Sermon: Family Values (According to Jesus)

First Presbyterian Church

June 9, 2024, Pentecost 2B

Mark 3:20-35

 

Family Values (According to Jesus)

 

 

The gospel of Mark sure does well at getting your attention.

While this year of the Revised Common Lectionary is nominally devoted to working through the story of Jesus as recorded in that gospel, it’s been a while since we heard a whole lot out of this, most likely the earliest gospel written. One could argue that’s at least partly the author’s fault; the season of Easter, for example, doesn’t really include much of Mark (besides Easter Sunday itself) because this gospel doesn’t have much Easter-ish stuff to offer beyond that blink-and-you-miss-it moment with the women at the empty tomb in Mark 16:1-8. Before that, in the season of Lent, Mark’s account of Jesus’s temptation and of the Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem are separated by a bunch of stuff from the gospel of John. So yeah, you could be forgiven for having forgotten about this brief gospel and its supposed place of prominence in this year’s lectionary cycle. 

I have to hand it to the lectionary folk, though; between last Sunday's reading and this week's, this is a heck of a scripture to bring this gospel back into focus. 

Since it’s been a while, and since this year’s lectionary cycle didn’t leave a lot of room during the Epiphany season, it’s probably best to recap what’s happened so far in this gospel (which, remember, has no nativity story at all): Jesus appears to be baptized by John in the wilderness; Jesus is tempted, though there’s precious little said about it in this gospel; he heads back north to Galilee to pick up his ministry there, calling his first disciples along the way; and he performs a lot of healings and casting out of unclean spirits. He starts up a preaching tour but keeps getting interrupted with more healings. Along the way various religious authorities begin to take offense at his work and his “speaking with authority,” though the common folk keep turning out in droves. More disciples get called, Jesus dines with some of the “undesirables” of society, and the religious authorities start trying to trap him in some kind of error or (better yet) blasphemy, which doesn’t work. Finally, here in chapter 3, Jesus does a healing in a synagogue, which prompts those religious authorities to seek to “destroy” him. The crowds only get bigger, unclean spirits keep cowering before him, and he finally sets the group of twelve disciples in place from among his followers. That brings us to the homecoming recorded here, set against a backdrop of both great popular acclaim and fierce authoritarian threat. 

For the first time in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’s family shows up. Remember, there is no nativity account in this gospel, so we have no names for these folks who show up; at first they’re just “his family” in verse 21. By verse 31 they’re named slightly more specifically as “his mother and his brothers.” 

This family appearance is the bread, so to speak, in what biblical scholars sometimes call a “Markan sandwich.” This writer is fond of a rhetorical device in which two stories are told together, with one story split up and placed on either side of the other, as the slices of bread are placed on bottom and top of whatever you take in your sandwich. The tendency in such “sandwich” accounts is to focus on the stuff in the middle – the “meat” of the sandwich – with the “bread” getting less attention. 

And it would be very easy to do here, because the middle of this sandwich is pretty juicy. The religious authorities come after Jesus, this time literally accusing him of being “in league with the devil” in order to cast out demons. Jesus bats down that charge as firmly as basketballs get swatted out of the air during the NBA playoffs, with the pithy observation that if Beelzebul is casting out Beelzebul's own devils, he’s not going to last much longer. Jesus hints at the one who really can subdue a strong foe such as Beelzebul (spoiler alert: it’s Jesus himself, who has already faced down the devil and cast out a bunch of unclean spirits), and then suggests, in a passage that needs a sermon all its own, that some folks are getting so willing to believe lies about him that they’re trending towards blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which is a hole you can’t get out of. When one has so embraced lies that one can’t even see the truth anymore, how can one be restored to right relation to Jesus and one’s neighbors?

That’s meaty stuff indeed, and one could make an old-fashioned forty-five-minute stemwinder of a sermon out of that. But the bread of this Markan sandwich shouldn’t be ignored even though – or perhaps especially because – it might make us even more uncomfortable than the stuff in the middle. 

Back to Jesus’s family. It’s quite likely that they have shown up here in what we can only guess is Jesus’s first time back in his hometown region since his baptism, or as we might put it in vernacular form, “when he went off after that crazy wilderness preacher John.” And he apparently hasn’t even stopped in for a visit. What’s worse – and you know how this always seems to be the worst offense you can commit in the eyes of family – he’s causing a scene. As verse 21 puts it, they are saying “he has gone out of his mind.”

As a result, they have come to “restrain” him. (Your NIV reads "take charge of him," but this NRSV translation is somewhat closer to the Greek.") Don’t overlook this word; it’s the same word used when the authorities come to arrest Jesus later in this gospel (ch. 14), as well as when John the Baptist is arrested (ch. 6) They’re not there to play nice. 

Jumping down to verse 31 (the other slice of “bread” in this sandwich), the attention shifts back to the family, now specified as his mother and brothers, who are “standing outside,” and who “sent to him and called him.” One might guess that sounded something like “Jesus! You get yourself out here RIGHT NOW!” 

Others in the crowd, those gathered closer to Jesus pass this news along to him. Jesus’s response is, shall we say, not exactly what you’d expect from a dutiful son.

 

Who are my mother and my brothers?

Here are my mother and my brothers! 

Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

 

 

No matter how shocking or offensive this might sound to us, one thing that emphatically must be named here is that there are many, many people in the world for whom this is good news. For those who simply cannot be reconciled to their biological families for whatever reason – physical or sexual or emotional abuse, neglect, rejection for sexual orientation or religious disagreement or for just “being a failure,” or even the politicized social polarization of our society right now – this is a definition of family in which there is hope, opportunity, and even welcome. 

For the “family values” crowd, not so much. Jesus isn’t anti-family, but family ties or obligations cannot be allowed to interfere with the business of “doing the will of God” as invoked in verse 35.

But what, exactly, constitutes “doing the will of God?”

There are lots of places in scripture where one could get an idea of what “doing the will of God” looks like. One might look at the parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25, or maybe the Beatitudes, for example. From the epistles one might think of the “fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians 5, or Paul’s list of things to think on in Philippians 4. But in this passage, among those whom Jesus indicates, what is it that marks them as “doing the will of God”?

It really seems like the answer is that they are there.

They are with Jesus. They are listening to what Jesus is teaching. They are there despite the accusations of the religious authorities. They are there even despite his own family’s claims that he’s gone crazy. They have come to him, they have followed him, and they are there.

In the end, any definition of “doing the will of God” has to start there, with the simple act of following Jesus. For us now, centuries removed from Jesus’s walking on the earth, “being there” cannot be separated from responding to the leading of the Holy Spirit and following in what the Spirit is doing. And doing that right can be just about as uncomfortable as dealing with out-of-his-mind Jesus was for his family. That Spirit leads to uncomfortable places, being called to do challenging things or taking up difficult journeys that might well persuade others that we’re out of our minds. It can lead to leaving behind all that’s comfortable and familiar and starting from what looks like nothing, or less than nothing. It doesn’t allow for sitting back and assuming everything will go as planned, or as we’ve decided it should go. And sometimes it even means taking care of one’s family.

But it starts with following, being present, listening. That’s the first answer to what it means to do God’s will. And that is the call of this very uncomfortable, not at all family-values-friendly moment in scripture. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #681, This Is the Day the Lord Hath Made; #829, My Faith Looks Up to Thee; #846, Fight the Good Fight

Sermon: The Power of Three (in One)

First Presbyterian Church

May 26, 2024, Trinity B

Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

 

The Power of Three (in One)

 

“Three is a magic number…”

At least that’s what I was taught by one of the “Multiplication Rock” cartoons I so eagerly watched as a child, part of the "Schoolhouse Rock" series I similarly devoured. The song went on to describe all sorts of things that came in threes. It also taught me a little ditty to remember my multiplication tables for the number three: “Three six nine…twelve fifteen eighteen…twenty-one twenty-four twenty-seven…thirty.” I would always be grateful for that in math classes.

Of course, there are lots of other places where I was taught that three was somehow an important grouping of things. It was, after all, three blind mice and three little pigs, not two blind mice or four little pigs. Even other songs, like the Jackson 5’s “ABC,” made a big deal out of that number: “A, B, C, it’s easy as 1, 2, 3, oh, simple as do, re, mi, A, B, C, 1, 2, 3…” (Sadly, that tune has gotten completely corrupted by being appropriated for some awful prescription drug commercial, with the 1, 2, 3 part now made ugly to remember.) And threes of various sorts pop up in all sorts of literature, art, music, you name it. You could almost be persuaded that three really is some sort of magic number.

Now I’m not a scholar on popular culture and how it gets that way, but it’s hard not to suspect that part of the reason that the number three carries such cultural significance is because of exactly the thing we commemorate on this day of the liturgical year. For all of the significance it holds in the church’s understanding of God, the whole idea of the Trinity is one of the least understood corners of the church’s doctrine and has been virtually since the beginning. Our reading from the gospel of John gets chosen mostly because if you read it with brain fully engaged, you can sort of see how all three members of the Trinity are found in the discussion, with “God” here being used to represent that first member of the Trinity known through much of the church’s history as “God the Father.” The Spirit gets much mention here with the comparison to the wind blowing where it will, and of course the “money verses” at the end speak directly of the Son and his work in the world. So yeah, you can sort of read this as a “Trinitarian” reading. This shouldn’t be taken to suggest that this is what Jesus (or John) meant this passage to be, although Nicodemus would hardly be the only person to be baffled by a discussion of the Trinity if that had been the case. 

The Spirit is introduced as an entity separate from the flesh, as in verse 6's terse formula that "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." The other two members of the Trinity are forwarded in verses 16 and 17. Again, by no means is it Jesus's or John's purpose to explain or even propose any kind of doctrine of the Trinity; here it simply happens that in attempting to get through to the baffled Nicodemus, Jesus speaks (and John records) and invokes the distinct members of the Trinity to demonstrate how one comes to see the kingdom of God.

The reading from Isaiah, while a spectacular portrait of the grandeur of God and one of the central “call stories” of scripture, really doesn’t help us much with the idea of the Trinity specifically, aside from providing the inspiration for today’s last hymn. On the other hand, the short passage from Paul's letter to Rome does at least address all three persons of the Trinity, it is primarily focused on the work of the Holy Spirit; it could easily have been part of last week's lectionary. Even here, though verse 13 - "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" - is closely akin to 3:6 from the gospel reading. Here, though, it is the Spirit that does the work of leading us towards God and reminding us that we are children of God, "heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ." 

The whole concept of Trinity has been so vexing that many of the church’s most ancient creeds were created specifically to address the Trinity and the many ways the church risked getting it wrong. (The Nicene Creed, which we do use on communion Sundays here, is perhaps the most prominent such example.) The challenge isn’t merely about being able to count to three, but it resides in the central paradox of the nature of God: even while we recognize what that last hymn today calls “God in three persons, blessed Trinity,” we are also compelled to recognize that, in the words of another hymn that didn't make it into Glory to God, “God is one, unique and holy.” God is three, and God is one. God is one, and God is three. 

This is where people get into trouble. Some have tried to argue, for example, that Father-Son-Spirit (to use the old formula) represents three different modes in which God manifests to humanity. No. This gives rise to the term modalism to label that as heresy – God is “God in three persons,” distinct and individual, yet one. 

On the other hand, you get some kind of attempt (even today in some more fundamentalist circles) to emphasize the three distinct persons of God by, for example, placing them in a hierarchy – God the Father being the big boss and Son and Spirit being subordinate, secondary figures. Nope. God is one, unique and holy – not some corporate hierarchy.

We are perhaps best left with the last stanza of today’s first hymn – “To thee, great One in Three, our highest praises be.” The power of three in one should perhaps be first understood as the power of mystery. It stands against our tendencies to reduce God to the comical grandfatherly figure of comic strip stereotype, or to reduce Jesus to our “best friend,” or to pigeonhole the Holy Spirit as the raucous thing that gets Pentecostals all excited. We don’t get it, and we won’t get it, and, ultimately, what of it? The Spirit, for example, does not rely upon our understanding of it to work on our behalf. We are not going to get everything down pat this side of eternity, and the sooner we get that in our heads the sooner we can get to work on what we do know; the work God has called us to do, the work Jesus showed us how to do, the work the Holy Spirit is leading us to do even now, in the in-between time in which we live, knowing that the God who is one and the God who is Trinity is with us at all times and in all ways. 

When we finally get that understood, we are left with the realization that some things are best left for the musicians to express in song.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #2, Come, Thou Almighty King; #---, We sing of God, Creator high; #1, Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!

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