April 26, 2015 GRACE FRUIT - 3. The Gift of Courage
Acts 4:1-13
Preface to the Word
A preacher shared this experience from about twenty years ago…
A few summers ago, on a bright summer Sunday, we worshiped in a little congregation in a fine old suburb of Berlin. The beautiful old church was only a few blocks from the Wannsee House where, just sixty years earlier, leaders of the Third Reich met and, over coffee and strudel, planned their ‘Final Solution’ for exterminating all the Jews of Europe.
To our surprise, the small parking lot of the church was full; full of Mercedes and other expensive cars. When we entered the church we could see why. There was to be a baptism. The proud parents, grandparents, and friends had gathered down toward the front of the congregation with their baby wrapped in elegant white linen and lace.
Here was ‘cultural Christianity’ at its best – I doubted if the family and friends had been in church before that bright morning; perhaps they had been there on some Christmas past, or the last time they had celebrated a child being born into the reigning culture.
The pastor stepped into the chancel, welcomed the congregation warmly, and prayed an opening prayer. At the conclusion of the prayer, as I had expected, there were three or four clicks and flashes of the assorted cameras, capturing everything for posterity. A gentle hum emanated from the amateur videographers.
‘Excuse me,’ said the pastor, ‘this is not a press conference, [now in sarcastic English] a “photo opportunity,” this is God’s church, this is a service of worship. When we are finished, you may take all of the photos you wish, but not now. This is what we call “worship.”’
Everyone became very still.
Then we began to worship. After hymns, prayers, and Scripture, the pastor preached. He began his sermon by noting that parents today face heavy responsibilities. They must provide for the education, the safety, the well-being of their children. Children require resources, patience and time.
‘Unlike some previous generations,’ noted the pastor, ‘we have the opportunity to provide generously for the material needs of our children. We are able to buy them many things...’
He continued,
‘Unfortunately, we are finding that it is much easier to give our children material gifts than to give them other gifts. Gifts like a reason for living… a purpose for life. Where can these gifts be purchased in stores?’
The congregation was still and attentive.
‘These gifts, these gifts that matter, can only come as gifts from God. We have a word for it – grace. Therefore we pray that God will give our children what we can never give them – grace. We smother our children with gifts that corrupt, that deface and deform them into superficial, materialistic adults because we are not good at giving, because we have not the resources to give them gifts that matter. So we offer our children back to the God who gave them to us and dare to ask God to form them into God’s image.’
Reflecting on this experience and the message of the German pastor, the preacher wrote:
In a number of places, the Bible claims that it is a fearful thing to be brought into the presence of the living God. A fearful thing. Yet on Sunday, in worship, even such fear can be life-giving. There, on a bright, summer Sunday – in a church whose sad history is a grim memory of a time just sixty years ago when the church did not have the resources to say, ‘no,’ when ‘no’ was needed – a courageous pastor enabled us to worship a free, living, demanding God.
So, to borrow a phrase from the story I just told, you and I have been considering for the last couple of weeks, “the gifts that matter;” those God-given gifts of grace that are offered to those who open their hearts to God. These are gifts given to the church – that form us in God’s image. Two Sundays ago we considered the gift of faith. Last Sunday the gift was that of understanding the scriptures. Today I want to take just a few moments to consider another gift of grace, the gift of courage… courage & power that God gives to us through Jesus Christ.
For you see, when Jesus broke the bonds of death and rose from the tomb on Easter, it was not just some “spiritual” event, some weird other-worldly event. It was a political event. On Easter, the living God went head-to-head with the powers and principalities that be, defeating and disarming those powers.
After all, what is politics but the exercise of power? I looked up the word “politics” and found this definition on Wikipedia:
“Politics is the practice and theory of influencing other people. More narrowly, it refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance – organized control over a human community, particularly a state. Furthermore, politics is the study or practice of the distribution of power and resources within a given community… as well as the interrelationship(s) between communities.”
In other words, in much more simple terms, politics is about power – who has it and the purposes for which it is used. So you see… Easter is very political!
To guide our thinking about this, let’s listen to a passage of scripture from The Book of Acts, chapter 4.
Scripture Reading: Acts 4:1-13
Sermon I.
A. So, a couple of ignorant, unlearned and ordinary men named Peter and John, after healing a lame man and speaking up for Jesus, now stand up to powerful leaders and have their say. What gives them the courage to do that? You see, a power has been unleashed! Jesus is not only resurrected, he has also raised up a people who challenge business as usual. Easter was not just something that happened to Jesus, it happened also to these lowly men, Peter and John, and the other apostles. Look at them… healing and preaching. They now have the power to do what Jesus himself did – healing, proclaiming, and showing forth the power of God in the world.
B. Christianity is forever clashing religion and politics. Some of us may be uncomfortable with that thought, but consider this…every Sunday, when we gather for worship, we pray a prayer called the Lord’s Prayer because it’s from Jesus himself. And in the Lord’s Prayer, don’t you and I pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”?
Think about it. We are in a power struggle with the kingdoms of the world over who, exactly, is Lord!
C. To be a part of Jesus’ kingdom is to acknowledge who is in charge, whose will ultimately counts. Unlike some faiths that try to disconnect the believer from a concern about earthly matters – who strive to rise above outward, visible concerns like swords and shields, wine and bread, politics and power – Christianity affirms the relationship between the physical and the metaphysical, between the body and the soul. It wants all of us: our bodies and our souls. It’s not enough merely to pray and worship and read our Bible. It matters how we engage the world. It matters how we spend our money. It matters how we invest our time. It matters how we cast our ballot.
D. To us as Christians, has been given the grace to know that we live in between the times. One the one hand, we have seen the fullness of God in Jesus Christ, having witnessed in Easter the great triumph of God over the powers of death and evil. Yet we also live with the glaring reality that the world is far from what God intends it to be.
That tension, stretched as we are between what is ours now in Christ and what God has promised will come, is the context for our role as God’s people.
E. So there is Peter and John standing before the people in control who asked them, “By what power do you do these things?” In reply, Peter tells the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. That’s is the source of their power. And this is the source of the God-given power we have in the face of the world’s powers. The Easter miracle found in the lesson today from Acts is not that two followers of Jesus could heal a lame man. The real Easter miracle is that these lowly, powerless, un-credentialed, uneducated men are standing up to the powers of their day and witnessing to the power of God. That’s the miracle.
II.
A. You and I are the living, breathing evidence that God has not abandoned the world, that Easter keeps on happening, and that God’s powerful grace continues to triumph. Every Sunday we pray “Thy kingdom come,” knowing that it comes when God’s will is done. We can be honest about all the ways this world is not the kingdom of God and we can still hope for more, because we know that God’s will has yet to be done and God’s kingdom has yet fully to come. We can live without despair in the world’s present situation because we are the living proof that God has claimed some enemy territory, has wrestled something from the forces of evil and death.
That reclaimed, renovated territory is us!
B. I recall reading a while back about a congregation that demonstrated the politics of Easter. When the city authorities voted to bulldoze down a low-income apartment complex in order to build a new, expensive, high-income apartment complex, this little congregation located near the low-income housing became involved. They asked the city to help relocate the residents to other suitable housing. Most of the residents were elderly, some of them were single mothers with little children. All of them were poor.
The city refused.
Members of the little church got on the phone and called members of other congregations in the area, asking for their help in dealing with the city. The next week, four thousand people from nearly every congregation in town descended on city hall. Guess what. The city leaders got the message. The residents were all relocated compassionately.
There were those who said it was just a bunch of church people who knew nothing of politics, pushing their noses into other people’s business. I believe it was Easter politics. In the modern world it is so easy to feel like a number rather than a name. It’s easy to feel like a cog in the great clanking machinery of the modern state, feeling powerless before malevolent forces, whether they are embodied in a cancerous growth in our body or in the nameless, faceless bureaucracies of government and marketplace.
C. Today’s text says that in Easter a new power has been unleashed, set loose among ordinary women and men like us, who desire to live lives of faith in the real world. It is a power of life against death, a power of truth against deceit, the power of love against hate, the power of the living God against all the idols we create for ourselves… including the idolatries of wealth, success, pleasure and power itself.
III.
A. My sermon today began with a story of a baptism in a German church, with the pastor explaining to those in worship that the gifts that really matter come as gifts from God. He reminded the worshipers who they were as a church and the faith into which this child was being baptized. He said, “We offer our children back to God who gave them to us and dare to ask God to form them in God’s image.”
B. It just so happens that at The Bridge time today, we will receive/have received new members into our family of faith. The covenant of church membership is built upon this sacrament of baptism, through which our personal lives are written into the story of God’s mighty acts of salvation and we are given new birth through water and the Spirit. It’s a good time for us to be reminded that all of this is God’s gift of grace, offered without price. It’s a good time to remember who we are because of this grace. It’s a good time to remember who we are called to be because of this grace. It’s a good time to acknowledge the gift of courage and power we have received.
When persons stand before us to receive the sacrament of baptism or bring their children before us to receive this gift of grace, they are asked extraordinary questions.
They are asked if they renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness and reject the evil powers of the world.
They are asked if they will accept God’s power and freedom, which is given to God’s children to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.
They are asked if they confess Jesus Christ as their Savior, put their whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as their Lord.
How are they courageous enough to answer yes to these questions? Where do we find the courage to answer yes to these questions? How are you and I brave enough to live out our faith in the real world in these in between times?
The authorities in power long ago asked the same question of Peter and John after they healed a lame man.
“By what power do you do these things?”
Their answer and ours… It is by the power of the crucified, resurrected Christ that we, the new people he has created through grace, are given the courage to bear his name and to continue his ministry before the world.