A Church Story
Many years ago there lived a young Italian man, who had been born into a noble and distinguished family. Upon reaching adulthood he entered the military, whether through enlistment or conscription is unclear, nonetheless, as a military man he did very well and eventually ascended to the rank of captain over a regiment of soldiers who were deployed in a foreign city. This was a beautiful city situated right on the coast overlooking the sea. Walking through the streets of this ancient place, the young captain would have been impressed with the lavish palaces and public buildings, a theater, an amphitheater, a highly sophisticated sewer system that kept the city unusually clean for the place and time in which it existed. He would have walked down to the coast and looked over a beautiful, magnificent harbor that seemed strangely out of place in a setting such as this. You see, the young man would have been accustomed to these sights in his homeland, but probably wouldn’t have expected to find such beauty and sophistication in this distant outpost to which he and his men had been stationed.
This captain was surprised to discover something else in this strange place. The native people here only believed in and worshipped one God. It’s likely that he had grown up as a religious man following the religious system of his homeland in which there were many different gods to worship. There were gods of fertility, gods of agriculture, gods for everything you could imagine. Even the leader of his country was considered to be one of the countless gods to which he was required to pay homage and appease. But now, in this strange place, among these strange people, he heard about one God...the only God in existence who created everything, who was everything humanity needed, and who didn’t demand to be appeased, but instead desired to be loved. Our stranger felt himself drawn to this kind of God, who wanted relationship with His creation, not sacrifices from His creation.
It wasn’t long before our captain came to understand the truth about this one God, and gave up on the religious beliefs he had been taught growing up, they had felt empty and meaningless all along anyway. But now this God made sense. All that had been written about Him by the natives made sense. This was the God he needed to devote himself to. He did so, and his devotion to this God took many forms. There grew in his heart a deep reverent awe for this God who over the centuries had demonstrated Himself so powerfully to the natives. He led his entire household, his family, his servants to understand and believe in this God. He began seeking out the poor who were around him and gave generously to them, doing all he could to ease their suffering. He established spiritual disciplines in his life; the most evident one being a life of regular prayer. And eventually, this captain overseeing an occupying army was looked up to and respected by the natives of the land he was sent to occupy. Our young man had experienced a dramatic life change...one that he probably never expected to happen the day he boarded his ship and set sail for this coastal city.
Despite the wonderful changes that had taken place in his heart, his mind, and the way he lived his life, there eventually came a time when he probably thought to himself that there was more to this story than he knew. Yes, there has been a closeness, a growing warmth and devotion to this God, but still it seemed as if there was more to it, but he was strangely unable to push further. He knew this God was real, he knew that God loved him and cared for him, he could clearly see how God had begun to change his heart and mind. But it seemed as if there was still a chasm between God and himself. There were probably times when he thought to himself, “I’ve come so far, I’ve gotten to know this God, why can’t I grow as close to him as I want to?” This experience was to him like walking for miles through the parched desert, finally finding water, walking to the water’s edge, but being unable to drink. It was like going without food for days, coming to a banquet table filled with every sort of delicacy, but not being able to eat. His heart ached, longing to know this God more, but being strangely prohibited by this unseen barrier that said to him, “Today you can only come this far.”
In those days before CNN, e-mail and Fed-Ex news spread slowly. But eventually word probably reached our captain about something strange that had just happened in a city about 70 miles away. One day about 120 people were gathered together in a room, praying to the same God that he had come to believe in. As they prayed a strange sound filled the air, and the people gathered together in the room began praising God out loud. It was such an unusual occurrence that people from all over the city came running to see what was happening. People from other countries, but living in the city and who spoke different languages flocked to the scene and were amazed that everyone, regardless of their language barriers, understood clearly in his own language what was being proclaimed by these 120 people. Finally, one the group came out of the room and spoke to the crowd. He spoke to them about a man named Jesus who had been crucified several weeks earlier for claiming to be the Son of God. When he finished speaking a throng of about 3000 people pledged their allegiance to this Jesus and joined the 120. I suppose our captain’s heart may have leaped as he thought to himself, “Maybe this is the rest of the story.”
The young Italian was careful to listen for more news about this. And it’s likely that more news came. This group of people 70 miles away was growing everyday. They called themselves the Ekklesia, which in their native tongue meant “the called-out ones.” They also called themselves the Followers of The Way, meaning that they believed what this Jesus meant when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” As time passed, and from a distance, our captain continued to struggle with this drawing to God, but inability to come intimately close. As he struggled day by day, his ears were always open to any news, any information he could gather about this unusual group of people. As he observed, he learned a great deal; making many observations about the “Called-Out Ones.”
One of the things he noticed was that they seemed to have a power that he had never seen before. Even the most devout worshippers of the many gods of his homeland didn’t possess the kind of power he heard about in these people. You see, this Jesus they followed told them shortly before he ascended through the clouds to heaven that in just a few days they would receive power from God. This power would come as God sent the Holy Spirit to them, to dwell within them, and empower them to boldly tell the world about Jesus, to resist sin, to love one another with an extraordinary love, to defy the laws of the natural world by healing diseases and performing miracles. Before anything else, this group of people, the Followers of The Way, were empowered by something, someone from another world; the Spirit of God himself.
I would imagine that he also heard stories about the way these people lived. There were leaders among them; they called them apostalos, which meant “messenger sent by God.” The people intently listened to the teachings of these leaders and applied them to their lives. There was a sense of awe that was always present among this group as they witnessed God doing miraculous things through their own hands; particularly through the hands of the apostles. These people loved to meet together; not just once a week, but every day. Everyday they would go to the main place of worship in town, - the temple, where they would worship and be taught by the leaders. But they would also meet together frequently in each others homes to share meals together. There was a lot of laughter, great joy, and there wasn’t a trace of poverty among them, because anytime someone had a need, someone in the group would just sell something so he or she could meet that need. Even the outside community around them—the ones who didn’t believe in Jesus—looked up to them and respected them because they could see the love that these people had for one another, and the good that was being done through them.
These people were lived in incredible unity with one another. The were united around one common purpose, to love and honor their Lord with the way they lived their lives and by proclaiming his story to everyone who would listen. If disagreements and dissention arose among them, they dealt with it quickly, lovingly, with wisdom. Evil, sin, and deception was not tolerated among them, but instead was exposed and dealt with quickly with the hope that the one who sinned would quickly and wholeheartedly turn from away from it and receive God’s forgiveness. Our young Italian likely heard how every day the number of those belonging to this group grew.
I’m sure that some of the stories that reached the captain were stories of how the Followers of The Way were just as concerned about the well-being of people outside of their group as they were about each other. They made space in their lives to love and care for people around them—people not in their group—who were poor, hurting, and far from God with the hope that they too would discover The Way. One such story involved a forty-something year old man who had been crippled from birth. His only hope of eating was that his friends would carry him to the city gate where he could sit all day and beg for a coin or two. On one of those days two of the apostles heard his cries, stopped, made time in their day to look him in the eye and offer him something even better than money. They took him by the hand, lifted him to his feet and pronounced him healed in the name of Jesus Christ. Walking, and leaping, and praising God with legs that now worked and new hope coursing through his heart and mind, this poor man had been touched and transformed by God, through those who had given themselves to this Jesus.
There’s no doubt that our soldier would have been troubled to learn that the leaders of the native religion of the land hated the Followers of The Way and wanted them silenced. These Called-Out Ones were natives too...they loved the same God...and look what was happening among and through them. Who would want to silence this? He may have thought, “Surely if the religious leaders put too much pressure on this group of people and threaten their lives, it will all end, they will succumb to the pressure, be silenced, this movement will end—and what a tragic day that will be.” But instead, stories spread about the radical devotion of these people, their refusal to be silenced, their willingness to give up even their own lives to keep the message alive! The more pressure that was applied, the more threats that were made, the more violence that ensued, the more passionate they became, and the more quickly the movement grew, and more and more people were added to their number. Even when one of them was finally stoned to death, instead of the Ekklesia disbanding and calling it quits, the Followers of The Way scattered all across the countryside carrying their message with them. All of the stories emerging out of this one city now spilled over into towns and cities everywhere and the group grew exponentially all across the nation.
With wonder and a burning curiosity the captain would have become more and more convinced that the rest of the story, the chapters that he had been missing in his life, was unfolding all around him. His journey began with turning to the one true God and worshipping Him—from a distance, which was all he and everyone else could do. But now, he began to see that the gap would be closed, the chasm bridged, the relationship between he and God transformed into a relationship like exists between a father and a son, through this person Jesus—the Son of God—who had issued to all of humanity an invitation to “Follow me, I am the Way to the Father.”
Read Acts 10:3-9, 17, 19B-27, 30-48
On this day, Cornelius and his entire household found the answers he had longed for. The story was now complete, and he was finally able to find himself in the pages of this story. He became a Follower of The Way, a Called-Out One, a child of the Father in Heaven, a friend of God no longer separated from Him by anything, brought near to God, so near that God Himself now lived within his heart. The Kingdom of God had come to Cornelius, to his household, and to his city, the city of Caesarea.
The Kingdom of God has also come to Carbondale, Illinois. It has come to Murphysboro, to Marion, to Carterville, to Herrin, to Makanda, to every neighborhood, village, and town in Southern Illinois. And in every neighborhood, village, and town in Southern Illinois you will find men and women like Cornelius. People who know that there is more to this story of life to be discovered, but have been unable to find the missing chapters.
There is also in every neighborhood, village, and town in Southern Illinois the Ekklesia, the Called-Out Ones, Followers of The Way. We are everywhere. Church buildings are sprinkled throughout the land. Hundreds of congregations fill these buildings every Sunday morning. Every Cornelius around us encounters Call-Out Ones every day. But the question is this: Do we as a church cause the Cornelius’s around us to pause and consider that maybe we know the rest of the story? When Cornelius looks at the Called-Out Ones of New Prairie, does he see a group of people among whom the Spirit of God is obviously present and at work? Does he find a group of people who have unashamedly determined to walk away from this world’s pattern of life and be transformed into the light of the world?
When Cornelius looks at us, does he see a people who are passionate about worshipping their God. Who offer their bodies as living sacrifices, lifting their voices, their hearts to God in sincere praise and thankgiving? Who are fiercely determined to not let anything stand in the way of them walking through life in God’s presence?
When Cornelius looks at us, does he see a people who are devoted to one another, loving one another, caring for one another, enjoying time with one another, experiencing both the joys and tragedies of life together, meeting one another’s needs, refusing to allow anyone among us to suffer alone as we walk this journey of faith together?
Does Cornelius look at New Prairie and see a people who are as concerned about those outside of our building as we are about one another? Does he notice that we make room in our lives for people who are hurting, broken, far from God, consumed by sin and evil with the hope that they too will discover The Way? Is he amazed at how deliberate we are in not just taking notice, but seeking out these people in our workplace, our neighborhood, our school, or even our own household?
Would Cornelius find us devoting ourselves to the teachings of the disciples as we pursue this thing called Christianity not just as a religious conversion, but as a radical change of life; a life of discipleship in which we are day by day learning, growing, changing, loving God more, and loving people more?
What would he think of the way we use our resources as people who have been “Called Out” for God’s purposes. Would he find us hoarding our resources, refusing to generously give what we can to work of reproducing the Ekklesia throughout the land? Would he be perplexed at how we foolishly squander what we have on the things this world offers while we watch those around us suffer and do without?
These are all questions that we will seek to answer over the coming weeks as we examine each of the five core values of New Prairie Community of Faith. My prayer is that when the hundreds and thousands of Cornelius’s around us observe how we live as Followers of The Way, they will find us faithful.
