Sunday, April 25, 2010

Acts 9:1-20 "Get Up And Go"

For some of us, the story of Paul’s conversion stands out among all the Biblical narratives. If we attended Sunday School as children, the beginning of today’s Scripture passage includes some of the oft times remembered verses. They are right up there with the story of the birth of Jesus, the empty tomb, the 23rd Psalm, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan.


For those who might be new to this story or who might be a bit rusty on the details, Saul (which was Paul’s name before he was baptized) experienced a vision while en route to Damascus. His name change was an important symbol and signified that he was a new man, transformed, a different person.

At the time, Saul was carrying arrest warrants, a list of those people - all followers of Jesus – that he was bent on eliminating. Before his dramatic encounter with God when sacred light literally blinded him, Saul was at the forefront of the Christian persecution movement.

He was a rising star in formative Judaism and a multilingual scholarly rabbi. Saul was born a Hellenistic Jew in Tarsus and was a Roman citizen. He considered himself to be a strict Pharisee and so was part of the majority party or sect operant in first century Judaism.

Saul was passionate about his religion and devastated to see it being tainted by what Pharisaic Jews considered to be the unorthodox theology of Jesus’ followers. Saul was on a personal vendetta to stamp out the heresy he saw springing up around him.

He went to Damascus with one purpose in mind - to nip this heretical teaching in the bud. Saul did not see Jesus’ teachings as a new religion but rather as a wedge being driven into his Jewish heritage.

Saul spared no effort to stifle the spread of the Gospel. It was he who had initiated and carried out the grisly instances of religious persecution in Jerusalem and who intended to stop this perturbation of Judaism in the Holy City.

From overseeing the stoning of the apostle Stephen to, as the Gospel writer of Luke/Acts narrates, “just (going) wild, devastating the church, entering house after house after house, dragging men and women off to jail” with fire in his eyes, Saul went above and beyond the plain language of his Pharisaic job description.

And yet, even as Saul persecuted the believers, as the author of Luke/Acts calls the followers of Jesus, those believers scattered to far off lands – and, horror of horrors to someone like Saul, continued to preach and heal with even more vigor and vitality.

Saul was loath to see heretics bastardize his blessed religion, and so he pursued them. It was then that the incident on the road to Damascus happened. Out for the kill, Saul “got to the outskirts of Damascus. He was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: "Saul, Saul, why are you out to get me?"

He said, "Who are you, Master?"

"I am Jesus, the One you're hunting down. I want you to get up and enter the city. In the city you'll be told what to do next." (The Message)

And the rest, of course, is history. Paul was struck blind and was led by the hand into Damascus where he did not eat or drink anything for three days. However, before the week was out, he was no longer Saul but Paul, and he was preaching the Good News of Jesus the Christ.

Paul would go on, of course, to become Christianity’s first missionary, traveling throughout Asia Minor, first beginning and then visiting churches in Corinth, Philippi, Thessolonika, Ephesus, and elsewhere.

We remember him best however for the letters he wrote to those churches – letters of encouragement, letters discussing polity and procedural issues, letters expressing his version of the meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Many of Paul’s letters are the earliest written material we have about the Christian church and are dated even before the Gospels themselves. Writings by Paul and his associates make up more than half of the canon of our New Testament.

However, our view of Saul/Paul is one of 20/20 hindsight. From our perspective 2000 years later, we can understand his radical transformation and its impact on our own religious heritage. We can see that of all the people God could have chosen to spread the Good News of Jesus, Paul was an excellent pick. He was intelligent, educated and literate, and above all passionate beyond measure.

Paul loved God and God’s work in the world more than anything else. He was willing to travel – and ultimately would suffer and face imprisonment for his convictions. We know that God chose Paul for his passion and simply gave him an opportunity to focus that passion in a positive way.

But Paul is not the only character in this story. The other one, Ananias (already a Christian), does not get much press. Paul is the big cheese, and Ananias is a side light. However, he, like Paul, also had a vision – but unlike us did not have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight – and that is important in understanding Ananias’ significance.

"Get up and go over to Straight Avenue (as we read in The Message translation of this story). Ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus. His name is Saul. He's there praying. He has just had a dream in which he saw a man named Ananias enter the house and lay hands on him so he could see again."

Ananias protested, "Master, you can't be serious. Everybody's talking about this man and the terrible things he's been doing, his reign of terror against your people in Jerusalem! And now he's shown up here with papers from the Chief Priest that give him license to do the same to us."

But the Master said, "Don't argue. Go! I have picked him as my personal representative to non-Jews and kings and Jews.”

And you have got to hand it to Ananias. He had probably lost family members and friends already to this murderous man, Saul. This was highly irregular from his perspective, and it is easy to understand his reluctance.

However, he did as God told him and laid his hands upon Saul’s eyes. The author tells us that something like fish scales fell to the floor (what a marvelous detail!), and Saul regained his sight. Ananias baptized him, and as we have said, the rest is history.

Ananias intrigues me much more than Paul does in this story because Ananias forces us to ask that difficult question: What would I have done in his shoes?

When God said, “Get ready and go” - would I have trusted my rational intellect that was screaming no, no, no – this man is dangerous, and I would be foolish to get within a mile of him? And besides, he deserves to be blinded for all the evil he has done.

Or when God said, “Get ready and go” - would I have trusted that little voice in me that was pleading that I put my faith in the Almighty and trust that good could somehow come from even this evil?

Oh, you and I will probably never have anything quite as dramatic as a vision like Ananias did. We will probably never be put into his difficult position of having to trust that God was indeed speaking to him in a circumstance that held the lives of hundreds of people in the balance.

However, surely each one of us will be – or has been - called to put aside our rational selves and to trust in a power greater than our own – as, in the end, Ananias was called to do. Let go, and let God, so to speak.

Maybe the world will hurl insults at our idealism, but we will hear that little voice inside of us whispering “Get ready and go” – make a difference, one school kit, one health kit, one heifer animal at a time. Trust that change can come out of the world’s irresolute cynicism.

Maybe the world will turn its back on us and we will feel so very much alone and ready to pack it all in, but we will hear that little voice inside of us whispering “Get ready and go” – go back into the world and you will find people to care for and people to care for you. Trust that community can come out of the world’s worst loneliness.

Maybe the world will flatten us with a loss so devastating that we will feel we have been stripped of everything we ever loved, but we will hear that little voice inside of us whispering “Get ready and go” – for you are not alone, for I am with you always, in all your struggles, in all your losses. Trust that life – new life – can come out of death, any death.

And above all, trust – as Ananias did - that in the end good will emerge out of what we can see now as only evil – for in the hands of God, all things are possible. In the hands of God, we are meant for change, for love, for life.

Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine


http://www.rvccme.org/

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Acts 5:27-32 "Where is the Evidence?

It was important to the High Priest that he maintain control in Jerusalem, especially during Passover when thousands of Jews were descending on the Holy City. After all, the Roman authorities expected as much, and, besides, the provincial governor, Pilate, was in town.

That was why Jesus had to be done away with. He had been a troublemaker from the moment he had staged that ridiculous parade through the secondary city gate. Everyone knows that parades lead to crowds that at some point become uncontrollable.

And, of course, that spectacle was followed by his rampage in the temple atrium – overturning tables and angering the sacrificial dove vendors. And who can forget Jesus’ showing up the temple Pharisees, beating them at their own intellectual game of theological cat-and-mouse.

Getting rid of Jesus was the only option. Burying him was surely the best solution. Then the High Priest would be done with the latest possibility of civil unrest and could set aside his deep fear of a mob scene.

And besides, he had the specter of Rome to consider. You never knew when something like this Jesus thing might draw the attention of the Emperor himself – and nothing good ever came from being anything other than far below the radar screen. And so, by means of a monkey trial and a series of complicated finger pointing, Jesus was executed – and all was quiet once more.

How disappointing then for the High Priest that the calm which always followed such gruesome crucifixion incidents only lasted three days. You see, those disciples of Jesus then came out of hiding and proclaimed that he was here once more – come back from the dead – raised to new life – resurrected.

The High Priest was currently in a peck of trouble since that first resurrection proclamation several months ago. Deterring the disciples (now called apostles) from preaching, healing, and teaching Jesus’ message was impossible. The one named Peter was the worst by far. Was there no understanding of the predicament the High Priest and his holy underlings faced?

As Church of the Brethren pastor, Peter Haynes, writes, “Jerusalem was dangerous enough as it was. Zealots were all over the place, people sick of Roman domination - ready to die in some holy war at a moment’s notice. With the benefit of history, we know that a generation down the road the fires would erupt among the people, and Rome would crack down with an iron fist, tearing apart the city brick by brick, so that all that would remain of the Temple would be one wall at which Jewish believers today still gather and wail, praying through their tears….Jerusalem was a powder keg ready to explode.”

Who were these blasted disciples – these ignorant men who dared to stand up to the vast intellectual capabilities and spiritual skills of the Jewish temple leadership? “Everyone said they were just fishermen and tax collectors - ignorant Galileans who ought to be frightened out of their wits by a show of power. They should have learned their lesson at Calvary.” (Haynes)

Peter, who all his life had led with his mouth – right up until the end when he had three times denied even knowing Jesus – Peter had already been jailed once for witnessing to Jesus and his message and for preaching an alternative and contrary Jewish theology. Then he had broken free and went back on the streets to tell the story of Jesus to as many people as he could before he was rounded up again.

This is where our Scripture lesson picks up. Hauled in before the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Council), Peter faced a High Priest who did not mince words. “Didn't we give you strict orders not to teach in Jesus' name?” the High Priest queried. “And here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching.”

Impassioned by the Gospel message, Peter courageously responded with a confession of faith so bold that it angered the Jewish Council beyond measure. More thought out than his spontaneous outcry at Caesarea Philippi when he was first proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah, Peter spoke this time with a hint of steely resolve in his voice, “It is necessary to obey God rather than men.”

And if that was not confrontational enough, Peter went on to accuse the High Priest of killing Jesus, whom God had raised from the dead, pointing out explicitly how God’s power was more effective than the High Priest’s. “And we are witnesses to these things,” he finished triumphantly.

“You can imagine the uproar this must have caused in the high court: Pandemonium. A gavel banging repeatedly, drowned out by the roar of voices from the bench calling out in protest. A chorus of voices demanding the deaths of these people who were thumbing their noses at the legal system, even blasphemously daring to claim the authority of God for their actions and words.”

Here was a new Peter, a transformed Peter. This was not the Peter who, along with the other disciples, had been clueless about their calling for the three years they had tagged along with Jesus. As Presbyterian pastor, Heidi Petersen writes, “That was before: before Jesus’ crucifixion, before Peter’s own denial, before Peter saw the risen Christ, before the church received the gift of the Spirit. At this point, when the High Priest forbids Peter to witness, he might as well have been forbidding Peter to breathe.”

Of course, none of the apostles had started from this posture of astounding belief. They had all run away when Jesus was arrested. They had watched the grisly scene unfold from a distance – or not at all. Peter had not even believed when he saw the empty tomb. In one way or another, they had all been afraid, but not any more.

Now – with one another, in community - they stood up for Jesus, proclaiming his message and witnessing in his name.

This is surely a real swashbuckling tale of courage and resolve and standing firm in the face of tremendous odds. But what could it possibly say to us? After all, we are not likely to be brought before the Supreme Court to defend our Christian beliefs. So how does this story touch our lives?

You know, as I read the Scripture for today earlier this week, I thought that this text is really too good to be read the Sunday after Easter, when attendance is back to normal, and all the Easter church goers are doing what they usually do on Sunday mornings.

Would it not be fun some year on Easter to substitute this reading for the traditional empty tomb story? We could still have lilies and spring flowers. Scott could still play the trumpet. We could even sing the usual Easter hymns. But the scripture would be something like this passage from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles – because this is what is really important about Easter – and the Easter church goers never hear this part of the story.

They never hear specifically how encountering the Living Christ resurrects something deep inside you – how being part of a like minded community makes you foolish like Peter was in proclaiming the message of Jesus even when it flies in the face of cultural norms.

They never hear specifically how encountering the Living Christ transforms your life – how being part of a like minded community makes you courageous like Peter was in proclaiming the message of Jesus and going out to change the world, one healing at a time.

You see, this passage in Acts illustrates beautifully what is supposed to happen when we know the story of the empty tomb. In short, we are challenged to harness that Easter joy and faith we felt so deeply last week – and do something with it.

The author of Luke/Acts calls this “doing” “witnessing.” That is what Peter was up to when he challenged the Jewish authorities. Academic professor Kevin Wilson defines it like this: “Witnesses are not simply passive observers of an event; they must actively make known what they have seen."

You and I profess that we have encountered the Living Christ. You and I say that we are witnesses to this extraordinary event. That is why we are part of the church, part of this like minded community.

That being said, then I think that you and I are supposed to be courageous like Peter when it comes to being a Christian - whether we are in the pulpit or the pews. We are to try for that steely resolve.

I think you and I are meant to share our faith in words as well as deeds because doing so is the cost of discipleship, the cost of following Jesus, the cost of participating in the resurrection – even when Jesus’ vision, clashes with the cultural norms that remind us day in and day out that might makes right, that it is better to be safe than sorry, that we must first take what we need because there is not be enough to go around.

Witnessing as Peter witnessed means living as men and women who understand the sacrifice Jesus made on tour behalf and who respond with the love he called his followers to practice in his name, who both believe that the love of God in Jesus has overcome every barrier between them and God, and who react by proclaiming that forgiveness and love to all who will listen.

There was once a popular bumper sticker that read: “If you were charged with being a Christian today, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

It is an intriguing question that bears serious thought – particularly right after Easter when we like the Easter church goers are sucked back into the ho hum of our lives. Yet, for us who have chosen to be part of the church, part of this community of like minded people, it is not that easy because now we have seen a glimpse of what Easter is all about, witnessed through the lens of Peter’s outspoken resolve.

“If you were charged with being a Christian today, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Think about it.

Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

http://www.rvccme.org/

Friday, April 9, 2010

John 20:1-18 It's Not About Us

It did not begin with the light we associate with joy. It did not begin with a chorus of alleluias. It began in darkness. It began with tears. And it began with a string – ludicrous almost – a string of muddled mistakes and misconceptions.

First of all, Mary thinks Jesus’ body has been stolen, carried off by grave robbers, so she ends up with swollen eyes, crying a river of tears because the body of her Lord and Teacher is gone, vanished.

When Peter arrives on the scene, he has the hutzpa to actually venture into the tomb, but he sees only emptiness and absence and the linen wrappings set in a crumpled pile with the cloth which had covered Jesus’ face folded neatly at the back of the cave. All Peter can muster up is a shake of the head and a thoughtful pull of the beard. He does not have a clue what is going on and so just turns around and goes back home to bed.

Peter’s unnamed buddy only sticks his head into the cave, maybe because he was overwhelmed by that creepy feeling you often get when you enter a cemetery in the dark. Yet, for some reason he believed (though John never tells us exactly what he believed). However, he sees no reason to stick around either, so he also goes back to bed - or maybe just ventures out to get his morning coffee.

So Mary ends up – again - in the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses. Well, not exactly alone because there is someone else there. It is Jesus – we know that – but she thinks he is the gardener. Then when she figures out who the stranger is, she throws herself at him, bent on an enormous bear hug, and he puts out his arm to fend her off, telling her she can not touch, she can not cling.

When you come right down to it, the whole empty tomb story is a pretty inauspicious and fragile way to begin a religion that has ended up lasting over 2000 years. I mean, the four canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) can not even agree on what happened that morning. I mean, if you lined up all the versions side by side, you would see a whole bunch of conflicting details.

And yet, each Easter, we insist upon focusing our energy on that pile of rocks in the garden. As Episcopal priest and religion professor, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, our concern is “on that tomb, on that morning, on what did or did not happen there and how to explain it to anyone who does not happen to believe it too.

The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact. Two of them saw clothes. One of them saw angels. Most of them saw nothing at all because they were still in bed that morning, but as it turned out that did not matter because the empty tomb was not the point.”

It is a waste of our energy to try to rationally figure out this resurrection business. So if you came here wondering if (or maybe even hoping that) I would have some new insight into constructing a logical synthesis of that first Easter morning, then you will be deeply disappointed. For myself, I fall back on the whole faith thing – though I know for at least some of you, that does not cut the mustard.

But you are here. You chose to be here. You could have stayed at home and enjoyed another pot of tea and a second hot cross bun. Ok – maybe you felt pressured by tradition or a spouse, but you exercised your free choice and came to sit in these not always comfortable pews this morning. In the end, the story means something to you – even if it is only a large question mark in your psyche.

So – if the empty tomb is not the point, then what is? Well, unfortunately, most of us get our second go at the story misconstrued as well because we keep trying to squash it into some conventional box, and it just will not fit. We end up thinking that the resurrection has something to do with us – and where we will end up spending eternity.

And so we listen to this story of the empty tomb and manage to catapult ourselves out of the present, out of this world, and into another place where we will someday not be dead – maybe thirty pounds lighter with washboard abs, blond or at least with a full head of hair – but not dead.

And lo and behold, the story of the empty tomb – the resurrection - becomes not about Jesus, but rather about us. And I do not think that is what the Gospel writer of John had in mind. That may have been a theology that developed in the early church, but the plain language of the text is not about our resurrection.

So, if the empty tomb is not the point, and our own twisting of the story to make it about us in the eternal future is not the point, then what is the point?

New Testament scholar and Anglican Bishop of Durham in England puts it this way. “The point is…(that) Easter has burst into our world—the world of space, time, and matter, real history and real people and real life.” If Easter is about us at all, it is about us in the here and now, in this world – not in the next.

Maybe that is why the Gospel writer of John chose to set his story in the garden with a weeping Mary – to remind us that Jesus lives in THIS world, in OUR world which, when you come right down to it, is not all that different from Mary’s world. There is fear. Sometimes there is only emptiness and absence. Everyday people cry a river of tears over one thing or another.

You see, the profound hope of the resurrection is that not only did Jesus die in this world but Jesus lives in this world too. However, that being said (and as Jesus told Mary), we can not cling. We can not hang onto the hem of his robe and hope that he will fly us away to some better place.

Because, you know, the Risen Christ has places to go and people to see – here, in this world. The One who Lives is among the living, loving the living. The question that should stump us at Easter is not: Do you believe in the doctrine of the resurrection?

The question that is really raised in the Gospel narrative is: Have you encountered a Risen Christ? Have you encountered Love – with a capital “L”? You see, because if you have encountered the latter, then you have encountered him.

In the Gospel of John particularly, the writer goes to great lengths to tell stories of Jesus appearing to his disciples – in an upper room in a house in Jerusalem, on the beach, over breakfast cooked on an open fire – and each time, as Barbara Brown Taylor notes, his friends “became stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring. Every time he came to them, they became more like him.”

And, that is the only proof of the resurrection that we can offer. When we live as Jesus challenged as to live, when we live in loving community, when we forgive, when we become reconciled with those who have pushed us away, when we practice compassion, when we are advocates for justice, something happens to us. The sum of the parts seems to be greater than the whole.

And (and this is the secret, the mystery, the miracle of Easter) the sum of the parts is greater than the whole – because He is present. He is present in the love, in the forgiveness, in the reconciliation, in the moments we fought for justice. Maybe we do not see him (chances are we will not), but by golly, if we allow ourselves to indulge in something beyond the rational, we will feel his presence – because he lives. Because there were no grave robbers. Because he was in that garden. Because He is risen. He is risen indeed.

Rev. Nancy Foran is pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine

http://www.rvccme.org/