This sermon was preached on Sunday 27th April 2025, at St Peter and St Andrew, Corby.

Bible Readings: Acts 5:27-32; John 20:19-end

Wow, can you believe that Easter was only a week ago? Who here is like, yeah, Easter was a week ago? Or maybe you are like, wasn’t Easter yesterday? Or maybe you are so far ahead that you are already looking at what date you will put up your Christmas tree. However long ago it feels, I hope you haven’t forgotten what we were talking about last week. 

Last week, I asked you three questions:

1. Are you excited about Easter Day? 
2. Are you excited about being a Christian? 
3. Are you excited about following Jesus? 

As you gathered from my excitement last week, I wanted us to fully realise and live in this exciting Easter good news that Jesus is risen and alive and living in our hearts each day. It’s a truth so exciting that it will be bursting out of the seams of your life. Everyone you meet will know that you are a Christian because you cannot stop talking about Jesus. 

So, a week on after Easter, how do you feel? Do you feel excited about Jesus? Are you excited that he is alive in your life and present with you 24/7? I hope you do. Jesus’ disciples were definitely excited about Jesus being alive. 

If you turn with me to our reading in Acts 5, we see the disciples in the early days of the church after Jesus has ascended into heaven, and after the Holy Spirit had fallen at Pentecost. The disciples are still in Jerusalem at this point, and they have been telling people about what they had seen and experienced. 

They told people they had seen the risen Lord Jesus. They spoke of how they touch the scars on his hands and his sides. They spoke of how Jesus was crucified, died and rose from the grave as our Lord and Saviour who defeated the power of sin and death to bring forgiveness and reconciliation to humanity and God. This is what they had seen. This is what they shared. 

The disciples, who are now referred to as the apostles (as apostle means one who is sent), were clearly doing a good job of telling people about Jesus’ death and resurrection because they were attracting the attention of Jewish leaders who were now very angry with the disciples. 

Prior to our passage in verses 27-32, the apostles were arrested by the High Priest and Jewish leaders because they were jealous of their popularity as they spoke in the Temple. The apostles were put in prison, but during the night, God led them out of prison, and the apostles then started preaching again in the Temple. The High Priest and the Jewish Council were even more enraged and brought the apostles to stand before the Council. There they said: ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in the name of this man, but see what you have done! You have spread your teaching all over Jerusalem.’^[1]

I love this moment. ‘See what you have done! You have spread your teaching all over Jerusalem.’ In a matter of a few days, by simply sharing what had happened to them, the apostles had spread word around the whole of the city of Jerusalem about what had happened to Jesus. 

Last week, when I got overexcited about being excited, I spoke about how excitement sparks a passion in a person to do things they wouldn’t normally do. One of the things that excitement can do is it can make you very chatty. If you have ever spoken to a child who is excited, then you will know what I am talking about, because when a child is excited about something, they will not stop talking about it. 

My godson, who is two, is obsessed with tractors, and if you ever speak with him, the first thing he will show you is his tractor, and he will talk to you about all the different types of tractors. The boy is two and can spot the difference between a John Deere and a Massey Ferguson. He is so excited about tractors that he will not stop talking about them. This is what excitement does to a child, but also to any person. The apostles were the same. 

The apostles were so excited about the risen Jesus that they had to tell everyone they could. They were teaching and telling anyone in Jerusalem who would listen about Jesus. They were put in prison for telling people about Jesus, and after a miraculous deliverance from prison, they went straight back to telling people about Jesus, the very thing that put them in prison in the first place. But that is what excitement does. When you are excited about something or someone, nothing else matters. Nothing could stop the apostles’ excitement about Jesus from spreading all over Jerusalem. 

My question to you is, where has your excitement spread this week? Has your excitement led to others hearing and knowing about Jesus? It might be through words, but it could also be through the way you live your life – the love and peace of Jesus that flows through you. 

Take a moment and look at your life this past week. The things you did, the people you met, and so on. Having lived this past week, did your words and actions tell others something of Jesus? Were you generous with money or time to those in need? Did your calm and peaceful presence bring a stillness to the busy workplace as people return after the Easter holidays? Could other people look at your past week and say, ‘See what you have done. You have spread Jesus all over Corby’? 

Now I recognise that, for all the best will in the world, many of us struggle to know how to tell others about Jesus. I know some people will say to me, ‘Oh well, it’s easy for you because you’re a vicar, but it’s not easy for the rest of us.’ I can accept some of that.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be very simple, something that we can all do. 

Look at the apostles in our Acts reading. The apostles told the Jewish Council, ‘We are witnesses to these things—we and the Holy Spirit.’^[2] They weren’t giving long, rehearsed, eloquent teachings; they were simply telling others what they had seen happen. They, and the power of the Holy Spirit inside them, were simply telling others about what they had experienced. Nothing more. Nothing less. This simple witness of sharing your experience of Jesus is what will spread Jesus all over Corby. 

Do you tell other people about your faith? Do you tell others about what you have seen Jesus do in your life? Did you tell anyone this week that you went to church on Easter Sunday, or that you mourned on Good Friday, or that you had your feet washed on Maundy Thursday? This is the easiest and probably the best way that we share our faith. We don’t need complex philosophical arguments. Just tell the story of what Jesus has done in your life. The way that most people came to faith in the early church was through the apostles and other Christians sharing how Jesus had changed their lives, sharing the amazing things Jesus had done, and how they had never experienced anything as incredible as the love of Jesus. This is how we share the good news of Jesus in Corby. Tell others what Jesus has done in our lives.  

We saw with the apostles that their lives were non-stop speaking about Jesus, and it was through this that the good news of Jesus spread across Jerusalem and then the world. Will your life tell the story of Jesus? Will you allow your life to speak to others about what Jesus has done in your life? Will your excitement lead you to share Jesus this week?

Is there one person you could tell this week about how Jesus has changed your life? Is there one act of love or generosity through which you could show Jesus this week? What will you tell of Jesus this week? 

Go forth and tell others what you have seen of Jesus, and see what you will have done, how your life will spread the good news of Jesus all over Corby and the whole world. 

Amen. 

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^[1] Acts 5:28 [GNB].

^[2] Acts 5:32 {GNB].