Easter 4 B
Miracles Often Do Come in Small Packages
Acts 4:23-33
04/11/03
"Feddersen’s Fables" has the story of a rancher who rented a famous stallion, to sire a champion by one of his thoroughbred mares. The owner of the majestic beast delivered and unloaded the stallion directly into a corral, and the next day, the rancher rode another horse out onto the meadow and attempted to drive his mare to the corral. Playing shy and "hard-to-get," or perhaps truly afraid, she would run in any direction except toward the corral.
So the rancher switched his strategy and attempted to drive the stallion out into the meadow. Not trusting the stranger, the horse would not turn his back to him. Every time the man tried to walk around behind the horse, it would kick out or quickly turn and face him. After about an hour of this, the stallion realized fully that the rancher was trying to drive him toward the open gate, but by this time his distrust of the stranger had grown to such proportions that he was determined that the gate was the last place he would go.
The two of them stood pitiful and helpless in that corral, looking at each other. The horse was afraid to let the stranger out of his sight and the rancher was not willing to approach that wide-eyed mass of muscle head on.
The rancher reasoned that if he left the stallion alone overnight, his hunger for the green grass and running stream or for the mare would soon take him out of the corral. However, the next morning found everything exactly as before. Having no better idea, the rancher tried both procedures from the previous day and had exactly the same frustrating results.
Tired, disappointed and more than a little aggravated, the rancher phoned the stallion’s owner and related the impasse. He told the owner to come and get his valuable property before the horse starved or dehydrated. The owner said, "Well, why don’t you just put a halter on him and lead him where you want him to go?" The rancher was timid, even fearful, as he moved toward that potentially destructive force, but he found that the horse was quite content to stand still as long as he could see what was going on.
After fastening the halter, the man walked through the open gate with the stallion willingly following him. This time he was the one who had to be brave enough to turn his back and take the risk of trusting the animal. Once through the opening, he unfastened the halter and the two mates were soon sharing the joy of their freedom and togetherness as they ran and played across the meadow.
The rancher’s approach is so true to life, an apt description of how we often try to fix our dilemmas. I remember trying to get my son, Caleb, to lie down for a nap. We tried heavy handed tactic we could think of to force that child to sleep, but what finally worked most effectively was dad lying down to take a nap with him. 10 – 20 minutes later he was almost always asleep.
It happens with neighbors too. We would like them to come around to our way of thinking, adopt our opinions, conform to our standards, work with us to accomplish community goals; but instead of taking the time to work with them, it’s often seen as easier to just force them into compliance. Our first and only approach is to try to whip them into shape from a position of authority and power – perhaps with a show of anger, a bit of intimidation or worse yet, going so far as to take legal action to get them to see things in your light.
This is even the case within the church. Without going into a great deal of detail our own church body is embroiled in an embarrassingly public controversy of its own involving a district president, our synodical president and several congregations, individuals and pastors that might well have been avoided if the parties had set aside their personal agendas and sought to work out their differences in a brotherly way.
It’s the way of choice that’s not always called for; though sometimes it is. Remember, Jesus acted in righteous anger to clear the tables of the money changers in the temple. He acted to stop an injustice against Gentile worshippers of the true God and to restore God’s house to its proper function of being a house of prayer.
In a more positive example we see in our text today how God used his mighty strength to reassure His people. He shook the house where the disciples were gathered to give them a physical demonstration of His powerful presence that would go with them and that would be active to overthrow the wicked intentions of those that would oppose Him and His church. And we all know how God authenticated Jesus as His Son through the miraculous deeds Jesus performed throughout His life and on occasion through the lives of His disciples after He had ascended into heaven; not the least of which was His resurrection from the dead. Shock and awe, demonstrations of power, implementation of force has sometimes been needed and used by God for the sake of His church, and He’s not beyond using it today; but more often than not I see Jesus playing the role of the owner of the stallion in our story today.
Many of the truly remarkable things Jesus did came in that which was much less noticeable and ostentatious. His faithful prayers, His instruction in the Word, His examples of service, His institution of the Sacraments, His death by an instrument of shame shared by countless criminals and individuals of ill repute – by all these means considered small, insignificant, weak and discounted by others Jesus accomplished some of His greatest deeds. These were deeds that would benefit all of humanity, not just a few. Through these, often discounted things, Jesus united the disciples’ hearts, bound them to the truth, committed them to the task of sharing His Word, forgave them their past, renewed them for the future, empowered them by His Spirit, encouraged them in the face of opposition, blessed their work and made in prosper. In these, often overlooked gifts, our Lord Jesus accomplished our salvation and set history on a course that has set these same blessed gifts at our feet today, gifts that continue to promise us a new found life; and the text before us today pictures just what happens when people of God, like us, would dare to follow after our Lord Jesus Christ.
Opposition to Christ’s church is just as prevalent today as it was in the early days of His church. Many Christians around the globe live under constant threat to their lives. But the opposition is generally much more subtle than that. It’s subtle, yet nonetheless effective. Today’s attendance is but one indication of how the world’s priorities and influences have made inroads within the church eating away its support.
And in reaction to all of this we could focus on the more obvious outward shaking of the room within the lesson today as the answer. We could take action to drive what we want out of others. We could try to light a fire under some of them with threats. In other ways we could try to wow people back into the pew, entertain them, blow them away with staged attempts to create some fascinated feeling. Many try to do just that, and it’s a legitimate concern of many individuals who see some of what the church does today as an attempt at fun at the expense of teaching the Word, drawing near to our Lord in prayer and focusing intently upon what Christ has and continues to do in our lives.
And that would be unfortunate. It would be unfortunate because it’s these things that truly make a difference in the face of such opposition. Look at the text. God’s people turned to him in prayer when they were threatened by the forces of evil, and God answered, but not so much with power. Yes the room shook. It was meaningful to God’s people, a confirmation of sorts that He had heard their prayer. But the real answer to the prayer didn’t come in powerful demonstrations that changed the world by force as much as it did in the hearts and lives of God’s people who were changed into bold instruments of His praise when they dared to turn their concerns over to Him, when they poured their hearts into God’s word and when they focused intently upon Jesus, His mission, His life. And my friends, it’s here that God would still dare to work today – in things people would often overlook, in people like ourselves that we often discount as too weak.
Most people would decry weakness. That’s why Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 12:10 about boasting “all the more gladly about my weaknesses,” comes across sounding so strange. But Paul rejoiced in them. He didn’t try to over compensate with some other form of human prowess, but admitted them and turned them over to God’s strength. That’s focusing intently on Jesus. That’s giving Christ Jesus the glory that He deserves; a glory that listens intently to His promises, that commits one’s challenges to fervent prayer, that rests in the secure knowledge that He can and will use you and me. It’s the secret to the church’s success in a world that’s set on its destruction.
God’s miracles, God’s power, His awesome designs, His victorious works have often come in small, disregarded, overlooked packages. Don’t discount the miraculous things that God can do through me and you if only we were bold enough to ask, expectant enough to look where others will never find them.
