“Continuing the Ministry of Jesus”
Acts 2:42-3:10
There was once a young man who snuck into church hoping no one would notice him.
The only reason he came was because he was interested in a girl who sang in the choir.
He hoped that if he was in the service he’d be able to see her at the end of the service and ask her out.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do, but he saw people going in and sitting down, so he did the same.
Just as the service was starting, an usher came up to him.
“Excuse me,” he said, “The person who’s supposed to do the reading hasn’t turned up.
Could you possibly do it?”
The young man was horrified for a moment, but then thought quickly.
The girl he had his eye on was there, in the choir.
She would be impressed if she saw him reading in the service.
“All right,” he said.
He took the Bible and looked through the reading the usher had shown him.
When it came to the moment.
He went up, opened the Bible, and began to read.
It was from John’s Gospel and he vaguely recognized it.
“Anyone who doesn’t enter the sheepfold by the gate,” he heard his own voice say, “but climbs in by another way, is a thief and a bandit.”
He was thunderstruck.
This is what he’d done!
He was standing here, pretending to be a regular Bible-reader, when in fact he’d only come in to meet a girl.
He forced himself to go on, aware of his heart beating loudly.
If he was a bandit, coming under false pretences, what was the alternative?
“I am the gate for the sheep,” said Jesus.
“The bandit only comes to steal, kill and destroy.
I came that they might have life, and have it to the full to overflowing.”
Suddenly, something happened inside the young man.
He stopped thinking about himself.
He stopped thinking about the girl, about the congregation, about the fact that he’d just done a ridiculous and hypocritical thing.
He thought about Jesus.
Unaware of the shock he was causing, he swung around to the Pastor.
“Is it true?,” he asked.
“Did he really come so that we could have real life, full life like that?”
The Pastor smiled.
“Of course it is,” he replied.
“That’s why we are all here.
Come and join in this next song and see what happens if you really mean it.”
And the young man found himself swept off his feet by the presence and the love of Jesus, filling him, changing him, calling him to follow, like a grateful sheep, after the Shepherd Who can be trusted to lead the way to good pasture by day and safe rest at night.
He got more, much more, than he bargained for.
(This story came from N.T. Wright)
Something like that happened the man in our Scripture Lesson who got carried to the temple gate in Jerusalem.
The man in our story had been crippled from birth.
He was born into a situation where he was never going to be able to live a normal life.
This is a man who had never stood up on his own two feet, had never taken a step or gone for a walk.
Growing up, he would watch the other kids run around and play ball but he couldn’t join in.
All he could do is watch.
He had lived his life isolated and left behind.
If that’s not bad enough, he’s probably never going to marry or have kids because he has no way to support his family.
His destiny is a dusty mat: a life of poverty.
Society didn’t have the kind of disability benefits that exist today.
There were no special parking spots or automatic doors, or wheelchairs.
There was nobody to hire people in his condition.
All he could do was to throw himself at the mercy of other people.
So, he would sit outside the temple hoping someone would come along that was generous.
His freedom was also very limited.
He had to depend on friends or family to carry him everywhere day and night.
He had to hope they didn’t forget to pick him up and leave him out there all night.
He wouldn’t be able to defend himself.
He’s completely at the mercy of others.
Think for a moment of all the people that looked down on him as some kind of sinner who deserved this state…
This man was in a dire situation.
He was hopeless, helpless and defeated.
It seems that most people don’t have much time for a guy like that.
I mean, he’s not going to benefit anyone.
Usually people are looking to connect with people who can help them, but this guy is a total liability.
But Peter and John had compassion on him.
They wanted to give him something—to help him.
That’s what compassion looks like in action.
I think it’s pretty cool, you know?
In the first part of our reading for today, in Acts Chapter 2, we see the first portrait of the Christian Church.
And it’s a beautiful scene—idyllic—really.
The brand-new Church devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Everyone was filled with wonder and awe.
The believers were together, breaking bread in their homes, eating together, praising God together and their numbers were growing daily.
Who could ask for anything more?
The easy thing for them to do in a situation like that would have been to turn inward.
I mean, what a cozy, closed club they could have become.
They were safe.
They had plenty of food, entertainment, friends…
Why venture out into the cold, cruel world?
At the first Church I served while in seminary I was the Associate Pastor.
One Sunday morning, I was in the main office area when the phone rang.
One of the active lay persons answered the phone.
From the conversation, it was obvious that someone had called to ask directions to the church—so they could worship with us.
This was long before GPS systems.
In any event, the woman gave the directions once, but obviously they still weren’t clear to the people on the other end.
And so, in an exasperated and angry tone the church member yelled into the phone: “NO! I said you take a right at the McDonalds, go about a mile and a half and you will see the church on your left.”
After that, she hung up the phone and said, “We already have too many members as it is!”
I suppose it would have been really easy for Peter and John to take the same approach.
But that is NOT what the Church is about—that is NOT what the Gospel is about.
It does not exclude, it invites.
It is not cold; it is compassionate.
It does not stay inside, within its doors, behind it’s bricked walls—it moves from the inside out!
It reaches out to the stranger, the marginalized, the other.
In the name of Christ, it offers healing to refugees, those of different socio-economic status, the disabled, people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds—you name it!!!
It does not discriminate—instead, it continues the work of Jesus Christ in this world.
And, and when it is truly walking in step with the Holy Spirit of God—it is our only HOPE!
As we can see from our Scripture passage for this morning, the gift of inclusion is as old as the Church itself!!!
Last week was Pentecost—the birth of the Church.
And we are told that 3,000 people gave their lives to Jesus Christ that day.
In the crowd on new converts were Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome; Cretans, Arabs---and they all spoke in different languages.
They had radically different backgrounds.
They looked different from one another.
They dressed different.
They had different skin tones.
And yet, and yet…
…as we see in our Scripture passage for today, they all came together—they shared what they had; they loved God and one another.
And isn’t that what it is all about?
In this country we are going through a time of terrible racism and upheaval.
What would happen if the Christian Church started to look like those protests in the streets of our cities—with white people, black people, brown people—you name it—all people gathered together under the banner of Christ—loving everyone and bringing everyone in?
Isn’t that the key to changing our world?
Jesus Christ is no respecter of persons.
We are all created in His image.
And I think one of the biggest puzzles of life is learning to get along, becoming color blind and sharing what we have with one another.
The first Christian Church “sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”
For a brief time in history, human beings allowed the Holy Spirit to break down the barriers of language, race and socio-economic status—and give us a peak at what the Church of Jesus Christ is really supposed to look like and act like.
We aren’t a political party.
We don’t align ourselves with the word.
We don’t take sides.
We don’t argue politics.
We don’t judge.
We love, we invite; we heal.
One day Peter and John were going up to the Temple at the time of prayer.
They encountered a desperate man—a fellow human being who was relegated to sitting outside the gates as others passed him by.
But instead of doing what most folks did, the two disciples stopped and spoke to the man.
They offered him something much, much better than silver or gold.
They offered him Jesus.
The man accepted what they offered and then jumped to his feet, began to walk and went with them into the Temple—a place he was well-acquanted with from the outside—a place which he had never seen the inside.
In Acts, we see a glimpse of the Church as Jesus planned it.
We see how we are supposed to live and act.
You know, the same Holy Spirit Who led those first Christians is still available to us today.
It’s possible to look and act like that first Church.
The question is: “Do we want to?”
Who are the folks sitting outside our doors, begging for sustenance, for life, for someone to love them, for salvation?
Will we leave our comfort zones and invite them in?
Amen.
