Sermon: Purposeful Chaos

First Presbyterian Church

May 19, 2024, Pentecost B

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:22-27

 

Purposeful Chaos

 

 

It’s a scene out of a Hollywood special-effects dream. A great rushing wind blowing through the room. “Tongues of fire.” A glut of languages – a sound of chaos. Really, the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark has nothing on this.

The Pentecost story is a strange one, in that on one hand its regular return in our liturgy almost guarantees that it suffers from the extreme familiarity that comes with such repetition, the kind that can cause us to tune out unconsciously; on the other hand, it’s rather a strange story, and one that has gained some uncomfortable associations for us mainline types, and therefore we tend to shy away from it. In short, it is both extremely familiar and extremely unfamiliar at the same time. 

Perhaps we can break through both of those roadblocks by breaking the story down a bit, and maybe clear away some of the misconceptions and misunderstandings that have been attached to Pentecost, starting perhaps with those two vivid images from the first four verses; wind and fire.

First of all, these are not literal statements. What came from heaven was “a sound ... like the howling of a fierce wind,” and “what seemed to be individual flames of fire.” In other words, these are examples of that favorite literary device, the simile.

But similes matter. When a biblical author like Luke invokes things like wind or fire, even in this comparison fashion, it is no accident. These images evoke a long history of God’s interaction with the people of Israel.

Think, for example, of the burning bush that set Moses on his path to the Exodus; engulfed in fire, yet not consumed. Think of the pillar of fire proceeding by night before the people of Israel during that Exodus. Think of the fire that consumed Elijah’s thoroughly soaked altar and the altars of the Ba’al prophets in that contest on Mount Carmel.

Think of the strong wind that drove back the Red Sea, so that the people of Israel might cross ahead of the Egyptian army. Think of the whirlwind out of which God spoke to Job. Think of the very breath breathed into humanity at creation. And think of those dry bones.

The Hebrew word ru’ah has a complex of meanings; it can refer to breath, to the wind, or to spirit. When Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy to the winds, to the breath, to breathe life into the lifeless, this whole complex is evoked. Similarly the Greek word pneuma carries both “breath” and “spirit” in its complex of meanings. We see this kind of association played up in hymns like the old hymn “Holy Spirit, breathe on me.”

So is the Spirit a wind, or a fire? No, but something about wind or fire gives us a picture, an idea of how the Spirit is, or how it moves or acts. It’s a useful simile or metaphor, but we should do our best to avoid getting too caught up in the metaphor and confusing it with fact or literal description. In fact, we should probably just steer clear of anything that goads us into thinking we’ve got it down, that we have any kind of firm grasp on the nature and substance of anything about God, Holy Spirit included.

Ezekiel’s vision points us toward another misconception that can be cleared up; this Pentecost story should not be construed as the first-ever appearance of the Holy Spirit in the history of God in humanity. It isn’t “new”; it has been, from the beginning, with God, as also is true of God the Son. What happens here is not a debut, but closer to an unleashing. The Holy Spirit is loose, not bound by any physical form or invocation. Nor, for that matter, is it bound by the rules and regulations of the Temple, or the Torah, or by any decree or proclamation of the nascent church itself.  The Spirit doesn’t follow your script; if anything it’s much more likely to rewrite it.

Something else we might want to think about is what happens in verse 13. The Spirit has driven the disciples out to proclaim, in these languages heretofore unknown to them, but that just happen to be the languages spoken by the crowds who are in Jerusalem for this particular festival (more on that in a moment). These crowds are portrayed by Luke as being from some of the most remote regions known to the people of Jerusalem and basically every direction one could go from Jerusalem – our curious metaphor about “the four corners of the earth” is the effect of the varied regions Luke describes. While they are puzzling over the fact that these people – who didn’t exactly look like linguistic scholars to anybody – were somehow speaking to them, each hearing exactly their own language (and not in the broken fashion of a non-native speaker either), the naysayers make their presence known. While people are wondering just what’s going on, the catcalls begin. “They are filled with new wine.” Go home, apostles, you’re drunk.

Now this just doesn’t make sense. Personally I’m not a wine-drinker, but I’ve never observed anyone for whom drinking wine was a means of speaking a language new to them. I’ve seen plenty of people who had trouble speaking their own language after a few glasses, but not the opposite. But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t really the point. In the face of something inexplicable, beyond any kind of miraculous that they had seen before, and maybe a little threatening, there were those who resorted to belittling, meanness, and spite.

It is not the work of the Holy Spirit to make you more popular. It is not the work of the Holy Spirit to make you respectable, or socially esteemed. It is not the Holy Spirit’s task to make your life easier. To the degree that your life is shaped and moved and motivated by the working of the Holy Spirit within you, there’s a real strong chance your life will sometimes include others deriding you, ridiculing you, belittling you, and even calling you a "freak" or a “heathen” or something similar. And there’s even a real good chance those people belittling or deriding you will be the “good church people.” Go home, 'followers of Christ, you’re drunk'. In the end, these disciples would find their lives being required of them, once they were moved by the work of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit wasn’t there to make their lives easier, not by a long shot.

So, what is the Holy Spirit about? What is it up to?

There are huge crowds in Jerusalem, from all those compass points of the earth. Many if not most of them are Jews, living abroad – expatriates, if you will, returned for the Festival of Weeks, an event on the Jewish calendar timed to occur fifty days after Passover – hence, Greek-speakers called the festival “Pentecost.” (Today the equivalent Jewish feast is called “Shauvot.”)

These visitors would have most likely known nothing of the events that had formed this local group of Christ-followers – the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, not to mention the ascended Christ. Their reason for being in Jerusalem was about Shauvot, marking the event of the reading of the Torah to the people of Israel. Jesus? Who was he, and why would they care?

The Holy Spirit moved among the Christ-followers, placing languages on their lips and on their tongues specifically to reach out to these souls, to proclaim to these people from all over the earth – children of God, all of them – the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this means that all of these people are welcome, male or female, slave or free, young or old, to be drenched in the Spirit in ways unimaginable before.

The Spirit is not the property of prophets or kings, scribes or priests or elders. The unleashed Spirit will work through anyone to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God come near. Because this band of Christ-followers waited in prayer (remember last week's reading), they were ready to be messengers of Christ, even in languages they had never known before.

This was no random chaotic event. The Holy Spirit at Pentecost was at work to proclaim gospel to the nations. Not only the miracle of the Christ-followers speaking languages they didn’t know, but the miracle of all those in the crowd hearing the message, each one in his or her own tongue, was all about spreading the Word. Here was a step on the way to fulfilling the promise that Jesus had made back in 1:8, about being witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 

A quick interjection from the Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Rome, reminds us that not all of the Spirit's work is quite so brash or dramatic. Indeed, the Spirit is at work within us and among us constantly; the Spirit "intercedes for us with wordless groans" as the NIV in your pews puts it, or "unexpressed groans" as found in the CEB. Here is one case where the New Revised Standard Version, where the Spirit intercedes with "sighs too deep for words", gets it so much better.) The Holy Spirit is an agent of purposeful chaos, yes, but also an agent of relief when needed.

Back to the disciples. In the days to come they would be pulling their resources together, supporting one another and lifting one another up. Peter and John would be confronted by the sight of the paralyzed man in the Temple, and responding to the moving of the Spirit, would heal that man and thus be brought to take a stand before the Temple authorities. Before long the followers of Christ would be scattered throughout the region, and the Word would be truly proclaimed “in all Judea and Samaria,” and the Word would find the Spirit moving hearts to hear and receive it, not only of Jews but also of Gentiles eventually. For the moment it may have sounded like chaos, but the Holy Spirit was working for a purpose, and will always be working towards that purpose.

For the purposeful chaos of the Holy Spirit, Thanks be to God. Amen.  

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #289, On Pentecost They Gathered; #292, As the Wind Song; #291, Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness

Sermon: The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

First Presbyterian Church

May 12, 2024, Easter 7B

Acts 1:15-17, 20-26

 

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

 

One of my favorite writers of any sort is the science-fiction and fantasy author Ray Bradbury. The author of such renowned works as Fahrenheit 451 (my personal favorite), The Martian Chronicles, and Dandelion Wine had, to me, a knack for finding just the right words to express the particular moment of the story, no matter how expansive or how pithy.  One of the prime examples of this knack is found in Chapter 31 of another of his most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Because it is so precisely worded and so particular to its moment in the story, I feel that I must quote the chapter in full:

"Nothing much else happened, all the rest of that night." 

Yes, that’s the whole chapter.

In today’s reading from the Book of Acts, the remaining disciples find themselves in Bradbury's Chapter 31. You may remember that the disciples were instructed by Jesus, just before he ascended and was taken up to the presence of God the Father, that they would soon be “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” but that in the meantime they were to go back into Jerusalem and wait. It’s been a few days now since that ascension and that promise, and…the disciples are still waiting. And nothing much else is happening, all the rest of that day or night.

Shifting from a Ray Bradbury chapter to a Tom Petty lyric, the disciples were finding out that the waiting is the hardest part. 

We learn that their days were occupied with prayer, along with “certain women” and also members of Jesus’s family, who haven’t been part of the story for a while now. We also get a roll call of the disciples, all eleven of them.

Ah, there’s the rub. Eleven. It was the elephant in the room; their number was reduced by one, and the one was about as painful a subject as possible. The traitor. The one who went beyond denying Jesus (like Peter) or running away at the first sign of danger (like the rest of the disciples). The one who collaborated with the ones who wanted Jesus out of the way. Judas Iscariot. One has to feel sorry for the “other Judas,” the disciple listed with the others in verse 13. 

Our lectionary framing skips over a rather gruesome account of Judas Iscariot’s demise, which if nothing else reinforces the fact that the betrayer’s absence was permanent. There would be no chance either for any kind of reconciliation or for holding Judas to account. He was gone, and his crimes would live on well after his death, even to this day. The name “Judas” still works as a shorthand for a betrayer or traitor.

Besides Judas’s act of betrayal, though, there is another factor nagging at the disciples, though. “The Twelve” aren’t twelve anymore. The original disciples, reminiscent of the ancient twelve tribes of Israel, are no longer whole. Eleven just doesn’t have the same impact or historical heft in their context. Already feeling a bit cut off with Jesus departed, the disciples seem to be cognizant of their incompleteness and perhaps of their seeming loss of connection to their heritage.

At least this seems to be part of what motivates Peter when he begins to address the gathering of Jesus’s followers in verse 15.  It’s as if he can’t go any longer with this specter of the traitor hanging over the group. Not surprisingly, he turns to the scripture to back up his idea; verse 20 mostly consists of two different citations from the Psalms, quotes that might seem rather stretched from that context. Still, Peter is moving on, and armed with these conveniently picked verses he moves forward with his agenda item; choosing a new apostle to replace the traitor Judas. 

Aside from his psalm verses Peter doesn’t really get into why he is so eager to get a replacement in place, but for whatever reason Peter makes his proposal and the group, numbering around 120 in all, goes along. Two names are proposed, or at least two individuals – one of them, “Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus” was a three-named monster – and one was chosen by casting lots. This no doubt sounds bizarre to us, and is not a recommended course of action for nominating committees, so don’t get any ideas. It did, though, have a fairly extensive place in Hebrew tradition as a way of removing the human element and leaving a choice entirely up to God. The lot fell on the man with a simpler name, Matthias, and he was from then on numbered with the apostles.

If Matthias is of particular interest to you, you’re out of luck; he is never mentioned again in the Bible. But he is hardly alone; most of the other, “original” apostles don’t show up again either. Peter and John make appearances in the early chapters of Acts, some of which have been heard in sermons in recent weeks. Peter in fact manages to maintain some visibility throughout much of Acts. On the other hand, the apostle James is only named one more time, in Acts 12, when he becomes the first of the apostles to be martyred. Otherwise, none of the apostles names in verse 12 appear again in the history of the church recorded in Acts. 

This is not to say that they are somehow “failures” by any means. But it is to point out that the church – such as it was at this point – was not going to stay under the control or leadership of this particular group of twelve. It was going to grow, and expand, and branch out in ways that could not be managed or controlled by this structure that they had known for so many years. 

Instead, the figures who become increasingly important as the book of Acts unfolds are people like Stephen, one of the seven deacons appointed in chapter six and a very early martyr for the faith; Philip, another deacon, whose experience with a high Ethiopian official we encountered a couple of weeks ago; and of course Paul, the unlikely persecutor-turned-apostle. Then individuals like Paul’s missionary partners, first Barnabas and then Silas; James, the brother of Jesus, who eventually becomes the head of the church at Jerusalem; and “foreign-born” missionary partners like Paul's protege Timothy, the wife-and-husband preaching team Priscilla and Aquila, and individual figures like Lydia, the “God-worshiper” who housed the missionaries Paul and Silas in Thyatira.

The point is not to denigrate the “original twelve.” The point is, however, that no matter how much they had devoted themselves to prayer, they hadn’t necessarily caught on to the kind of transformation that was coming to them. While they were busy preserving or recreating the structure in which they had worked and lived for their years in Christ, the Holy Spirit was getting ready to blow through that structure and break down the barriers the little group of believers had unwittingly built up around themselves. They had yet to truly grasp the truth of Jesus’s words in verse eight, about being witnesses “in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The book of Acts, as we've seen these last few weeks, illustrates this progress remarkably well. The group of believers in Jerusalem remains the focus through the first seven chapters of the book, before the believers begin to be scattered in a wave of persecution after Stephen’s death. Even though the disciples (we’re starting to call them “apostles” now) remained in Jerusalem for the time, the Holy Spirit didn’t remain confined to Jerusalem. As Philip the deacon (not the apostle) found himself in Samaria he began to witness to the resurrected Christ, and they began to believe and be baptized. Then Philip the deacon was sent out by the Lord to witness to that Ethiopian treasurer, sending the faith even further along to an even more distant people. 

In the meantime the newly-converted Paul stirs up trouble with his preaching, and Peter learns a hard lesson about God’s wide-open arms in his encounter with the centurion Cornelius and his family (as we saw last week), having to process the fact that even (shudder!) Gentiles are receiving salvation, something with which the church at Jerusalem never fully makes peace. While Paul and Barnabas are sent out by the Holy Spirit to “the ends of the earth,” the church at Jerusalem, to the very end of the book, still remains deeply uncomfortable the idea that Gentiles can go straight to faith in Christ without becoming 'Judaized' by undergoing circumcision or some other similar rite. And as for the Jerusalem church, which had agreed to Peter’s decree in verse 21 that only a man could fill the role of Apostle #12, it's hard to imagine what they would have made of such preachers and leaders as Priscilla and Lydia.

In short, the little group of believers really didn’t know what was coming. They would be faithful, to be sure, as we may recall from the experiences of Peter and John in the Temple. But the Church just wasn’t going to continue to be what they had known. The Holy Spirit wasn’t going to be contained in the ways they had known or expected. That Jesus had ascended and gone to the right hand of God the Father did not mean “the restoration of the kingdom to Israel,” as they asked in 1:6, nor did it mean the life that they had known with Jesus in person was going to be restored or restarted. 

Yes, this might well be a cautionary warning to us here in this interim place; if we are truly seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the future of this church we had better be prepared for the possibility that it might be something we currently can’t imagine. But it’s also a warning to each of us in much the same way. If you had told me seventeen years ago, when I was accepting a job offer at the University of Kansas, that I would end leaving and then coming back to Kansas as an interim pastor of a church in a town I hadn't heard of, I would have laughed so very hard at the thought. 

And yet as a church this is all we can do. We cannot recreate what was before. We cannot grow this church, in numbers or in faithfulness or in spiritual maturity, only by replicating ourselves. We can keep doing what we do, and simple demographics state we will be gone in five or ten or twenty years – whether we speak of this church by itself, or our denomination, or the church more broadly. 

But if we truly submit to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, there is the threat of change. It might not look familiar to us. It might involve people we don’t like or don’t trust. It’s scary. And yet, if we truly want to be the people of God, the body of Christ, we really have no choice.

Pentecost is coming. The Holy Spirit will come in like a rushing wind. Are we ready?

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (From Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #299, Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim; #761, Called as Partners in Christ's Service; #733, We All Are One in Mission

 

 

Sermon: The Last Hurdle

First Presbyterian Church

May 5, 2024, Easter 6B

Acts 10:34-48

 

The Last Hurdle

 

There is a reason I'm frequently drawn to the lectionary readings from Acts in the season following Easter Sunday. In all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary cycle, readings from Acts are included in the lectionary in place of the Old Testament readings found through most of the liturgical year, I can only guess because it fits to insert a "history" of the church post-Resurrection in place of a history of the people of God pre-Nativity. 

That presumption of mine points, somewhat, to why I find it so intriguing to pick up these texts for this season; what can we learn from those followers of Christ in this time, the heady and unpredictable days after the Ascension and then Pentecost, as these followers of Christ in a world varying between indifferent and hostile, a time in which all of their 'sacred assumptions' about life, God, and the way to live were being challenged and broken down.

Today's reading finds us in the middle of an extensive account of an unexpected meeting between the de facto leader of the apostles and a man who could not possibly be a candidate for an encounter with the Holy Spirit, an encounter of the kind that had happened periodically since Pentecost, according to those 'sacred assumptions' they held, almost unthinkingly, about faith. That 'sacred assumption,' the 'last hurdle' if you will, was this:

There are Jews, and there are Gentiles, and never the twain shall meet. 

Not that one was necessarily supposed to be hostile to those Gentiles; all those laws about hospitality still applied, to a degree. You didn't turn down a stranger in need, but you didn't indulge in table fellowship with them. You could provide a meal for such a stranger, but you didn't necessarily share the meal with them at the table. 

This stranger, a Roman centurion named Cornelius, had made an impression on the locals in Caesarea, one described in different places in Acts as a "God-fearer," one who was not a Jew but who prayed and gave to those in need regularly. In today's terms one might call him a "seeker." He probably could not convert fully to Judaism and maintain his role as a centurion.

God puts before Peter some extra preparation for this encounter; a vision, given three times, of an utterly sumptuous feast of rich and savor foods, all of them utterly hunger-inducing and all of them utterly un-kosher. Peter gives the proper (to him) response of refusal to eat what is "impure or unclean," only to be rebuked by God each time with the rebuke "do not call anything impure that God has made clean." While Peter is reeling from this vision, Cornelius's messengers show up to request that Peter come to visit. While his first reaction might have been to politely decline, he had gotten enough from the vision (and another prompt from the Spirit) to know that was not the right answer this time. 

The next day Peter and his traveling companions go to Caesarea (remember, a seat of power for the Roman occupiers) and are greeted by Cornelius, who has apparently invited plenty of friends over for the meeting. Cornelius tells Peter his story, and Peter's response is where today's reading begins. 

First acknowledging the uniqueness of the situation and what he has already learned, Peter moves before long to the same basic content of the impromptu sermons he has delivered over the course of this time since Pentecost. For this occasion, it would seem that verse 43 contains the key acknowledgment: 'All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.'

At this point the Holy Spirit shows up in full force, visiting Cornelius and his household and guests with the same kind of manifestations that showed up at Pentecost and at other occasions in the time since then. 

This was unprecedented. Even the Ethiopian treasurer from last week's reading had some connection to Jewish faith and practice, no matter how uncertain it might have been, but this man - a Gentile, and a Roman soldier at that - was receiving the Holy Spirit. You might get the impression that, to Peter and his fellow travelers, this event was as mind-blowing, as unexpected and unfathomable as Pentecost itself. 

Speaking of that Ethiopian, Peter's response to this event sounds a lot like his response to Philip's proclamation: "Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water." Especially, he adds, since they're already been baptized with the Spirit. 

The water is brought and Cornelius and his household are baptized, and then in what would have been unthinkable a day before, Peter and his fellow travelers stay for a few days, guests in a Gentile's home.

This isn't quite the end of this story; the circumcised believers back in Jerusalem get into a holy snit when they hear about Peter baptizing and eating with a bunch of uncircumcised Gentiles. Peter tells the whole story, and apparently the witness of the Holy Spirit falling upon those Gentiles managed to convince the body there, although one might imagine that a few souls might have been compelled to 'leave the church' over this terrible breach of 'sacred assumptions.'

This is the last hurdle to this ragtag body of Christ going forward with that full mission statement Jesus had left them just before his ascension, the one that commissions them as witness 'in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.' No one is to be left out; no one is to be called "impure or unclean' whom God has made and named clean. 

The question for us then becomes, Who are the 'Gentiles' today? Who are the ones whom, though we'd never use such language, we still somehow insist in our own minds must be 'unclean'? Who are the ones we can't possibly imagine God making and calling clean? And when are we finally going to get over that last hurdle and bear witness to all who seek God? What will it take? And what's stopping us?

To borrow a pointed conclusion from New Testament scholar and editor F. Scott Spencer:

To attempt to block the saving, embracing, impartial God and dam the freeing, flooding, boundary-busting Spirit is foolish and ultimately futile. Just ask Peter. But unfortunately, in the meantime, 'we' often continue to hunker down in our 'us'-protecting, 'other'-suspecting trenches to fight senseless wars against perceived enemies (foreign and domestic). May God help us, may the Spirit interrupt and overcome our discriminatory ways - and may we diligently preach and practice 'peace by Jesus Christ - he is Lord of all.'

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #371, New Songs of Celebration Render; #285, Like the Murmur of the Dove's Song; #288, Spirit of the Living God. 

Sermon: Everyone Everywhere All at Once?

First Presbyterian Church

April 28, 2024, Easter 5B

Acts 8:26-40

 

Everyone Everywhere All at Once

 

 

Things have changed a great deal since we last looked in on that fledgling community of Christ-followers back in Acts chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 5 brought another attempt by the Sanhedrin to shut up the disciples (all of them this time), only for one wise member of that body to counsel that trying to silence them only made them stronger, so maybe don't do that? In Chapter 6 we get our first introduction to the deacons, assigned to bring order to the distribution of resources. One of those deacons, Stephen, turned out to be a lot more of an evangelist than table manager, and that got him in trouble, but this time no one was going to stop a lynch mob from stoning him to death. That set off a larger wave of persecution that resulted in the scattering of much of this body out of Jerusalem, while the apostles somehow remained there. Chapter 8 introduces all of this while also introducing a wannabe Pharisee by the name of Saul, who launches his own personal campaign against these followers of the Way; his story will change greatly in chapter 9, which we regrettably won't get to in this Acts run.

We are also introduced to Philip, another of those deacons (not to be confused with the apostle Philip), who is among those scattered and dispersed from Jerusalem. He finds himself in a town in Samaria, and comes to the conclusion that there was no reason not to proclaim the good news here just as they had been doing in Jerusalem. It went extremely well, and many were saved and joined the dispersed but still growing community of Christ-followers. Things went so well, in fact, that word got back to the Twelve in Jerusalem, and Peter and John came to check things out.

For Philip, this must have seemed like his big break. A new community of believers was coming together, and there was plenty of potential for more witnessing and ministry. It must have seemed like this was a situation in which Philip could settle down and do the Lord's work.

So of course, God called him to pick up and go. Ministers will tell you: this happens a lot.

Even for all that these instructions from "an angel of the Lord" in verse 26 must have seemed downright strange. As our author helpfully reminds us in parentheses, the road to which Philip was sent was a wilderness road, one might say in the middle of nowhere. Whatever his compunctions might have been, Philip got up and headed south for that road. 

It turns out he wasn't the only one headed that way. A chariot draws near, and a fine one at that. 

On the chariot is no less than a high official of the queen of the Ethiopians, the Candace (the official title for that queen). He oversaw her treasury. He was seated in this chariot, driven by another man, trying to read from the book of Isaiah; as the custom of this time was that such reading was done out loud, Philip quite likely heard him and possibly recognized what was being read. 

A couple of clarifications: "the Ethiopians" refers to those from an area that would have included the modern-day nation of that name but much more; at its most expansive usage the term encompassed all of sub-Saharan Africa. It's worth noting that the modern-day nation of that name has a Christian history that dates back well into the first centuries of the first millennium, and it's quite possible that this story plays a role in that happening. It's also worth noting that the region, for many citizens of the Roman Empire, constituted the farthest known realm at least to the south; it was, for all practical purposes, "the ends of the earth."

Another point involves something that Philip probably didn't know, but that Luke (the author of Acts as well as the gospel by that name) seems keen to emphasize. In some nations and cultures, it was held that a high woman official could not be served safely by a man who might be tempted to some form of sexual aggression against her. As a result, such high officials were often served by eunuchs, who because of that alteration could not so threaten the queen. Whether this official had been so sexually altered as a youth in preparation for such service, or was so eunuched only before taking office, we don't know.

This complicates the story somewhat. According to the law, a person who had been so altered could not be accepted as a man, much less as a Jew, but some teachers, reading from Isaiah and other prophetic sources, were inclined to grant some grace to such individuals and welcome them into the community. Again, it's not clear how Philip would know this about this visitor, but Luke is quite emphatic about making this clear, perhaps in light of what it means for this emerging faith community (and faith communities of the future, perhaps). 

Philip, again taking the divine prompt, offers to help the traveler with his reading and finds that the passage in question just tees up the chance to introduce this man to Jesus, and the story culminates with the traveler excitedly spotting a pool of water in the desert and begging to be baptized with the question "what can stand in the way of my being baptized?" Philip quickly concludes that the answer is "nothing," and baptizes the man. When he comes up from the water, Philip isn't there, but the man rejoices and resumes his journey home, where for all we know he started the process of spreading the good news among the Ethiopians, down at "the ends of the earth."

Philip, meanwhile, found himself (which is how "appeared" is translated in other modern translations) in a town called Azotus, much closer to the Mediterranean coast and not far from Caesarea, the center of Roman governmental authority in the region. Like he had done in Samaria, he concluded that he might as well preach, and set about spreading the good news in those towns from Azotus to Caesarea. If nothing else you have to credit the man with some serious resilience; no matter where God diverts him to go or to "appear," he gets up and dusts himself off and sets about proclaiming the good news. 

For what it's worth, Philip will show up one last time, in Acts 21, when Paul and his party visit him on their way to Jerusalem. Apparently, he got to settle down in Caesarea and had fathered four daughters, who were all evangelists or prophets, depending on what translation you read. 

But back to what happens in chapter 8, with a brief detour to Acts 1. Remember that when Jesus was about to ascend into heaven, his last words were:

It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (1:7-8)

 

Philip had first ended up in Samaria, where he bore witness to Jesus. Then, when God sent him elsewhere, he gave his witness of Jesus to the Ethiopian, a man from somewhere like "the ends of the earth" in the perception of a typical occupant of Roman territory. Look at Philip, taking on two of those ultimate destinations in Jesus's final words, and all because no matter where he ended up or found himself, he got up and dusted himself off and started bearing witness. It's a small start, to be sure, but it is a start to the word being proclaimed everywhere, to everyone. No, it's not quite all at once, but it's a start, and at least part of that start is attributed to one deacon-turned-evangelist who, no matter where he "found himself," dusted himself off and set about the work of proclaiming the good news.

May God show us how to do likewise. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #611, Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee; #482, Baptized in Water; #541, God Be With You Till We Meet Again.

Sermon: Rock and Cornerstone

First Presbyterian Church

April 21, 2024, Easter 4B

Psalm 23; Acts 4:5-12, 18-20

 

Rock and Cornerstone

 

 

Yeah, I know, I could have preached on Psalm 23. Everybody loves Psalm 23, right? 

Or I could have turned to the day's gospel reading from John 10, the part that starts off with the declaration from Jesus that "I am the good shepherd." Or I could even have pulled those two together, around that common "shepherd" theme.

But there's still this ongoing story in Acts, one that takes a dramatic and threatening turn as we come into today's reading. While those other two readings about good shepherds place us in the role of sheep, today's Acts story reminds us that there are times when following Jesus and being moved by the Holy Spirit results in actions that are, after all, not very sheep-like. And it turns out this passage has its own pretty significant quote in here, even if it's borrowed from one of the Psalms and shows up in the gospels too.

Peter continued to teach the people who had gathered at the sight of the long-paralyzed man walking and jumping around, finally living up to that name Jesus had given him all those years ago (remember, his name roughly meant "rock").  They only stopped when the priests and the Temple guard captain (the Temple has a guard?) showed up. The priests were highly agitated at just what Peter had been saying about Jesus and his being resurrected from the dead, not to mention how the power that healed the paralyzed man had been in the name of that same Jesus. The priests presumably had Peter and John seized by that captain of the Temple guard and thrown in jail for the night.

(An aside: not only did the Temple have a guard with a captain and everything, but they had the power to arrest people? I really don't like the idea of some kind of church guard corps that could come in and arrest me if I said something they didn't like in a sermon or prayer or something. Anyone who would advocate for such a thing would clearly be rejecting any idea of religious liberty, which has been kinda important in this nation's history. But I digress.)

The next day Peter and John are brought forward before an impressive array of priestly power, both past and present. The list of names given would likely have been familiar to any Jewish folk of the time, especially those with any connection to Jerusalem or the Temple. Their question to Peter and John was simple and direct: "By what power or what name did you do this?" Its simplicity offered Peter and John an escape clause; just don't keep going on about this Jesus that they clearly don't want to hear about. 

So of course, Peter and John doubled down. Not only is Peter "filled with the Holy Spirit" again, that Holy Spirit seems to have added a gift of something like sarcasm or snark for Peter this time. "If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed ... ". OK, fine, if you're really going to arrest us for healing a paralyzed man, here goes. It is a masterful stroke of reframing that would leave a modern p.r. consultant blushing with envy. It's very unlikely that this escaped the notice of the high priests.

With that established, Peter keeps on doubling down: "then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man who stands before you healed."

You can't be much more direct than that, but Peter has one more rhetorical trick up his sleeve, one that is even more direct at the assignment of blame for that crucifixion. In chapter 3 Peter would have been speaking to a crowd who, for all we can know, were not part of that mob that the religious leaders riled up to demand Jesus's crucifixion. Maybe they were, or maybe some of them were, but we really can't know. This audience, on the other hand, would have been exactly the group that gathered to condemn Jesus and send him off to Roman officials for crucifixion. Peter knows this, and pulls out a passage that will turn extremely accusatory.

Psalm 118:22 reads in its original form "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone...". Versions of this verse also show up in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in that final week of Jesus's earthly pre-crucifixion life, which Peter and John would have been around to hear. Peter's version of that verse is a little different; he declares that Jesus is "the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone." [emphasis mine]

And to top it all off, in verse 12, Peter asserts that there is no other name in which such a feat could have been accomplished. 

All of this is enough to provoke the priestly group to withdraw into a private meeting - an "executive session," we might say today - to figure out what to do. The answer to that question was: nothing, pretty much. The man was still out there walking and leaping when everyone who ever came near the Temple knew that he had been unable to do that in his lifetime before. That man was still making sure that everybody knew this had happened, if not by Peter and John, then at least through them. And no, it wouldn't look good to "blame" the healed man. 

All they could come up with was to order Peter and John not to keep talking about Jesus, which went about as well as you would expect it to go by now. Notice one again how the two frame their answer. They don't say "we're not going to stop." If anything, their answer makes it clear that it wasn't up to them:

Which is right in God's eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. 

 

It's not up to us. We can't refuse to talk about what God has shown and taught us. And even then, all the priestly cohort could do was mumble another couple of threats and let them go. 

Later in Acts, there will come threats to the followers of Christ that will do actual harm. The deacon Stephen would be executed by a lynch mob, and violence against the other followers would drive many of them out of Jerusalem. Then in chapter 12 the Roman puppet king Herod would discover that punishing these disciples gained him favor with the locals, and had the disciple James (John's brother) killed with the sword, and arrested Peter with the intent to do the same to him.

However, those followers who scattered after Stephen's lynching just kept telling what they had seen and heard, with the result that the good news spread farther and farther out from Jerusalem. As for Herod, after an angel helped Peter escape from prison, Herod came to his own bad end. 

Still, filled with the Holy Spirit and founded upon the cornerstone that is Jesus, these disciples (now becoming known as apostles) and deacons and other followers without names kept telling what they had seen and heard. And the body of the followers of Jesus kept growing, possibly up to five thousand by now. 

There would be persecution to come. There would be challenges for the growing fellowship to face. And yet, after its first major confrontation with the religious authorities, they were not only still together, but they were still growing and still bearing witness, both to their own contemporaries in their own time, and also to us today.

For the witness of the early followers of Jesus, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #624, I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art; #353, My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less; #394, Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation

Sermon: Who Are You, and What Have You Done with Peter?

First Presbyterian Church

April 14, 2024, Easter 2B

Acts 3:12-19

 

Who Are You, and What Have You Done With Peter?

 

 

Our reading for this morning begins in the middle of a particular story, one that begins at the beginning of this chapter and continues through chapter 4. We will pick up later in this same story in next week's reading, as the echo of what happens in this account leads to trouble with the Temple authorities and some excellent witness bearing in the fledgling community of followers of Christ. 

It's worth remembering here that to some degree, this community doesn't have a name yet. You might find some reference to "followers of Christ" or "followers of the Way," but the word "Christians" isn't applied to this community until chapter 11 of this book of Acts. We need to remember that, at this point in the story, the dispute that will come of this event is a "family argument"; that is, it is an intra-Jewish disagreement taking place here. The very fact that Peter and John had come to the Temple at all should help us understand that when Peter addresses the crowd as "fellow Israelites" in verse 12, it isn't merely a rhetorical device; as far as Peter is concerned, he is addressing his fellow Jews. 

He does this in the Temple to a crowd that has gathered around him and John and one other man, who the Temple-goers recognized, but not like this. They knew him as the man who was always seated at one of the entryways into the Temple, seeking alms. He was seated there daily, with the help of some sympathetic fellow Jews, because he could not walk; he was born paralyzed. When he asked Peter and John for money, Peter (probably truthfully) said he had none. He instead told the man to get up and walk and reached out his hand to help the man up. The man indeed did get up and walk, and even threw in a little jumping just because he could. It was this sight, as recounted in the beginning of this chapter, that drew the crowd looking for an explanation for this unexplainable event. 

Peter's address to the crowd, of which we have the first half or so, can sound accusatory as it is translated in most English translations, especially after his initial statement that this man was healed, not by Peter or John, but by Jesus, the one whom "You handed ... over ... You disowned ... before Pilate ... You disowned the Holy and Righteous One ... You killed the Author of Life ... You acted in ignorance." You can probably imagine a courtroom lawyer in some kind of TV drama hitting that word "you" with increasing emphasis with each repetition. 

Notice that beginning with verse 17, Peter's tone shifts from accusation to something like empathy, a "but you didn't know what you were doing" tone that opens the door to a call to repent of that ignorance. The accusation is not any kind of final condemnation, but the opening of a door, inviting those listening to follow the One whose power had raised up this paralyzed man to walk for the first time. 

The story is itself compelling, and we will hear more of it in next week's reading. Before going too much further, though, it's worth noting just who it is that is delivering this strong proclamation and witness to the power of the risen Christ. It is, of course, Peter, one of the twelve. You remember Peter, right?

You know, the one who used to be called Simon. The one who was the first to call Jesus the Messiah, only to turn around and mess up what "Messiah" meant so badly that Jesus basically called him the Devil. The one who put his foot in his mouth on the mountaintop when Jesus was transfigured. The one who denied Jesus not just once, but three times. You know. That Peter.

What has gotten into Peter? Or, to borrow the modern slang idiom suggested in the title of this sermon, who are you, and what have you done with Peter?

Let's retrace Peter's steps for a moment.

In the gospel reading from Mark that we read two weeks ago, the account that ends with the charge to follow Jesus to Galilee, the messenger at the tomb told the women there to repeat this instruction to the disciples and specifically, by name, to Peter.

In John's gospel, when Jesus meets some of the disciples by the lakeside, he asks Peter "do you love me?" three different times, you might imagine once for each time Peter denied Jesus. Each time, once Peter had answered in the affirmative, Jesus told him "Feed my lambs," "Take care of my sheep," "Feed my sheep." Despite his multiple failings, Peter was never shamed out of the community. If anything, Jesus put that much more of a charge on him. 

As we move out of the gospels and into the record of the development of the early church in Acts, we first see Peter as more or less the leader of the disciples in the first chapter of Acts, an account we will come to read in a few weeks. Then of course comes the Pentecost event, at which Peter first steps forward to speak to the startled crowds. Only a few days later, the healing that sets today's reading in motion happens at the Temple. 

In the span of about two months' time as we would count it, Peter has clearly changed. How do we account for this?

For one, as noted above, Peter wasn't thrown out or abandoned by Jesus despite all those stumbles and shortcomings, even if that encounter on the lakeshore was a rather hard and bitter one for Peter. The modern church could stand to remember that sometimes.

We also have to acknowledge, especially for this post-Pentecost story, that the one speaking through Peter is no less than the Holy Spirit. 

Due to the oddities of the Revised Common Lectionary we won't get to that account for a few weeks. For now, we should remember that the disciples, gathered in a room waiting as they had been for ten days since Jesus's ascension, were touched by "a sound like the rush of a violent wind" and "divided tongues, as of fire," after which they "began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability."

As far as we can tell, that was, in Peter's time frame, just a few days ago. 

Peter knows firsthand what the Holy Spirit is and what the Holy Spirit can do, and because of that Peter can speak with boldness and give good testimony to the work of Jesus, and people hear, and people are changed. The response to that first sermon, at Pentecost? Three thousand people. As we'll see next week that number goes up after this speech.

 We have safely cordoned ourselves away from anything so rash and disruptive as the Holy Spirit. At most it's one Sunday of the year when the pastor tries to get people to wear red and some different hymns or songs might get sung. But the idea of actually living under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, well, that's risky. You might get in trouble, as we'll see with Peter and John next week. Things might <shudder> change. Can't have that.

As we will see through these next few Sundays, our earliest ancestors in the faith went through some shocking and extremely disruptive things under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, some of those things extremely difficult for us to comprehend or accept. But without these ancestors and their willingness to be led by the Holy Spirit, to put it bluntly, there's no church today. It doesn't spread out from Jerusalem into all of Judea and Samaria and then to Syria and Asia Minor and even all the way to Rome and then beyond. We don't exist without the Holy Spirit and those who welcomed that Spirit and were led into things they would never have imagined.

What about the church if we won't be led by the Spirit? Let's not find out.

For the Spirit that incited the first believers, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #234, Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain; #494, Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts; #629, Jesus the Very Thought of Thee

farmstead

farmstead

not many such things
on presbyterian properties 
i would guess 

a few chickens 
several goats 
and a pair of donkeys 
plus some garden patches

as i am about to walk away
one of the donkeys eyes me
and starts to walk towards me
carefully 
i approach the fence at an angle 
the donkey comes to meet me 

what happens next 
i’ve seen many times 
from our cats
a slight tilt of the head 
towards my hand
i know that sign

so i stand there for a few minutes 
patting a donkey’s head 

the point
is not that this was somehow a
magical
mystical
cosmic 
spiritual moment 
it doesn’t get special 
just because i’m writing 
one of these 
silly little poems about it

if anything 
maybe the point is to wonder 
that we have created a world 
in which
such a moment *seems*
magical 
mystical 
cosmic
spiritual 
and not
something that happens 
between fellow creatures of God

i mean
we are fellow creatures of God
right?