Lk 13; Mt 19). And moreover, Jesus’ call to the disciples
is a radical one where he says “If any man come to Me and hate
not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters,
yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” (Lk 14:25-27).
This call is not just leave his relatives (father, mother, wife, children, … ) but “hate” them. We could immediately sense
that, this is the most scandalous saying of Jesus to his disciples. Jesus enacts
this saying by asking “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” (Mt
12:48). But, this scandalous saying of ‘hating’, father, mother, wife and so on,
as Zizek understands, is the real call for a community, which is “the core of
democracy”[3], which negates power structure or hierarchy within the community of
believers. These words are not be naïvely understood, that we should ‘hate’ our
family, but we should ‘hate’ any kind of power construct that tries to impose hierarchy
within the community. And only this community which is free of hierarchy and
power struggles is an ideal community which generates ‘one heart and soul’
which paves way for the presence of the Holy Spirit.
It is against this view of Holy
Spirit-filled-community that the event of Ananias and Sapphira needs to be
read. It is here the ‘sin’ of Ananias and Sapphira becomes evident, that is;
their deception disturbs the circle of community, by introducing the false
humility and deception, thereby, gaining honour within the circle, and
introducing hierarchy. They are not only trying to gain honour within the
circle ‘greater honour than they deserved’[4]. Through their ‘hidden’ wealth they bring in another disruption of “hierarchy”.
Ananias and Sapphira are now above the circle of egal by deceiving certain
wealth from the community, thus subversively raising their position above others.
This subversion of Ananias and Sapphira is, only seem to give to the community,
while taking even more both in Honour and in Hierarchy above others, which is
detestable and it disrupts the circle of the Holy Spirit community. And it is
for that disruption they are removed from the circle.
And coming to the present day, the act of ‘giving’
to the church in various ways has become an exercise in extravaganza. Whoever
gives the more, is honoured more and vice versa; and forgotten or those names
which gives less in comparison to those who give ‘more’. This exercise of ‘giving’
and ‘donating’ for “God” which every church tries to promote by introducing
various projects, right from selling DVD’s to building mega-churches, which or “innocent”
ways of disrupting the circle of Holy Spirit community. Appallingly the church
even preaches that whoever gives more ‘will be blessed more’. This
understanding of giving as means of receiving more than others, by the way of
giving ‘more’ is the disruption of the idea of benevolence and giving to the
community. The blasphemy of preaching “whoever gives more receives more” is
totally against the Holy Spirit community, which is the unforgivable ‘sin’.
Even as Jesus witnessed those who give more (not everything) gave from their
abundance, while those who gave little gave everything. This false
understanding of giving to receive more is “grave” danger to the Holy Spirit
community, which brings in total disruption to the community, by introducing
hierarchy. This hierarchy based understanding
of benevolence and giving is the ‘sin’ against the Holy Spirit, which was
judged so severely, in the life of Ananias and Sapphira.
[2] Slavoj Žižek,
"Introduction: For a Theologico-Political Suspension of the Ethical,"
in God in pain: Inversions of Apocalypse
/ Slavoj Žižek and Boris Gunjević ;
Boris Gunjević's chapters translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać,
eds. Slavoj. Žižek and Boris Gunjević, Seven Stories Press 1st ed (New York:
Seven Stories Press, 2012), 27-41.
[4] Richard S. Ascough,
"Benefaction Gone Wrong: The "Sin" of Ananias and Sapphira in
Context," in Studies in Christianity
and Judaism = Études sur le christianisme
et le judaïsme, no.9, Text and
artifact in the religions of Mediterranean antiquity: Essays in honour of Peter
Richardson / edited by Stephen G. Wilson
and Michel Desjardins, eds. Michel. Desjardins, Stephen G. Wilson, and
Peter Richardson (Waterloo, Ont.: Published for the Canadian Corporation for
Studies in Religion by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000), 104.
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