5th Sunday of Easter, May 6, 2007 “Series C”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, through the power of your Holy Spirit, push us out beyond the safe confines of our congregation. Restore us to the great adventure of the Gospel, that leaps like wildfire over all boundaries, and makes families out of strangers. Give us the courage to follow your leading, wherever it takes us, even among people we don’t know, and to places we don’t think we want to go. Inspire us to be your apostles, to take the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection to those around us. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
As William H. Willimon states in his commentary on our first lesson for this morning, the book of Acts paints such a vibrant picture of the early church! Just think about the first worship service that Luke describes. The church gathers and the Spirit descends like tongues of fire upon the disciples, the whole building rumbles, and it is only 9:00 in the morning. But what an early service this was! Peter preaches a spectacularly short sermon. And the response – three thousand people come forward for baptism.
And then, in Acts 4 we read that the apostles performed mighty wonders and deeds. They had not a needy person among them. They shared their possessions. They went tot he temple every day to pray and praise God. They ate their bread with glad and generous hearts. And the Lord added to their number every day. [1]
And then, in our lesson for this morning, we find that Peter, through the prodding of God’s Spirit in a dream, takes the message of God’s grace in Christ’s death and resurrection to the Gentiles. And to those who asked him to account for actions, he exclaimed, “If God gave them the same gift (of the Holy Spirit), that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God? When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God all the more.” [Acts 11: 17-18]
Isn’t that some picture of the church, especially when we compare it to the picture of the church here in Northwestern Pennsylvania that Bishop Jones painted for us on his visit to our congregation. Here, we find the church declining in members, some having to be closed and many others needing to engage in shared ministry with other congregations in order to pay the bills.
Clearly, the church in our synod does not seem to exhibit the vibrancy that is pictured of the early church in Acts. Nor do the churches of our synod exhibit the vitality that was expressed by Bishop Boganza, in his description of the congregations in our sister synod in Tanzania, when he attended our synod assembly last year. In Tanzania, the church is growing so fast that they add thousands of persons each year to the membership roles. In fact, the growth has been so rapid, that some pastors have to serve as many as 8 congregations, some having as many as 3000 members. As a result, we can not assume that God’s Spirit, which empowered the early church to be so vibrant, is no longer present and at work in the church today. Bishop Boganza would certainly not agree with that thought.
In addition, even though our area has seen a significant decline in population over the past 20 or so years, there are still many people in our communities who have no church or religious affiliation. And the fact that many congregations have been declining in membership at a faster rate than the population, raises some interesting questions as to how we, who have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, respond to the grace of God and the power of God’s Spirit that we have received.
I will confess to you, that as I was writing this sermon, I began with pen and tablet, working on the tonneau cover of my truck, with the garage door open, enjoying a cigar. It is one of those vices that I have. But in the process of this, a good friend backed his van into our driveway. Since I had so much more work, I was hoping he didn’t need me to help him at this time. After all, he has done so much for me over the years, that if he needed me, I would have thankfully done what was needed.
Instead, he opened the back doors of his van, and I helped him lift our lawnmower, which he had welded and repaired, to the ground. He had already traded me my broken mower for one he had given us, in exchange for the engine on our old one. But he had taken the time to fix our mower, in spite of the fact that he had lots of work to do from the windstorm that did a lot of damage to all of the structures on his family’s farm, just a couple of weeks ago.
Then, when I asked him what I owed him, he said, “Don’t insult me. You don’t owe me anything, but a thank you!” It has always been his answer! And then he added, “Besides, this is a heavier mower than the one I gave you. And I’m sure Josie would rather use the one she is used to using, than the one I gave her. After all, she’s the one who mows your grass, isn’t she?
Well, I couldn’t argue with that, because I’ve never been able to mow the grass to Josie’s satisfaction.
But the point of this story is not who mows the grass at our home, but the witness that my friend makes with every act of kindness that he does for those in need. He has, in more ways than one, shown me through his life that he knows the Gospel and the power of God’s Spirit to be a witness to the love of God to his neighbors. Through the power of God’s Spirit, he has internalized the Gospel, in the way he lives his life. Oh, he has some faults, like the rest of us. But he is, none the less, a witness to the Gospel, one that truly inspires me.
Or consider this story, in another commentary by Dr. Willimon. Even though it is one that I have shared with you before, but it’s message is so pertinent to our lesson. Dr. Willimon states that he knew a pastor who stated, “My church is your typical, older, now declining inner-city church. But we had this program where we tried to get back in touch with our community. To do that, we made up these little bags of donuts. We stuck four donuts in a sack, along with a prayer, and had some of our members take them door-to-door to various homes. That was all.
A few weeks into this project, an older man showed up in worship one Sunday. When I asked if there were any announcements or prayer requests, this man stood up and said, ‘I haven’t been in church for nearly 30 years. I’ve been having a tough time of late. I just barely get by on my social security.
Last week, I only had enough money for my medicine, nothing for food. I went downtown, bought my pills, and had nothing left. I had been sitting in my apartment all day, with nothing to eat, an no possibility of anything to eat until my check came at the end of the week.
Then some of you people knocked on my door. You handed me that sack of donuts. It was literally food for a starving man. Those donuts were as much love and concern as I have seen in a long time. I’m here to say thank you. I’d like to be part of a people like you, if this is the sort of thing that you do for other people.’” [2]
The truth is, if we look at the vibrancy of the early church, as depicted in the book of Acts, and the vibrancy of the church today in Tanzania, we see a picture of the church in which its members not only believed in the Gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection for their own redemption, they trusted this message enough to change the way they lived their lives, toward others. Through the power of God’s Spirit, the members of the church knew what it meant, as Jesus says in our Gospel lesson, “To love others, as he has loved them.”
As a result, they internalized the Gospel. They were open to the power of God’s Spirit to share the grace of God with others, even with those who were outside the scope of their own religious parameters. They came to understand that through the power of Christ’s resurrection, God had acted to redeem all people, not just them.
The truth is, we are a vibrant congregation. There are so many positive things happening here, through the power of God’s Spirit, that we should rejoice, and praise God for the new life we have been given, and for the bonds of love that unites us as members of God’s kingdom. It is certainly a joy for me to be a part of God’s church, with you.
But a part of our rejoicing, if we are to take God’s message seriously, is not to keep this joy to ourselves, but to share with others, so that God’s kingdom might increase. And I believe that God’s Spirit is just as willing to see us, here at St. John’s, reach out and touch the lives of those in our community, just as the Spirit is touching the lives of those in Tanzania today. So open your hearts to God’s Spirit, to open your hearts to the new life God’s grace offers us in Christ’s death and resurrection, and empower us to witness to this gift of grace we have received, not only through the way we live our lives caring for those around us, but also in inviting others to join us in this new family, whom God has created.
Amen.
[1] Pulpit Resource, Logos Production Inc., 2007
[2] Pulpit Resource, Logos Production Inc., 2004
