Sermon: All the Languages

First Presbyterian Church

May 28, 2023, Pentecost A

Numbers 11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21

 

All the Languages

 

 

One of the things that sometimes needs to be set straight about Pentecost is that no, this is not the first time the Holy Spirit is invoked in scripture. Today's first reading provides one such counterexample, as a stressed-out Moses pleads for help and God invokes that Spirit to be bestowed upon seventy elders of the people of Israel so that they might share some of the burden of leadership. That Spirit's appearance is made manifest in an outburst of frenetic prophesying, one that spills over to include two men back in the camp, not numbered among those seventy. Joshua (in a typical fit of church leadership) wants to have those two men silenced and that unexpected outburst of Holy Spirit squelched, but Moses (in a typical fit of pastoral weariness) stuffs that idea, crying out that he wished everyone could prophesy. It's not how we typically expect to see the Spirit play out, to be sure, especially since this prophetic outburst is only a one-time thing, but it still serves to remind us that the Holy Spirit is not a new thing as the disciples show up for this Pentecost morning.

While the Holy Spirit isn't new in this case, there are certainly some distinctive features of this particular Spirit-event that are worth noting on this one day of the liturgical year when the Spirit comes to the forefront. In last week's sermon I noted how the Ascension of Jesus got all of four words in the ancient creeds, and in one case the Holy Spirit doesn't do a lot better. The Apostles' Creed, one of the oldest statements of faith in Christendom, has this to say on the subject: 

 

I believe in the Holy Ghost...

 

That's it. Thankfully the Nicene Creed does a bit better, giving a whole paragraph to the subject. The church has some history of not really paying attention to this particular member of the Trinity, perhaps to its own harm; it is the Spirit most of all that is the most direct participant in the day-to-day life of the follower of Christ, and it is this Pentecost in-breaking of the Spirit that marks the ongoing truth of this presence and participation.

Since we last heard from this group, we know that they have indeed remained in Jerusalem as they were instructed. Acts also mentions in an interesting aside that they elected one of their number to replace Judas, the traitor against Jesus whose grisly death is reported in an aside. And they have waited, probably wondering what exactly they were waiting for. Now they're about to find out.

The description itself lingers: "a sound like the rush of a violent wind"; "divided tongues, as of fire"; and then, the sound of all the languages.

Let's be clear; this group of followers is speaking languages they don't know, but that other peoples outside of Judea or Palestine do speak. Ecstatic utterances in tongues that require interpretation (what we commonly call "speaking in tongues") come later in Acts; this event is one of miraculous speech and hearing.

Those tongues matter because just outside their windows there is a crowd of folks gathered in Jerusalem for the festival of the harvest that was Pentecost in the Jewish tradition, a group ripe to hear something good each in their own language.

Have you had that experience of being in a crowd with people speaking any language but your own? The particular challenge of this was pressed home for me many years ago when I was in Quebec City for a conference back in my academic days. The conference itself was held in English but going out for dinner or frankly anything else meant being among French speakers. While some also spoke English well enough to understand me, that wasn't always the case. I'm horrible with languages, and French is one of my worst. At least in this case the worst that came to me was that I declined the sugar I very much wanted for my coffee. 

These people were Jews from, as a Judean would have seen it, all over the world. The list of locations provided here literally denotes a whole range of nationalities from the east, north, west, and south of Jerusalem, a way of evoking that which we sometimes metaphorically call "the four corners" of the world. Before these followers of Jesus get sent out into the world, the world has come to them. And because of this outburst of the Holy Spirit, the world at the windows is able to hear good news, each in their own language.

This is not always a thing the church or the world has taken to heart. The Western world in particular has a particular imperial history of forcing their own languages upon those peoples whom they encounter, or frequently whom they conquer. On the North American frontier, those seeking to drive out or subjugate the Native peoples made a very specific and fixed point of pushing to  eradicate the languages those so-called "savages" spoke. An Indian, in the vernacular of the time, could only be tolerated if every trace of "Indian-ness" was driven out of them, and it was presumed that one of the surest ways to do so was to take away their language, especially in the "Indian" schools that appeared on those frontiers (one of which was just up the way in Lawrence, since changed into Haskell Indian Nations University). The students at such schools were forbidden to speak their own language, being forced to speak English, or possibly French in Canadian schools. This, of course, was in addition to numerous other oppressions visited upon them, quite literally as a means of separating them from their families and their peoples for good.

What happens in today's scripture is the complete and total opposite of that act of emotional violence. Those seekers who came to Jerusalem, thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit, were welcomed in their own languages. They weren't stripped of who they were, weren't denied their own humanity and worth, in order to hear the gospel. One could even say that this Holy Spirit outbreak was for these listeners, the ones who heard the commotion of that sound like a violent wind and wondered what was going on, as much as it was for these followers of Jesus, or maybe even more so. 

We don't really know how it worked from here forward, as the believers (including possibly those who became believers on this day) were scattered from Jerusalem into, well, all the world. There were certainly going to be language barriers to be faced as these followers of Christ spread further and further out from Judea. But these followers knew from experience that the Holy Spirit would find a way for them to communicate with those waiting to hear the gospel. 

Do we have that same confidence? Does the church today, which can struggle with getting a worship service posted onto Facebook or YouTube, have the confidence to find a way into a world of Instagram or TikTok or whatever social media outlet comes next, outlets where exactly the folks who don't darken the doors of the church find a kind of media "home"?

On the flip side, it can be a scary thing to find ourselves in a world where, more and more, it seems like most folks out there aren't speaking our "language," whether literally or more figuratively. While Pentecost can mean an awful lot of different things in the life of the church, sometimes it can be hard to remember that the Holy Spirit has experience with helping Christ's followers find the right language to speak, if we will listen and submit to that work. It might be disruptive, and it might take us out of our comfort zones, but it has been done, and it can be done. 

At the same time, the Holy Spirit also has that experience of preparing those who listen, those who seek to hear, those who call upon the name of the Lord, to be able to hear that word in their own language and to be ready to respond. 

For all the languages, and the Spirit's ability to speak them, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #289, On Pentecost They Gathered; #292, As the Wind Song; #66, Every Time I Feel the Spirit

 

Sermon: Ascension Deficit Disorder

First Presbyterian Church

May 21, 2023, Easter 7A

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53  

 

Ascension Deficit Disorder

 

 

Before we go any farther: the title comes from a comic strip, one that circulates frequently among preacher types about this time each year.

In the strip the disciples are seen (backs to us viewers) looking up at the sky, some pointing, as Jesus ascends into heaven. One disciple, however, is crying out “Where? Where? I can’t see him!” And of course, that one disciple is labeled “Ascension Deficit Disorder.”

Such deficit of attention has been typical of the occasion for quite a while now, even in some of the church’s most liturgical quarters. Part of the issue is that, technically, the feast day doesn’t fall on a Sunday – Ascension Day was actually this past Thursday. As well, the event doesn’t really feature prominently in much of the church’s liturgy and practice – its “public theology,” if you will. Let’s face it, the most attention any of us ever pay to the Ascension is when it appears in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, in a terse four-word phrase. For example in the Nicene Creed we read: 

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

 

And, really, that’s about it for the Ascension.

To be fair, it’s not as if scripture makes that big a deal of the Ascension either. Only one New Testament author takes the trouble to mention the event, but interestingly that author feels compelled to describe it twice. Luke includes a brief account of the event at the end of his gospel, but then returns to the event at the beginning of the book of Acts. And if we look closely, the two accounts…well, they’re not exactly the same.

The Ascension is described, not surprisingly, at the very end of Luke’s gospel. It shares the twenty-fourth and last chapter of that gospel with the visit of Mary Magdalene and other women to Jesus’s tomb, now found empty; Luke’s lengthy account of Jesus’s appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus; and Jesus’s subsequent appearance with the larger body of disciples back in Jerusalem afterwards. The account we read from Luke earlier picks up directly after that event, after Jesus has asked for something to eat and been given a piece of fish, which he ate in front of them in a way a ghost would not be able to do. 

Luke doesn’t give us any indication of time lapse in chapter 24; so far as we know all of the events in this chapter take place on the same day – including Jesus’s opening of scripture to the disciples and their trip to Bethany, where he was lifted up to the heavens in front of them. 

At the beginning of Acts, however, Luke offers some different details. For example, in verse 3 Luke adds the noteworthy detail that after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples over the course of forty days – quite different from the seeming all-in-one-day approach at the end of the gospel. The words Luke records from Jesus are slightly different as well, and Acts also adds the two men in white robes who chide the disciples for standing around looking at the sky. 

While there are churches in this country, and probably in this town, who would accuse me of some sort of heresy for pointing out what looks like inconsistency from one biblical book to another, the explanation here is pretty simple. At the very beginning of his gospel Luke declares to his intended reader, the otherwise-unknown Theophilus, that after noting how many others were seeking to write down accounts of the gospel story as they had been handed down by eyewitnesses, that “I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you” (Luke 1:3-4). In short, Luke tells us from the very beginning that these two substantial volumes are the products of careful and thorough research. To put it in scholarly terms, Luke has taken up the task of gathering material from primary and secondary sources (eyewitnesses and those who had received the stories from them). When, by the time of writing down Acts, he had gathered information that he didn’t necessarily have at the time he wrote his gospel, Luke duly and diligently updated the record, so that “most excellent Theophilus” would be more completely informed about all these things that had taken place. 

Would that we would be so diligent in our handling of scripture. 

So, what of it? Why is this obscure lectionary event worth bothering with? 

We get some hint of that in that third reading, the one from the letter to the Ephesians. When, in verse 20, the author describes how God "raised him (Jesus) from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places," we also see that this places Jesus "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion" of the earthly variety, and head over all the church as well. In addition, the earlier verses of this reading suggest what it looks like when the church is truly living and serving together under that ultimate authority of Christ; faith in Jesus, love for all the saints, wisdom, hope. To understand the Ascension, and to what Christ has ascended, is to begin to understand our place in God's order, and perhaps to avoid getting a little too stuck on ourselves and our own importance. We live under the authority of the risen and ascended Christ; nothing we do escapes that authority. 

As to today’s story itself, maybe two points need to be reinforced. In both accounts Luke records Jesus reassuring the disciples that even as he is leaving them, he is not leaving them alone. Actually, though, the fulfillment of this promise is pretty much next week’s scripture, so let’s leave that until then, shall we?

The other striking point that we might easily overlook is almost buried in Luke 24:49, and reiterated in Acts 1:4. Even as Jesus is telling the disciples that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem,” (or to be Jesus's witnesses in “Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” as Acts describes), Jesus’s first instruction to the body is to … go back to Jersualem. Go home. Wait. 

Wait “until you have been clothed with power from on high” in Luke. Jesus “ordered them not to leave Jersualem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father” in Acts. 

Even as we have a worldwide call, we also have a mandate to wait upon the Lord. We are to go into all the world, but not without being made ready by the moving and shaking of the Holy Spirit. We are, in short, to hurry up, and wait, to be open and receiving and ready for the leading of the Spirit to prepare us to witness to the world.

Does the church, universal or particular, really do a good job of that? In a way that's exactly the kind of thing a church, especially a church in an interim or transitional period, needs to do most of all; wait, listen to Jesus's authority, listen for what the Spirit is saying and where the Spirit is leading.  These days it doesn't seem like many churches are all that good at this, and maybe that’s the Ascension Deficit Disorder we need to be worried about.

For even the highly neglected days on the church calendar, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated); #267, Come, Christians, Join to Sing; #---, When Jesus knew his time had come; #---, See our Jesus now ascending

If anyone knows where this comic came from or who created it I'd love to give them credit.

Sermon: Resurrection Happens

First Presbyterian Church

May 14, 2023, Easter 6A

Acts 17:16-34; 1 Peter 3:13-16

 

Resurrection Happens

 

 

 

The climax of today’s account from Acts is set at a place called the Areopagus, in effect an open forum in the city of Athens in which, at this point in the city’s history, debates and philosophical discussions ranging from the serious to the frivolous were carried out among the Athenian public, with certain intellectual groups like Stoics and Epicureans at the forefront. The name of this forum derived from the name of the ancient Greek god of war, Ares, to whom the site was tied in their mythology. You might recognize this story more quickly if the location is cited by its Roman equivalent, Mars Hill.

The name “Mars Hill” actually caught on at times in Western Christian culture as a kind of shorthand for the open and courageous defiance that Paul is presumed to have exemplified in his speech there. A Google search can turn up a number of Christian-supported educational institutions bearing the name, the most prominent probably being Mars Hill University in North Carolina. Originally given the more prosaic name French Broad Baptist Institute at its founding in 1856, the school received the Mars Hill name shortly thereafter, with verse 22 of this chapter cited specifically. In the King James Version prevalent at the time, that verse reads “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.” I guess this defiant tone must have seemed appropriate to the school’s early supporters, which makes me wonder just how much mid-19^th century North Carolina came off as an idolatrous spiritual wasteland to them. The name continues to this day, and private elementary and secondary schools also carry the name in various locations.

One can also find a number of churches bearing the Mars Hill name. Probably the most famous (or infamous) was the megachurch based in Seattle, which at its peak was the center of an empire of fifteen locations across five states, with a peak membership of nearly 6,500 and regular attendance over 12,000 across those locations. Revelations of improprieties on the part of its celebrity pastor, Mark Driscoll, and Driscoll’s refusal to submit to discipline over those irregularities and violations, led inexorably to that church’s decline and eventual dissolution in January 2015. (It seems that it wasn’t just the idolatrous world around him that Driscoll was intent on defying.)

What’s odd about these examples is that if those who chose the Mars Hill name had read the whole account more closely, or had read more than verse 22, I can’t help but wonder if they would really have been impressed by it at all. Far from being “in-your-face” pushy and defiant, the speech turns out to be quite a model of finding ways to work across difference and find common ground with persons of different religious persuasions, with the real stumbling block found only at the end. 

When we join the story in verse 16 Paul has been forced to leave the city of Berea due to unrest stirred up by a group of synagogue followers from Thessalonica, a previous stop on Paul’s journey. The believers of Berea sent Paul away to keep him safe. His partners Silas and Timothy stayed, while Paul was put on a ship to Athens under the presumption that the instigators were unlikely to follow them there.

We don’t generally see Paul alone in Acts; usually he is traveling with a working partner – Barnabas early in the book, Silas and others later on. But here he is in Athens, all on his own, so of course he’s going to get himself into trouble.

First, as usual, he finds the local synagogue and begins to speak about Jesus there to his fellow Jews; somewhat unusual was his appearance in the local marketplace, not to mention debating local philosophers of the Epicurean and Stoic persuasion. 

His first efforts among these locals apparently didn't go well; some are calling him a "babbler," others are puzzled by his proclaiming "foreign deities" - it's possible that when Paul spoke of "Jesus and the Resurrection," the word he used for "resurrection" was being misunderstood as the name of another deity. Also, while traveling through the city, Paul took notice of the proliferation of idols, and his education as a Pharisee from all those years ago set off a visceral reaction to these idols. At last, though, Paul fought off his gag reflex long enough to take note of one particular idol, for future reference. 

And now we’re back to verse 22, the one in which the King James Version called the Athenians “superstitious.” The NRSV chooses a less harsh translation, instead having Paul call the Athenians “extremely religious.” You could look at that phrase two ways in this context; it could be a simple opening gesture of compliment or even flattery, or it might just have a tinge of winking sarcasm in it – “I see how ex-treeeeemely religious you are in every way…” (nudge-nudge wink-wink). Either way, the audience is much more likely to be hooked in than when being assaulted as “superstitious” from the beginning. 

With that opening, Paul moves to his “hook.” Here’s where that one idol he noticed earlier comes in and becomes his opening to talk to the Athenians about what they don’t know, and what – by their own admission – they know they don’t know.

The idol Paul found was inscribed simply “To an unknown god.”

You have to wonder what prompted the establishment of such a shrine. Were they afraid they forgot one? Was it some strange way of being “welcoming” to out-of-towners? “Hey, we know you’re lonely and missing your local deities, so just in case one of our thousands of idols can’t meet your needs here’s one you can turn into whatever idol you need it to be!” Really, what was the reason for this idol?

Whichever was the case, Paul pounced on it: “what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

What follows is pretty striking for what’s missing as for what’s included. All the Mars Hill schools and churches might not have noticed that in this talk, Paul doesn’t really engage in any Bible-thumping. The things he proclaims certainly are scripturally sound, to be sure. The God who created all that is, made humanity all out of one ancestor, allotting the times and seasons for the peoples of the earth – all of that you could back up from multiple sources of Hebrew scripture, but Paul doesn’t do so? Is he wimping out on “preachin’ the Gospel” or is it just possible that Paul realized that trying to confront the Athenians with scripture they probably didn’t know might not have been the best start? 

As if that weren’t enough, the two direct quotes that can be identified in this speech are not from any scripture, but from two Athenian poets of centuries past. The phrase “in him we live and move and have our being” is a pretty clear quote from Phaenomena, by the poet Aratus (about 300 years before Paul's time), and “for we too are his offspring” could be from any number of Greek sources. Paul has questioned the legitimacy of the Athenian gods using the words of their own poets. Not bad.

The stumbling block was inevitable, though, and here it comes.

First it was the idea of repentance. Huh? What’s this?  In practices that mostly revolved around paying your homage and making your offerings to your chosen deities and, well, maybe not killing anybody or being otherwise horrible, the idea of repentance – not only confessing doing wrong but changing – made no sense in Greek thought.

Even that paled in the shadow of the ultimate stumbling block – speaking of a “man whom he has appointed, … of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Athenian philosophies, to the degree they considered life after death at all, were all about escaping the body - disembodied spirits, not 'zombies'. The idea of returning in the physical body – a body that had died, no less – that was too much. You can almost imagine some of the crowd walking away saying, “dude almost had me until that coming back from the dead bit, ewww...”. Many scoffed, a some were mildly curious, but a few even believed, including one of the Areopagus regulars named Dionysus and a woman named Damaris, who apparently joined Paul as he left Athens.

We can adapt a lot in conversations with persons of other faiths or no faith at all. More than one scholar has observed that the typical tenets of many religions bear an awful lot of similarity to one another. At some point, though, the Resurrection happens. We come up against that inescapable, indispensable, foundational rock of our faith and can do no other than say it straight, no matter what scandal it causes for those who hear us. It is what makes us, it is what makes us one. 

Christ is still risen, no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Sermon: A Lynching in Jerusalem

First Presbyterian Church

May 7, 2023, Easter 5A

Psalm 31:1-16; Acts 7:54-8:3

 

A Lynching in Jerusalem

 

 

Preacher, what are you thinking??

I'd imagine that's what some of you are thinking right now. First official Sunday in the pulpit, congregation feeling anxious and concerned about how things are changing, and you're going to hit us with this scripture? A man getting stoned to death? 

It's an ugly scene, no doubt. The act of stoning a person to death is perhaps not as gruesome or grotesque as the act of crucifixion that Christ (and countless others across the Roman Empire) suffered. However, a stoning is hard to match for the sheer spectacle of violent, even unhinged rage that tended to motivate it. We're not talking about easily-handheld rocks being thrown; these are boulders meant to do severe bodily harm. It was a violent spectacle, one of rage; one might think of the lynchings that dotted this country during the civil rights struggle for acts with similar rage behind them.

It's hard to say exactly what Stephen did to provoke such an ending to his life at the hands of decidedly enraged enemies. We only meet him one chapter earlier, when he is one of seven members of the early Christian community appointed to oversee the distribution of food to the poor and widows of the community; this was done so that the disciples could concentrate on the Word of God and not be "distracted" by waiting on tables – yes, they really said that. (This "hospitality committee" consisted of all men; you know how well that would go today…) Stephen is noted immediately as being "full of the Holy Spirit," and also as "full of grace and power," and later as one who "did great wonders and signs among the people"; clearly, he wasn't going to be limited to waiting tables. 

This is most of Acts 6. As that chapter continues, a group from a local synagogue assembly apparently took offense at Stephen's works, and tried to play theological "gotcha" with him, only to end up thoroughly embarrassed and shamefaced at being unable to withstand his power of argument and command of the Word (apparently, he didn't have any trouble doing that while waiting on tables). Those wounded snowflakes then ginned up some false witnesses and dragged Stephen before the religious council, where he let loose with a stem-winder of a lecture/sermon that must have made Peter proud, one full of Hebrew history (Moses in particular, since the false witnesses had accused him of disparaging Moses). Stephen was only beginning to connect all of that to the still-recently-crucified Jesus when he was dragged away and killed with stones. 

We should note that in one important aspect, Stephen's death is very much unlike the crucifixion of Jesus, in more than just the method of killing. Each of the gospels gives us a detailed description of Jesus's appearances before various official figures -- Pontius Pilate most memorably, but others are included in the different gospels. 

No such official proceeding is recorded here. Instead, Stephen is brought before a religious council, one that interrogates Stephen about a number of false charges that others have made against him. It is at the climax of his defense that members of this religious council charge at Stephen and drag him out of the city and stone him to death. No officials of the ruling Roman Empire were involved at all. To borrow terms from American history, Jesus was executed, but Stephen was lynched, with stones instead of rope.

Stephen's final words have done as much to seal his place in the church's history as anything. First there's the admittedly somewhat inflammatory part about seeing the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God – you can see how his enemies might get more enraged at that suggestion. At the last, he echoes the words of Jesus from Luke 23:34 ("Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do") on the cross, asking that this sin not be held against his murderers. 

But that middle one is of most interest today. Here it is translated "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Again, it's a lot like something Jesus said on the cross, again from Luke: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46). But Jesus's own words are an echo of a verse from today's psalm reading. Notice there in verse 5 of the psalm: "Into your hand I commit my spirit." 

The excerpt of the psalm given in the Revised Common Lectionary doesn't truly capture the full force of the full psalm; what we've just heard adds a few verses to that to catch more of the language of despair found throughout it. Verse 10 offers this: "my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away." Or there is this extended lament in verses 11-13 (here in the NRSV):

I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. 

I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; 

I have become like a broken vessel. 

For I hear the whispering of many – terror all around! – as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.

 

It's quite a lament, as some psalms are, and seems far from relief.

And yet…the very next verse turns: "But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, you are my God." And from there we follow into those two final verses of today's reading, with their note of trust in God's provision.

Whether Stephen was consciously echoing Jesus's words from the cross in his own exclamation, or was directly remembering the psalm on his own, we don't know. What we do see is that, even knowing that his end was near, Stephen did not despair. His trust remained fast in Jesus, and his remembering these words seems to have been a help, in that moment of final terror, that allowed him to hold on to that trust in the darkest moment.

What is it that allows us to hold on to that trust in dark, uncertain times? Where is the connection, where is the foothold that helps us to remain firm on that "rock" and "refuge" that is sung in verse 2? What is going to help bring us back in those times when, unlike Stephen, we don't necessarily seem to be quite "full of the Holy Spirit" but instead we're unmistakably full of decidedly less sanguine fears and despairs and hopelessness? 

On the other hand, what of the seeming, apparent fact that Stephen being "full of the Holy Spirit" ended up in his being brutally killed? How is that comforting at all? Is that what following faithfully and devotedly gets us? 

It's hard not to think of Jesus's own words in Matthew 10:34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth: I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." 

As writer Enuma Okoro puts it in The Christian Century: 

In theory, I like the idea of being close to God, intimate to the point of speaking regularly with God—and receiving clear directives. Whenever I was confused about something, I could just ask God and get clarity on the matter. I’d never have to wonder about what my next step should be. God would lead me and guide me and maybe even use me to get an important message across to other people.

It sounds divine! Except that in the Bible, an intimate relationship with God usually sends people’s lives into chaos. It makes them widely unpopular as messengers; it sends them to the margins of society. It also quite often gets them killed.[i]

 

There's the challenge: to hold on to the idea that even if this call to serve and to follow and to proclaim ultimately leads us into danger or hardship or marginalization, if it deprives us of the comforts of society to which we have become accustomed, even if all of those things happen we are still God's own, sisters and brothers with and in Christ Jesus, and as the psalmist says to God, "my times are in your hand." 

It was only a few years ago that the idea of "serving God" was best exemplified (as strange as it seemed then and seems now) by staying home, not risking being the one who brings illness and suffering to another. Who knows what form it will take for any one of us, or for this church, in the future? Are we at a point where such witness as Stephen's might yet provoke such violent reaction, even from religious leaders or those who claim religious authority (as happened to Stephen, remember)? Or, conversely, are we at a point of wondering if anyone is paying attention at all? Does anyone even know we're here, much less listen to what we say?

Oh, and one more thing, about those added verses from chapter 8: it sure looks like things are going from bad to worse. The followers of Jesus (except, apparently for the twelve) are scattered out of Jerusalem, and this Saul fellow who minded the coats of the lynch mob is inspired to go on his own personal rampage against these followers. It looks bleak indeed.

However, if you keep reading you see this in 8:4: "Now those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the Word." Look at that: this wave of persecution that was meant to stamp out this "good news" ends up helping it spread far beyond Jerusalem. The rest of chapter 8 contains a couple of interesting stories about Philip, another one of those table-waiting deacons like Stephen, who ends up helping the Word spread not only into Samaria, but even down into Africa (read the chapter to see). As for this Saul fellow, we'll run into him again too, but things won't exactly go as he plans. Eventually he'll change his name and his affiliation and do an awful lot of spreading the word under the name Paul. I guess that old saying about "darkest before the dawn" might fit here.

Whatever the case may be, we know we have a place to turn for words that can guide and comfort, yes? Hear Jesus on the cross; hear Stephen at the hands of his killers; hear the cry of the lamenting psalmist; hear all of these who knew that their times were, as our times are, in God's hands.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #463, How Firm a Foundation; #432, How Clear is Our Vocation, Lord; #719, Come, Labor On

 

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[i] Enuma Okoro, "Living By the Word: May 14, Fifth Sunday of Easter," The Christian Century 11 April 2017 (accessed 9 May 2020), https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/may-14-fifth-sunday-easter?fbclid=IwAR0i0pUWH2FmJ3ahUj3kbXF-DgtvQ0gitGZM1iMwPer-bDMQ98MuACeI65U