Evil and Love

I wonder how many of us really believe in the existence of evil. We believe in God. We believe that God loves us. We believe that God wants us to live forever. But do we believe also that the enemy of God is active in our world? I wonder.

Many people around the world know the reality of evil. People whose lives have been uprooted by the wars surrounding the Islamic State know about evil. People whose lives are left in tatters by poverty and abuse know about evil. Those of us who are relatively comfortable hear these stories on the news, or read about them in a letter sent to us, and we shudder, but our lives remain relatively comfortable. It’s harder for us to wrap our minds around the reality that our world is, as C.S. Lewis put it, “occupied territory”.

A World of Evil

Here is how Lewis describes it in Mere Christianity.

One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin. … Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.

Consider a very different voice. Scott Peck (author of The Road Less Traveled) wrote a book called The People of the Lie. Peck was a psychiatrist, trained in Western psychology and counselling to accept people non-judgmentally. He wrote The People of the Lie as an effort to reflect on evil as a reality that his training had not equipped him to understand. Encounters with his patients persuaded him that some people are emotionally bruised and need help to heal. But there were other patients who resisted healing, and were so self-centred that the only category that made sense to Peck to describe them was “controlled by evil”.

Peck is cautious in his description, working towards a psychology of evil, but is persuaded that we must name evil and face it. The essence of this evil is to lie—not big lies that are easily seen through, but a web or tissue of little lies that effectively hide the truth of oneself, even from the person who tells the lies.

Listen to another voice, this time from an Episcopalian priest from the USA named Fleming Rutledge, who was interviewed for the March edition of Christianity Today. Here is a part of the interview:

I believe, along with others, that the problem of evil is the central conundrum of Christian theology. Philip Yancey calls it “the question that will not go away.” We have just lived through a century of genocide. We have entered a new century of terrorism. And to act as though simply talking about resurrection is adequate to the horrors of our time is irresponsible. And it is untrue to what God has revealed in Jesus Christ. I believe that the Crucifixion specifically discloses what God has done and will do about radical evil.

She continues, reflecting on the brutality of the cross:

Crucifixion was specifically designed to be the worst of the worst. It was so bad that good Roman citizens didn’t discuss it in public …. Why this method and not another? Because it corresponds to the depth of depravity caused by human rebellion against God. It shows how bad things really are with us. No wonder we don’t want to look at it. Yet again, the African American church has never been afraid to look at it. It gives them hope. It gives them strength. It gives them comfort.

It is not just the news headlines, then, that lead us to fear for our world. Careful reflective voices from a variety of backgrounds speak of the evil that lies within the human psyche. This is an important point. There is an unstated assumption in North America about much of life. We assume that people are essentially good and that our underlying instinct is to do what is right. But the reality of human evil in our world suggests a different truth: That people are essentially twisted and deformed inside, and our underlying instinct is to do what is wrong.

Peck describes this twisted bent in us as “negative narcissism”: That is, the streak within a person that makes that person bad is a complete and destructive focus on himself or herself. When human beings put themselves at the centre of their moral reasoning, they put themselves on the path to becoming evil. The evil is small at first, but it grows and grows until it consumes the whole person.

Healing the Evil Within

Notice how the psychiatrist, Scott Peck, responds to human evil. Here’s what he says:

The methodology of our assault—scientific and otherwise—on evil must be love. This is so simple-sounding that one is compelled to wonder why it is not a more obvious truth. The fact is, that simple-sounding though it may be, the methodology of love is so difficult in practice that we shy away from its usage. At first glance it even appears impossible. How far is it possible to love people who are evil? Yet that is precisely what I am saying we must do. … We must start from an a priori position of love for them.

Let me return to the dilemma I faced in dealing with Charlene [one of his clients]. She insisted that I love her unconditionally, as if she were an infant without stain. But she was not an infant. And I could not find it in my heart to affirm her in her evil as she so desperately wanted. Is it not evil itself to love evil?

The resolution of this dilemma is a paradox. The path of love is a dynamic balance of opposites, a painful creative tension of uncertainties, a difficult tightrope between extreme but easier courses of action. … We must somehow be both tolerant and intolerant, accepting and demanding, strict and flexible. An almost godlike compassion is required.

Do you begin to see? If we wish to heal the evil in our world, or at least to see it healed, we must learn to love with God’s love. In Jesus, God is willing to receive into the very self of God all of our rebellion and nastiness and ugliness—so ugly and nasty that it looks like a man nailed to a cross where he hangs until he dies.

When we give up our rebellion and in tears and sorrow turn back to God, then God’s love takes us and remakes us from the inside out, fully re-created in God’s image. And we, in our turn, begin to love the people around us with God’s love.

Excursus

A brief side note here. We might think that the response to evil, the lies of our lives, is simply the light of truth. Indeed it is. As Jesus says, he is the way, the truth, and the life. Healing comes from God’s truth about ourselves. But it takes love to shine the light of truth steadily into the darkness of deceit until the evil is fully destroyed. That is one of the lessons that comes out of Peck’s book, The People of the Lie. Love is the action of bringing truth to bear in the relationship.

The Texts

So finally we come to the texts. Hear them briefly.

John 13:31-35

After Jesus washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, he told them to serve each other in the same way. Then he gave words that Paul calls “the law of Christ”: ³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” The action at this stage in the gospel is moving towards the cross. In the next scene Peter says he will never leave Jesus, and Jesus says, “But you will deny me.”

Even when we have experienced God’s love and transformation, becoming truly God-centred is hard. Like Peter, we will fail.

Acts 11:1-18

The action of Acts 10 and 11 is a pivotal moment in the life of the first church. They had grasped the central importance of loving each other. The summaries of chapters two and four show a body of believers who cared for each other so fully that they met everyone’s needs as they became known.

The way that Luke repeats the narrative in chapters 10 and 11 shows how important the event was. In Acts 10, Peter has his vision of God’s action cleansing the Gentiles as well as the Jews. His report in Acts 11 makes it clear that he gets it: He realizes that “love each other as I have loved you” includes loving Gentile followers of Jesus as well. But learning to really love the other is harder than responding to a vision one time. In Galatians 1 Paul talks about how Peter turned his back on Gentile believers when Jewish believers criticized him. It took the further council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 to continue the change in his life.

Both of these passages make it clear that God’s love is at work, and that God’s love changed Peter radically. But the process of change takes time, and there are many false steps, many failures on the way. We meet God in some experience or other. We embrace the hurting marginalized people around us. We commit ourselves to live more simply and to work on behalf of those most in need. Perhaps you responded to the writing of Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical).

But then it gets too hard. Another article in the March Christianity Today describes it like this: “The stories of those driven to change veer wildly all over the map. There are countless long-term disciples, missionaries, lawyers, artists, and community activists. But there are also more than a few people who have burned out in spectacular ways, succumbed to disillusionment or bitterness, or simply faded into a life lived for oneself.” When it gets hard, we hear the passage from Revelation 21:1-6

21 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. ² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

As Lewis said, we live in occupied territory, and we must take the reality of evil in our world seriously. But God’s love is deeper than human failure and rebellion. God’s love wins, and God’s love working in us brings eternal joy to us in the end.

⁵ He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶ He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.

Amen and amen.

Grace Bible Church

24 April 2016

Texts     Acts 11:1-18; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

Sermon Interrupted by Life

I slipped out of the service just before preaching—old guys will understand the need I felt. As I stepped back to the door of the sanctuary to re-enter the service, I could hear the prayer preceding the sermon. Wilma (one of the church’s pastors) was still praying, so all was good. Then I saw a couple who had just come into the open area beside the sanctuary. They were waiting at the bottom of a small flight of stairs and called to me, “May we speak to the pastor?” I might have looked like the pastor, but I was just the guest speaker.

I replied, “She’s just finishing the pastoral prayer, but I’ll speak to her as she comes down from the pulpit”—a nice old-fashioned stage with a big impressive pulpit and choir loft and organ. I asked them to come on up the steps and wait in the narthex, while I called Wilma. Then I went on in and sat down.

“Amen.” Wilma came off the stage and I told her about the couple. She went out to meet them, and I stepped up to the pulpit. As I started talking about John 10, I saw the couple come in and sit down. They were middle-aged, First Nations at a guess. This put me in a quandary. My notes read:

A basic theme throughout this section of John’s gospel is that Jesus is calling the people to follow him, so that they can find God. We can mock them for their failure to recognize God in the person of Jesus, but I have some sympathy for them. Jesus was from Galilee. Sometimes in Canada we tell Newfie jokes. Well, in our terms Jesus was a Newfie—or an Indian from up north. Jesus came from the margins and represented the margins of society. It is not surprising that the people did not recognize God when Jesus spoke. Yet the way to life was found only in hearing Jesus and recognizing his voice as the voice of God.

Well, my native from up north was sitting down to my right about four rows back. I skipped that line and made Jesus a Newfie. If I had been sure that the couple could see my notes, so that they knew I didn’t add the description because they were there, I might have used it. Jesus probably impressed the Pharisees a lot like natives impress many Manitobans, ringing out all our prejudices and skepticism. But to say the words as they sat there; I couldn’t do it.

They left before I spoke about the Dene People and Tadoule Lake. I was a bit sorry. I was using a Canadian experience to understand the distress of 21^st Century life. I wish I could have listened to their thoughts. I learned afterwards that the pastor gave them a gift card, and that they chose to spend five or 10 minutes with us before they went on their way.

The interruption had the effect of making my illustration-application either better, or artificial. I don’t know which. I know it made me wonder how I dare to say the things I say when I preach. Sermon interrupted by life.

Behind the Scenes (What's Really Going On?)

Introduction

As often happens with the lectionary, we have three separate texts this morning, each with its own action and ideas. I began my preparation with a basic idea in mind, but if I am to hear the Scripture speak, I have to set that idea aside and ask what the texts say. Once we hear the texts themselves, then we can ask what God is saying to us this morning. Join me, then, in this journey through the lectionary texts.

John 10: 22-30

We begin with the gospel reading from John 10.

Verses 22-24 set up the action: Jesus was in the Temple courts near Solomon’s Porch. The Jews—who in John represent the people in Judaism who do not follow Jesus—challenged him to answer their question (“Are you the Messiah?) with a simple yes or no.

In verses 25 and 26 Jesus replies that he has already answered their question, but because they refuse to accept him, they cannot hear his answer. “You are not my sheep.”

Verses 27 to 29 give Jesus’ thoughts on those who are his sheep. “Those who follow me know me the way that sheep know the Shepherd. They follow me, and I give them eternal life.

Then in verse 30 he answers the Jews’ question as clearly as possible, “I and my Father are one.” When you remember that the Jews’ own confession of faith begins with the affirmation of unity, you can see how his answer might upset them. They cry out, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Jesus says quietly, “I and my Father are one.”

What do we hear in this brief section? In the passage before these verses, Jesus speaks directly to the Pharisees. They think of themselves as protectors of God’s Chosen People. He calls them in effect “thieves and robbers” who betray the sheep (his image here for the Chosen People). The Jews—those listening to his words—disagree with each other. Some say that his teachings are the kind the Messiah would give; others say that his teachings must come from a demon. This is why they ask the question they do. After the verses in our passage, the Jews try to stone him for blasphemy, but “he escaped their grasp” (verse 39).

A basic theme throughout this section of John’s gospel is that Jesus is calling the people to follow him, so that they can find God. We can mock them for their failure to recognize God in the person of Jesus, but I have some sympathy for them. Jesus was from Galilee. Sometimes in Canada we tell Newfie jokes. Well, in our terms Jesus was a Newfie—or an Indian from up north. Jesus came from the margins and represented the margins of society. It is not surprising that the people did not recognize God when Jesus spoke. Yet the way to life was found only in hearing Jesus and recognizing his voice as the voice of God.

Acts 9: 36-43

The episode is placed just after a major shift in Acts—from an emphasis on Peter’s ministry to an emphasis on Paul. The first 19 verses of the chapter tell the conversion story of Saul, the young man who held people’s coats while they stoned Stephen and who was ready to kill all the other followers of Jesus as well. The next 12 verses describe his early life as a follower of Jesus: “he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.” Eventually he fled Damascus, and then after an unspecified period of time appeared in Jerusalem. There Barnabas spoke up for him and soon he was preaching in Jerusalem, where he met with more opposition. Finally the believers sent him off to Tarsus, and the church enjoyed a time of peace and stability.

Up until this point Luke had told various stories of Peter’s ministry. After Saul’s conversion, Luke returns to the story of Peter. First he healed a man Aeneas, then we have our passage.

Verses 36 and 37 shift the scene to a nearby town named Joppa. A woman there named Tabitha fell sick and died.

In verses 38 and 39 the disciples sent for Peter, and he joined them.

In verses 40 to 43, Peter sent the others out of the room; then he prayed and called on Tabitha to rise. She did so, and he took her out to meet the rest of the people gathered there. The result was that many more people believed in the Lord. The closing verse sets the stage for the events of chapters 11 and 12, by placing Peter in the house of Simon the Tanner.

A basic theme throughout the book of Acts, and highlighted in this passage, is the way that Peter and the apostles continued the ministry and message of Jesus. Note that the raising of Tabitha had the effect of bringing people to faith. That was its primary purpose. As John puts it in John 20: ³⁰ Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. ³¹ But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

This basic idea is true for us today as well. The idea is not that we will do miracles—we may, or we may not. The idea rather is that we continue the ministry and message of Jesus. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, and has given to us the ministry and message of reconciliation” (my conflation of verses).

Revelation 7: 9-17

A word about the way that I read Revelation. We sometimes read the book as a history of the future, which is (I believe) a mistake. I think that what happens in this book is that John looks at their contemporary situation through a series of lens. Thus chapter 6 portrays their lives as one of hardship and distress, while chapter 7 looks at the same scene and sees something else going on—a scene of redemption and praise. I know that the passage begins with the words, “After this I looked, and there before me …” We can read this as referring to the chronology of events, when he means simply, “Then I saw.” In divine revelation he saw that what was happening around him on earth had a different appearance in Heaven. There is a chronology behind the events portrayed in Revelation. Satan is at work on this earth. God is also at work. The final outcome of this spiritual war is that Satan is defeated and destroyed, and that we live forever with God. Our job is not to figure out the chronology, but to live in light of the divine reality behind the events of our lives.

With this in mind, look again at our verses.

Verses 9 and 10 picture the reality of the church beyond church praising God forever.

In verses 11 and 12, they are joined by angels and all the powers of good in praise to God.

In verse 13 one of the elders asks John if he knows who “these” (those in white robes) are. Then the elder answers his own question: They are those redeemed by “the blood of the Lamb”, praising God forever. God has removed all their distress and given them joy forever.

The description makes it clear that, although we do not construct a history of the future, John is describing the present in terms of the final reality. This is the first idea that I saw as I read the passages several weeks ago: That what we see on the stage of our lives (distress and pain and humiliation) is different from the view behind the scenes (where we discover that the whole scene leads to joy and delight unending). To change the metaphor, we see what is happening with our limited perspectives, where God sees from the perspective of omniscience.

There are other ideas we could pick up—the multicultural nature of God’s people is probably the most important one. This passage brings to fullness the promise made to Abraham, “In you all families off the earth will find their blessing.” The first part of this chapter, noting the perfection of Abraham’s family in God’s eternity echoes that promise.

But this idea of the divine reality behind the scenes of our human realities is the one that I want to work with in the time remaining.

Synthesis

How do the passages from John 10 and Acts 9 fit with this theme of God’s action behind the scenes? In John’s gospel Jesus, who could say of God, “I and my Father are one,” came from the wrong side of the tracks. What “the Jews” saw in front of them on stage was someone they could not respect, but behind the scenes the reality to which he invited them was eternal life with God. In the book of Acts we met Peter, acting in the name and manner of Jesus. The gospel of freedom and life was passed on by marginal people until it took over the whole world of that day.

When we work with the lectionary, we take a common theme and ask how it applies to us today. This morning that common theme is the reality of our lives: We live with pain and hardship and struggles that conceal the reality of joy and power that we receive by God’s grace.

Applications

You might wonder if it is true that we live with pain and hardship and struggle. We are fortunate people, compared to the majority of the world. We have more resources and can control so much more of what happens to us than most people can. Is it fair to say that we live with pain and struggle and hardship?

I think it is. I don’t need to recite the physical struggles that we have dealt with in this congregation. Even if no other hardship comes our way, in the end we die. But as I look around a relatively affluent Canada, I see more than simply the inevitability of death. We could consider the reality of distress and suffering in First Nations communities. Their distress is our distress, if only because we have helped to cause it through our shared history.

But I look at another basic reality around us. At Providence our M Div (and some MA) students do a final integrative essay in their final year. This past week one student presented his essay on the subject of ministry to Korean youth, Korean-Canadians who are neither fully Korean nor fully Canadian. As a youth pastor, he said, he has discovered that these relatively affluent youth struggle with a loss of identity that makes life increasingly difficult.

He noted also the way that young people generally live in a web of constructed identities. Social media gives repeated opportunities to present yourself with any identity you want. As a result, more and more people find it hard to relate to other people face to face. Another member of the integrative class works with Youth for Christ, and he confirmed this struggle with identity.

Their comments remind me of a D Min dissertation by Chris Marchand, which he did for us at Providence some years ago. Chris examined the effect on youth pastors of the situations they encounter in their ministry. Often they respond to so many heart-breaking stories that they suffer from compassion fatigue (what Chris called secondary PTSD).

As a child of the 60s, I remember how some of us used to say, “I need to find myself.” We were describing the same thing. In times of great social change, identity is one of the most difficult things to figure out, and we live in an era of rapid change greater than any previous period in history. An underlying current to life in Canada today, then, is a hidden psychic pain that many people struggle with.

In that context, then, we hear these passages. In his integrative paper, our Korean-Canadian student made a profound observation: The centre of the gospel is found in marginalized people. The centre is at the margins. He continued with a second fundamental and profound truth: Our struggles and hardships find meaning in the sufferings of Jesus. So the way to deal with pain is to embrace it. “I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms.”

He is absolutely right. When we count on our affluence to help us, we become like the Jews who could not see the Son of God when he stood before them. When we turn to Jesus in our pain, we find that he is there with us, giving our life meaning and hope. When we embrace God in our suffering, we discover the reality behind the scenes, “that great multitude that no one can number, gathered before the throne and before the Lamb.”

It is easy for this kind of statement to become trite and unhelpful. I mentioned the hardships of First Nations history. I could say to First Nations in Canada: “Accept your pain; it is God’s gift to show you himself.” They may reply truthfully, “Who are you kidding!” They might use stronger and less polite language than that. And they would be right.

But it remains true that the way to find the reality behind the scenes is to enter fully into the hardship and pain of our lives. In the situation I just mentioned, I must first learn from our native community what that actually means. I cannot tell them what to do, but I can sit with them and discover what I need to repent of. I can live with them and begin to see the real pain of the Dene people relocated from Duck Lake to Churchill in 1956. In the 1970s they relocated to Tadoule Lake, but cannot simply undo the effects of the relocation. I can say, “Embrace your pain,” but that is simplistic. First I must sit with them and learn what their lives have been. In that learning, we both may find anew the presence of Christ, whose passion and suffering gives meaning to our own distress. (My thanks to another of our students who described this experience in his integrative essay.)

Conclusion

We live in a world of rapid, almost catastrophic change. It is hard to remember who we are when so much shifts and falls around us. These passages remind us to see Jesus, who is God incarnate, and to find our new identity in Jesus the Risen Lord. The vision of the end is also a vision of the present. We also are “they who … have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” We also “are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple.” And God “will lead us to springs of living water and wipe away every tear from our eyes.”

Grace Bible Church

17 April 2016

Texts: John 10: 22-30; Acts 9: 36-43;  Revelation 7: 9-17

Walking and Leaping

Introduction

I love the book of Acts. The story of how the despairing disciples become empowered apostles is wonderful, an inspiring story about God’s goodness and grace expressed in the lives of ordinary people. At the same time, I am sometimes afraid of the book of Acts. I wonder if I am supposed to do what they did, and if we are supposed to see miracles such as this one in Acts 3. This morning I will set the stage for looking at this passage, go through the text, and suggest what I think it says to us today.

The Book of Acts (skimming chapters 1 to 5)

Acts is Luke’s account, volume two. Volume one is “an orderly account” of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Volume two is the story of what happened to the disciples he left behind when “he was taken up into heaven”.

Acts 1: Jesus spends 40 days with the disciples after his resurrection. This is an important point. Sometimes we think that Jesus rose, met the disciples, and ascended—all in the space of few days, but Luke (who is the most careful of the Gospel writers with historical details) tells of an extended period of time. It lasted long enough to make it clear that the resurrection appearances were no mass hallucination. They took place in Jerusalem and in Galilee. They included dramatic meetings and ordinary times of eating together. They made it clear that Jesus is alive.

Then Jesus tells the disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit. In Matthew’s gospel they had gone up to Galilee to meet Jesus. Similarly in John’s gospel the events of chapter 20 take place in Jerusalem, and the events of chapter 21 take place by the Sea of Galilee. Now they return to Jerusalem to wait for the promised Spirit, after which, Jesus says, they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the whole earth. This verse (1:8) provides the outline for Luke’s description of the Acts of the Apostles. I have heard preachers use it as an outline for our call to witness to Jesus. Jerusalem is your home, and you move out from there. I suppose for us Jerusalem is Winnipeg, Judea is southern Manitoba, Samaria would have to be Saskatchewan, and Toronto may as well be the ends of the earth! But I think that this equation misses an important point. Jerusalem is the city of God, and in this outline it represents not the disciples’ home—Galilee was their home—but rather it represents the place where they met God. Jesus might say to us, “Wait in the emotional and mental and spiritual space where you met me; wait there for my Holy Spirit; and then be my witnesses from there to the ends of the earth.”

In chapter 2 this filling comes, and their witness begins. Chapters 3 to 5 gives the miracle (and its aftermath) in which Peter and John heal the lame man in the gate of the temple, followed by a sermon from Peter, who emerges as the primary spokesman of the first believers. He states the message clearly in a series of sermons: God sent Jesus to give you life. You killed him, but God raised him from the dead. Believe in him and receive forgiveness and life. The Sanhedrin arrests the apostles, and Peter repeats his message. They tell the apostles to keep quiet, but they continue preaching and healing. The High Priest and Sadducees put them in prison, but an angel frees them. The Sanhedrin tells them to stop preaching, but Peter and the apostles reply, “You imprisoned us, but God set us free. We will obey God rather than you!”

Chapter Three

In chapter three we see what happens when God’s Spirit fills the apostles and disciples. In verses 1 to 10, we learn that the apostles continued to pray regularly in the Temple, and on one such occasion Peter and John encountered a man lame from birth. He asked for money. They gave him complete healing of his physical infirmity. He responded by running around, leaping in the air. His actions are the more surprising because he had never learned to walk in the first place. More than one miracle is evident here.

This exciting stuff! Look at the lame man. He expected maybe some money from Peter and John, but he certainly did not expect what happened. Have you ever seen someone receive a physical gift? Mrs. Shumba was a woman we met in Bulawayo in 2003. She had severe cataracts, so that she was functionally blind. We took her to an eye clinic and paid for cataract surgery, since she could not. They removed the cataracts and put patches over her eyes and told her to come back in several days. When she returned, they removed the patches. I will never forget her amazement and delight: “I can see! I can see!” As we drove her back to where we were staying, we heard her talking in the back seat of the car. She was reading the signs in store windows, delighted that she could see again to read them. Her delight gives me a bit of an idea of what this lame man may have felt.

In verses 11 to 26 Peter responds to the astonishment of those who saw this event with a sermon, completely typical of all his first sermons in the book of Acts:

·        God glorified his servant Jesus.

·        You handed Jesus over to be killed, but God raised him from the dead.

·        This man has been healed by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.

·        Repent and turn to God “that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”

·        All of this fulfills the prophets and the covenant God made with Abraham.

Peter probably understood these “times of refreshing” to mean that Jesus will return and that the end of all things is near. He probably expected the second coming almost immediately. Although Jesus had told the disciples that they could not know when the kingdom would be restored, they probably thought he would return quickly. We are still waiting, but Peter’s call to repentance remains, and he was certainly right that times of refreshing—new life in Christ—comes only as we repent of our rebellion against God and choose to follow Jesus.

Hearing the Text Today

So what does chapter three say to us this morning? Peter and John healed a lame man. Should we expect miracles of healing in our church here? In chapter two there were other miracles. Should we replicate those also in our church today? Peter preached a simple message of repentance. Should we tell people around us that they also killed Jesus and need to repent? The apostles got into all kinds of trouble with the religious authorities in chapters four and five. Should we also have our leaders put in prison and set free by angels so they can come and preach to us again? I’m not trying to make fun of the text or of us with these questions. These are real questions, and we look for real answers.

Notice that none of these events are given as commands. Luke does not say to us, “Speak in tongues”, or “Heal people”, or “Get arrested”, or anything else. There are various commands throughout the gospels and in the book of Acts, but these are not among them. Jesus commands us to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves (Mark 12: 30-31). Jesus commands us also to love each other with his love (John 13:34). So clear is this command of love that Paul calls it “the law of Christ” (Galatians 5:14 and 6:2).

There are other commands also. Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow him (Mark 8:34). Jesus also commands us to make disciples of people everywhere (Matthew 28:19), which includes bringing people to faith (baptizing) and nurturing them in the faith (teaching obedience). Jesus also commanded the disciples to wait for the promised Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5), which leads to empowerment for witness (Acts 1:8). Paul echoes this command in Ephesians 5:18, “Don’t get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.”

I see these commands clearly, but I don’t know of any commands to do miracles or other “signs and wonders.” Promises of such works, yes (John 14:12); commands, no. I have not looked carefully through the whole New Testament, so I welcome conversation with those who may point me towards such commands, but I see these as descriptions of life in the Spirit, not as commands we must do. Jesus commanded the disciples to wait for the Spirit. That is the command we should heed today also. Wait for the fullness of God’s presence to fill you, and then live the life that God calls you to live. The miracles of Jesus in the gospel accounts, and of the apostles in the book of Acts, are descriptions of the kind of life that follows when you and I are filled with the Spirit of God.

I remember an example a speaker at my graduation from AMBS used. Life in the Spirit is like riding a bicycle with a tailwind; life without the Spirit is like riding a bicycle into a headwind. I have done both. Forty years ago I was part of a group of people who rode from Fort Dodge, Kansas to Azusa, California on our bicycles. We aimed at 70 miles a day, but our second day out we hit a steady 40 mile an hour southwest wind, the kind you get in Kansas in the summer. WE rode 35 miles and it wore us out. The next day the wind switched around, and a stiff tailwind blew us all the way into Springer, New Mexico—about 105 miles. We made up all our lost time! Life in the Spirit is like that: We can do amazing things when God is working in us.

“Far Too Easily Pleased”

Most of us here this morning have heard God’s call on our lives and responded. Like the disciples beside the Sea of Galilee, we have heard Jesus say, “Follow me.” We have followed. We have recognized that we are not good enough to be called followers of Jesus, and we have confessed our weakness and our sin. God has forgiven us through Jesus’ sacrifice of himself on the cross. That’s a basic part of what makes the Easter season we are in so wonderful. We are forgiven people, who have the new life of Jesus within us. But once the glow of our initial encounter with Christ wears off, we go back to work. Soon the everyday pressures of life combine with old habits to reduce the impact of our Christian walk. We are saved, but that is about all that we are. Jesus told the first disciples to wait for the promised Holy Spirit, to spend time in the place where they met the risen Christ until the Spirit of Christ filled them. I think that God is telling you and me the same thing: Wait for God’s Spirit to fill you—expect more of God than a one-time encounter.

Now, you have to be careful with this idea. Some people are professional “wait”-ers. They seek God so much that they never live for God, so that waiting for God takes the place of living for God. With this caution in place I repeat: Wait for God’s Spirit to fill you; expect more of God in your life. God rewards such expectant waiting and then we enter the kind of life described in Acts 3. Then we can act in situations in ways that meet people’s real and deepest needs. Then we can speak directly into the lives of our friends and acquaintances in ways that genuinely help them. Then we become witnesses of Jesus to everyone we meet.

I don’t think that the point of this story is the miracle. Confronting the authorities—as happens later in the chapter—is not the point. Experiencing the fullness of God’s presence in our lives is the point. That is what God wants. That is what God promises.

We may experience miracles even today, but we don’t need to look for them. We look rather for the fullness of God’s presence in our lives. God gives us himself to encourage and strengthen us. I remember the presence of God’s Spirit in 1990. In September we were in Zimbabwe, trying to decide when to come home. We got a call from Lois’ parents, who told us that Dad had cancer, and was given perhaps six months to live. We came home in December, and he died seven months after that phone call on March 30, 1977. The encouragement came when we told my younger sister that Lois’ Dad was dying. She said, “You know, I woke up one night,”—we realized it was just when we got the news about Lois’ Dad—“and I knew you were trouble. So I have been praying for you. Now I know why.”

This kind of experience is encouraging, but in fact all such things are part of the fuller life that God promises to those who wait expectantly for the fullness of his presence. How do we “wait expectantly”? Since relationship with God is relationship with a person, I can’t give you a formula. Prayer and Bible reading (alone and with others) are important. I find silence before God especially helpful. We live with an attitude towards God that says, “Show me yourself” in everything we do.

The trouble is that we are sometimes satisfied with a sort of spiritual fire insurance—we think, “I’m going to heaven and not going to Hell. Good!” Yes, it is good; but God has much more for you and me than just a spiritual fire insurance. C.S. Lewis put it this way.

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Indeed, we are far too easily pleased. We settle for a bit of life, and God wants us to receive the fullness of life in Christ. Like the man lame from birth, we settle for asking for a bit of money to get by, and God offers us something much more, which leads to the extravagant spectacle of this man walking and jumping and shouting, “Hallelujah!” I invite you to wait expectantly for God’s fullness, and when God gives it to you, please, seize it and experience God’s life to the full!

Steinbach Mennonite Church, 10 April 2016

Text: Acts 3

Who Are These Who Are Believers Now?

Introduction

This morning I will look briefly at the texts from John and Revelation, and then reflect more fully on Acts 1 to 5, using the text from Acts as a window. I am asking these texts a question that arises naturally from Luke’s account in Acts: “Who are these people that we call followers of Jesus?” The answers to this question give us insight into who we are as God’s people today.

Today is the Second Sunday in Easter in the church year. The resurrection was one of those events that you cannot comprehend in a day, or in a brief weekend. Those who have lost a loved one, or gotten married, or had a baby, know that life is never the same afterwards. The Resurrection is that kind of life-changing event. The day after the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples did not say something like: “Well, that was quite an experience! Back to work!” They had to find out what life meant now. They had to learn to live in a new normal. These passages help us discover what the new normal is after our lives have been completely changed.

John 20: 19-31

We begin with John. Verse 19 lets us know that this passage takes place still in Resurrection Day. That evening the disciples were back together wherever they were staying. We don’t know exactly who was there. We know that Thomas was not there. We don’t know if they had heard from Mary and the other women, or from Peter and John. We do know that they were not yet convinced that Jesus was alive. Rather they lived in fear for their own lives. Then Jesus appeared, removing their doubt and filling them with joy.

In verse 21 Jesus gives them their commission: He sends them into the world as his followers and representatives. Then in verse 22 Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into them. I would not try to harmonize John and Luke here, to systematize the way that followers of Jesus receive the Spirit. To make any pattern normative goes beyond the text. Verses 24 to 29 give the interaction with Thomas, who needs stronger proofs than a vision in order to believe. Verses 30 and 31 then give the purpose of these stories and of the whole gospel account: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Revelation 1: 4-8

The book of Revelation is a letter from John to some churches in modern Turkey. John calls these believers a priestly kingdom (verse 6), echoing the language of God’s words about Israel in Exodus 19. They were—and are—God’s people, his representatives on earth who serve as priests mediating God’s presence to the world and interceding with God for the world. Here we could preach a sermon on mission, but we leave it for another time. Today we note simply this identity, “kings and priests to God”, which is the destiny of the first group of disciples whom we met in John 20. So to the book of Acts.

Acts 5: 27-32

First we set the stage of Luke’s larger work here.

Acts 1: Jesus spends 40 days with the disciples after his resurrection. This is an important point. Sometimes we think that Jesus rose, met the disciples, and ascended—all in the space of few days, but Luke (who is the most careful of the Gospel writers with historical details) tells of an extended period of time. This was an extended and significant period of time. It lasted long enough to make it clear that the resurrection appearances were no mass hallucination. They took place in Jerusalem and in Galilee. They included dramatic meeting and ordinary times of eating together. They made it clear that Jesus is alive. We say not only, “Jesus has risen”, but also “Jesus is risen!” Like saying “Jesus is a Jew”, or “Jesus is God’s Son”: Subject—verb—complement. Risen-ness is the quality that describes Jesus. He is the Risen One, who calls us also to walk in the resurrection.

Then Jesus tells the disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit. In Matthew’s gospel they had gone up to Galilee to meet Jesus. Now they return to Jerusalem to wait for the promised Spirit, after which, Jesus says, they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the whole earth. This verse (1:8) provides the outline for Luke’s description of the Acts of the Apostles. I have heard preachers use it as an outline for our call to witness to Jesus. Jerusalem is your home, and you move out from there. I suppose for us Jerusalem is Winnipeg, Judea is southern Manitoba, Samaria would have to be Saskatchewan, and Toronto may as well be the ends of the earth! But I think that this equation misses an important point.

Jerusalem is the city of God, and in this outline it represents not the disciples’ home—Galilee was their home, but rather the place where they met God. Jesus might say to us, “Wait in the space where you meet me; wait there for my Holy Spirit; and then be my witnesses from there to the ends of the earth.”

In chapter 2 this filling comes, and their witness begins. Chapter 3 to 5 gives the miracle (and its aftermath) in which Peter and John heal the lame man in the gate of the temple, followed by a sermon from Peter, who emerges as the primary spokesman of the first believers. He states the message clearly: God sent Jesus to give you life. You killed him, but God raised him from the dead. Believe in him and receive forgiveness and life. The Sanhedrin arrests the apostles, and Peter repeats his message. They tell the apostles to keep quiet, but they continue preaching and healing. The High Priest and Sadducees then arrest them and put them in prison, but an angel frees them.

The Sanhedrin then questions them in the passage we read. In verses 27 and 28 they say, “Stop this! You are shaming us!” In verse 29 Peter and the apostles say, “You imprisoned us, but God set us free. We will obey God rather than you!” Again they repeat their basic message: You killed Jesus, but God raised Jesus and has exalted him to bring us repentance and forgiveness. Then verse 32: We are God’s witnesses through God’s Spirit.

My Question

I asked at the beginning: Who are these people? The Gospels raise the question about Jesus: Who is this man? The Book of Acts raises the question about the apostles: Who are these people? John tells us that they are Christ’s messengers (like Paul’s image of Christ’s ambassadors). Revelations tells us that they are the chosen people, God’s priestly kingdom. Acts connects their beginning identity with their ultimate identity: They are filled with God’s Spirit to be God’s witnesses in the world.

A Polish Easter carol (in the Mennonite Hymns for Worship, #270) says it like this: “Who are these who are believes now? These are they who have been shouting ‘Hallelujah!’ They have seen the Saviour and have been filled with splendour. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” That is indeed who they are. It is also who we are.

We celebrated the Resurrection last Sunday. This is not simply a day in the church’s calendar, so that life continues afterwards as though nothing had happened. Resurrection Sunday changes everything: “We have seen the Saviour, and have been filled with splendour. Hallelujah!” I add this: If you have not met the Saviour, if you do not know God, if you have not discovered God’s presence in a way that changes everything, I invite you to do so.

Two Examples

You may recall an event several months ago in Kenya. Last December a militant group of gunmen stopped a bus travelling in northern Kenya. They started to separate the Muslims from the Christians in order to execute the Christians, when the Muslim passengers took action. One man stood up and said that they were all brothers and would not separate. The Muslim women on the bus started to give their hijabs to the Christian women so that the armed men could not tell them apart. The gunmen shot Salah and two other men and then they fled. Salah later died of his wounds.

This is a wonderful story of Muslims and Christians pursuing peace together in the midst of conflict, but there is more to the story. The day before this man had a difficult series of conversations with relatives and neighbours in his home village. He declared to them his intention to follow Jesus as Lord and Saviour. In a written testimony he stated his willingness to die for Jesus. He is one who had seen the Saviour and was filled with splendour. In his case, this encounter led to his death, following the way of peace.

Encounters with Jesus are all around us. I think of a friend of mine, awkward in the extreme, but shining with goodness. When a friend of his said that he could not believe in God, because life is too difficult, my friend—whose life has been much harder than mine—said something like, “God loves me, and I love God.” His friend was quiet for a moment and then said, “I’ll have to think about that.” My friend has seen the Saviour and has been filled with his splendour.

Conclusion

We live in a world that causes us to give up hope. Into the darkness of political machinations and the corruption of business dealings comes the risen Jesus. Into the bluster and bombast and barrage of hate and fear that surround comes the risen Jesus. Jesus invites you and me to wait in his presence.

I can’t say what this process looks like. We try to turn it into a system, to make certain that God will answer our call, but we cannot control the process. We open ourselves to Christ, and we wait. Perhaps in the communion service that follows this sermon, perhaps as the choir is singing, perhaps as you are walking home, God appears. I invite you to spend time daily with God, to read your Bible, to pray and sing—alone and with others. Invite the Risen Christ to live in you, individually and corporately. We are they who have seen the Saviour and have been filled with splendour. Hallelujah!

Grace Bible Church

3 April 2016

Texts: John 20; Revelation 1; Acts 5