You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
There
was a churchwoman who volunteered each Sunday to warmly welcome visitors and
ensure that their first time experience was a pleasant one. Sometimes, however,
that was easier said than done. You see,
worship was not always memorable in her church and could be downright boring as
the preacher was long-winded and exceedingly dull. On this particular Sunday, the sermon seemed
to go on forever, and many in the congregation simply fell asleep.
Afterwards,
in order to be social, the woman walked up to one of the very sleeping looking
visitors, extended her hand in greeting, and said, "Good morning, I'm
Gladys Dunn."
Before
she had a chance to even invite the gentleman to coffee hour, he replied,
"You're not the only one, ma'am, I'm glad it’s done too!!"
Apparently
Peter and the other apostles did not have the same problem of forgettable
worship and boring sermons following the resurrection of Jesus. Earlier in the Book of the Acts, formally
known as the Acts of the Apostles, which is our Biblical history of the
beginnings of the church in Jerusalem, we discover that after Peter’s first real
sermon, 5000 people were so taken by his message that they were baptized on the
spot. He was quite the rock star!
But
it was not only the inspiring sermons. Healings
and miracles abounded. The lame
walked. Illness disappeared. Townsfolk even moved their sick husbands and
wives, brothers and sisters, children and parents on their pallets and mats out
into the streets, simply hoping that Peter’s shadow would fall upon them as he
walked by.
As
you might expect in the midst of such religious frenzy, the Jewish temple
elders were jealous and so had issued harsh warnings and stern instructions to
the apostles: They were to never again
preach, teach, or heal in Jesus’ name. Yet, for the apostles, even a gag order
like that did not stop them. After all,
when you have a message to share that you believe has the potential to change
the world, there is no holding back. Nothing
will stop you.
When
you think about it, it had been quite a transformation for Peter and the
others. After all, these were the ones
who had abandoned – or even openly denied - Jesus the night he died in order to
save their own skins. These were the ones who locked themselves
away in a hot and stuffy upper room in the Holy City, intent on staying out of
harm’s way until the whole crucifixion thing blew over. These were the ones who had been afraid they
would be arrested and executed alongside this man they had called their rabbi and
friend – and so intentionally kept a low profile.
However,
now that the apostles had encountered the living presence of the Risen Christ –
in a locked upper room or on the road to Emmaus - they were changed,
transformed. Instead of filled with
fear, they were courageous. Instead of
being a bunch of scared illiterate fishermen, they were emboldened to be articulate
witnesses of the new faith they had found.
In short, they became passionate evangelists.
As
United Church of Christ pastor Richard Allen remarked, the “apostles were giddy with the good news. They were like
Charles Dickens’ Mr. Scrooge waking up on Christmas morning and nearly making a
fool of himself, gibbering and jabbering; telling the world he had been
changed; professing he had seen the light! He had this good news to share.”
As
I said, all the hoo-hah did not sit well with the local Sadducees, the Jewish
hierarchical posse of esteemed theologians with Supreme Court-like judicial
powers. They were hoping that this Risen
Christ business would be a flash in the pan, a passing fad. Such did not appear to be the case, however,
and so they decided to take action. They
arrested the apostles and locked them up in the pubic jail.
However,
just as a tomb could not hold Jesus, so a jail could not contain the apostles.
They escaped in the dead of night and, instead of defending themselves before
the Jewish High Council the following day, by dawn the next morning they were
preaching in the Temple itself – much to the dismay of the Sadducees.
Not
to be outdone, however, the High Council members sent their minions to round up
Peter and the apostles, which they did.
The writer of the Book of Acts is careful to mention, however, that no
force was used because they were afraid that the city folk might stone them for
taking away these first Christ followers and proclaimers. That is an indication of just how popular
the apostles were!
It
is at this point that our Bible reading picks up today. The Jewish religious intelligentsia is
questioning Peter and the other apostles.
“Didn’t we give you strict orders not to teach in Jesus’ name? And here
you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are trying your best to blame
us for the death of this man.”
And
Peter, spokesperson for the group, defiantly answered, “It’s necessary to obey
God rather than men. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus…And we are
witnesses to these things. The Holy Spirit, whom God gives to those who obey,
corroborates every detail.”
The
High Council members were furious, we are told, and wanted to off the lot of
them right then and there. However,
reason prevailed in the remarks of a Pharisee named Gamaliel.
He
wisely told the Sadducees, “Fellow Israelites, be careful what you do to these
men. Not long ago Theudas made something of a splash, claiming to be somebody,
and got about four hundred men to join him. He was killed, his followers
dispersed, and nothing came of it. A little later, at the time of the census,
Judas the Galilean appeared and acquired a following. He also fizzled out and
the people following him were scattered to the four winds.
“So I am telling you: Hands off these men! Let
them alone. If this program or this work is merely human, it will fall apart,
but if it is of God, there is nothing you can do about it.” The High Council followed Gamaliel’s advice,
and so the nascent church continued to grow.
This
passage is such a marvelous glimpse into the passion, exuberance, and
conviction of the very earliest Christians.
Their faith did not rest on the absence of a corpse in a tomb but on the
living presence of Jesus in their lives.
How
could they keep from singing? How could
they keep from preaching, teaching, and living the Easter message? How could they keep from proclaiming the
freedom they had been given to be all that God called them to be, the freedom
to be Easter people? They were no longer
content to live in a dying world but, trusting in the presence of the Risen
Christ in their lives, they were activists, transformers, world-changers, and
life-givers.
Someone
once asked comedian and actor Flip Wilson about his religion and he said, “I’m
a Jehovah’s Bystander.”
“Don’t
you mean a Jehovah’s Witness?” the person asked.
Wilson
replied, “They wanted me to be a Jehovah’s Witness, but I didn’t want to get
involved.”
However,
getting involved on a variety of levels is part and parcel of being a follower
of Jesus. Have you noticed that religion
worldwide is perceived more and more narrowly these days? So many of us
understand Islam only as fundamentalist Muslims portray it – a violent and
terror-based cult. Likewise, the term,
Christian, has been usurped, taken over, by the conservative evangelical
right.
The
result is that many of us who say we are followers of Jesus side-step and
downplay our religious convictions in public because we know that those we
share our faith with are as likely as not to think we are one of them – those
anti-intellectual, anti-science folks who believe that the earth was created
6000 years ago and dinosaurs were simply a ploy God sent to test our Biblical
knowledge and faith, those who are so narrow in their thinking that they cannot
conceive of the rightness of spiritual paths other than their own, those who
follow unswervingly and, even worse, unthinkingly a socially conservative
political agenda because they believe it is right, and they believe it is right
because they believe that God personally said so.
Where
are thoughtful Christians in all this?
Where are moderate Christians?
Where are we in this church? If
people out there do not hear from us what goes on inside these four walls -
especially during worship, during this time when journeys are continued, when
community is formed, when faith is deepened, when questions are asked, then
those people out there will draw their own conclusions, based not on fact, not
on personal experience, not even on what they have been told by those of us who
do know what goes on here (because the likelihood of us speaking up is
very slight), but rather they will draw their conclusions based on the very
narrow definition of what they have been told it means to be Christian - and
that is not us.
It
is not enough anymore for people to just come to a pot roast supper here. If we want this church to grow, we must break
out of our tombs, come out of our hiding places as Peter and the apostles
did. We must trust that the Risen Christ
is with us – shoulder to shoulder - and therefore we can choose to be
passionate witnesses rather than tepid bystanders.
We
do not need to preach like Peter. We do
not need to raise the dead.
But we need to speak up – because speaking up
with passion about who we are is the beginning of living as Easter people. We need to be not quite so coy about why we
go on a mission trip and how that week at Maine Seacoast Mission or in the
Dominican Republic reflects our church values and our faith and maybe even
changed our Christian lives. We need to
say that our kids come to Sunday School to learn about their religious heritage
and maybe even, over time, question their Christian faith. We need to say that
this church might be different than what you expect, so come and see.
We
need to conclude, as Peter and the apostles did, that – Wow! - this Easter
message is something else! This faith
business is awesome! This church is an
important part of who I am!
After
all, when you have a message to share that you believe has the potential to
change the world, there should be no holding back. Nothing should stop you.
Let’s
then lift up the cup of freedom that Easter offers us – and toast the passion
that I, as your pastor, trust lies deep inside you. Let’s begin proclaiming and no longer keep this
church a secret from everyone out there who is seeking a people like us and
need a community like this one. Let’s be
like Peter and the first apostles who could not keep from singing.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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