11/3/24 - Christian Community:  A Matter of Life and Death - Acts 4:32-5:11

Christian Community:  A Matter of Life and Death

Acts 4:32-5:11

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

November 3, 2024 

Image:  Ten of the dancing saints at St. Gregory of Nyssa Church, San Francisco, CA: William Byrd, Desmond Mpilo Tutu, Alexandrian Washerwoman, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, Manche Masemola, Isaiah, The Kangxi Emperor, Roland Allen, John Coltrane

 

 Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9zorSYSVC8

This is a terrible story that Angela read for us, a terrifying story. What kind of people were they in Jerusalem that they kept this story alive long enough for Luke to write it down?  This is an awful story.  That might be why it is not included in the 3-year lectionary.  What kind of pastor chooses this story for Pledge Sunday?  You are asking such astute questions today.  I’ll try to circle back to them.

First, I want to remind us about last Sunday’s lectio divina.  The text was about the time when Paul and Silas were in prison and there was an earthquake which shook open the cells and the shackles of the prisoners. The jailer assumed that everyone had escaped and was ready to take his own life, but Paul called out “We are all here.”  In the Zoom chat, there was quite a discussion about that phrase we are all here.  Who is the all in that sentence?  In last week’s discussion, someone said “Rich, poor, differently abled, believers and not believers.”  In the Jerusalem church, we might add “social elites and those on the margins, those with citizenship and those without, Hellenists and Hebrews.”

 We are all here.

This growing community gathers a diversity of people.  Chapter 2 refers to 3,000 people being baptized with another 5,000 being added in chapter 4.  It is a large community that builds its life around the story of Jesus, the breaking of bread, fellowship and prayers.   The whole of this expanding community, Luke says, is of one heart and mind.  They are characterized by their incredible unity; their unwavering agreement on belief and purpose and mutual care.

A common theme in the many speeches or sermons in the book of Acts is to trace the history of God and God’s people right up through the resurrection of Jesus.  In these speeches, the apostles bear witness to God’s intention across millennia to form a people, a people sometimes called peculiar, a people who will be in relationship to God and each other in ways that will be a blessing to the whole world.  The apostles understand themselves to be at the dawn of a new era, a key place, in God’s work.  They are inviting others to join that community which is defined by new loyalties and a new story.  “God is at work to create a new people who are not to be defined by the old categories of race, language, gender, or social class, but a people united in witness to the resurrection. . .”[1]

We are all here.

And people cannot join fast enough.  In this community, they live cooperatively, not competitively.  They figure out how to worship and fellowship together, across barriers of culture and language. They show up for each other.  They are generous with their time and finances.  “There was not a needy person among them” Luke says.  That is a reference to Deuteronomy, to the expectations God set forth when the people first moved into the Promised Land.  From ancient times, God’s desire was for abundance and generosity so that no one would ever be in need. The promise of Deuteronomy is being fulfilled.  This is evidence of the arrival of the reign of God which has always been characterized by love, peace, abundance and justice. [2]

There was not a needy person among them because the people with means shared with those without. This faith community is concerned with practical and concrete everyday stuff as well as big theological ideas.  Lutheran scholar Matthew Skinner writes, Salvation includes “relinquishing one’s real and perceived advantages and entering into true solidarity with others.” [3] 

A few weeks ago, we read the story of Saul’s conversion. We noted that in Acts, conversion is about “crossing boundaries and barriers and reaching a whole new way of seeing and understanding life.”[4]  This is what is happening in Jerusalem. Thousands of people are crossing boundaries to break into a new understanding of how to live life. This pattern repeats itself over and over.  And the community keeps welcoming and including and teaching the newcomers. We are all here.

Imagine with me the rate of change.  Hundreds of individuals are changing their minds and habits.  Some are abandoning family or giving up social standing to do so.  The community leaders are reaching more and more people. The community is developing ways to nurture faith and strengthen new habits and share abundance. Can you imagine the number of meetings necessary for that?  Next week, they have to do it all again with the current folks and add in more.  They are all about changed and changing lives, about sustaining those changes and inviting others to share in changed life.”[5]

As you know, Emmanuel is engaged in an intense process of discerning our purpose. Sometimes, people get tired of the process and they say things like “I wish someone would just tell me what to do and I would do it.” Maybe you don’t feel that way, but I have heard that sentiment on occasion.  So, this week, when I read a sentence that started with “the core purpose of the church is . . .” I gave it my full attention. The sentence was in a book entitled Called to Be Church.  It was written by two people – Anthony Robinson,  a United Church of Christ pastor who has written a dozen books and now coaches congregations, and Robert Wall, a United Methodist New Testament scholar and retired seminary professor.  You might want to know about those credentials as you hear the rest.

Together, they say, “The core purpose of the church is to be a community that sustains continuous change and transformation as we grow in the likeness of Christ and image of God.”[6] 

The purpose of the church is to keep changing? Changing ourselves, changing the world? It has been a very long time since I’ve heard anything like that. I confess that for most of my vocational life, it has felt like the purpose of the church is to pass on the faith to the next generation, just as it was received from the previous one, carefully preserved and unchanged. 

“The core purpose of the church is to be a community that sustains continuous change and transformation as we grow in the likeness of Christ and image of God.”  Tuck that away to mull on more later.

So, what we see in Jerusalem is a church that is having an impact.  Centered around a story of abundance and liberation, they are challenging their culture in life-giving ways.  They are united in heart and soul and there is not a needy person among them, because people who have property make a practice of selling it and giving the proceeds to the church to distribute to those who need it.  Willie James Jennings says that these followers of Jesus released themselves to one another, making themselves responsible for and accountable to one another.  “Money here will be used to destroy what money normally is used to create:  distance and boundaries between people. . . Jesus will join us and he will use whatever we have to make the joining possible. . .  Too often, in our reading of this story our view is clouded by the spectacular giving and we miss the spectacular joining.  Now these followers of Jesus will become the bridge between uneven wealth and resources, uneven hope and uneven life.”[7]  We are all here.

That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?  People are even changing their financial habits.  They’re managing their wealth, not for their own benefit or for their heirs, but for the strangers who keep joining the church.  Barnabas is just one example of someone who sells property and gives all the money to the apostles.

This is where the story gets awful.  Maybe Ananias and Sapphira are jealous of the attention that Barnabas receives.  Maybe they want to be admired as he is.  So, they scheme together to sell land and hand over the proceeds, except that they agree to keep some of the money for themselves.  They each lie about it and they each immediately fall down dead.  The story is terrifying because there is no forgiveness, no mercy.  The offense is not that they kept some of the money.  Peter tells Ananias that it was his property. He was free to keep it.  He was free to sell it and give away only a portion of the selling price.  The offense is that they lied about what they gave to the apostles. They faked their commitment. They lied to the community.  They lied to God. 

We get it.  They did a very bad thing.  But the punishment should fit the crime.  The death penalty for one lie?  That’s over the top.  Where is the God of mercy and forgiveness that this community is always talking about? 

What kind of people were they in Jerusalem that they kept this terrifying story alive?  Who clings to such a story with its image of a quick-tempered, no-second-chances-for-you God? Who thinks or hopes that God acts like this? One scholar writes, “Maybe angry people do.  Or threatened people. Or fearful people.  Not people suffering from merely any kind of fear – maybe these people fear losing what is truly life-giving to them.  Maybe . . .people afraid of losing a community capable of embodying the best things, such as God’s own commitment to them.” [8]

Maybe fearful people tell this story.  They tell it not to warn that God is vindictive, but to plead “This new, one-of-a kind community is vulnerable.  Don’t hurt it.” [9]

What kind of pastor chooses this text on Pledge Sunday? 

Maybe a pastor who hears the deep longing for a flourishing faith community.  A pastor who is aware that we are fearful.  We do not want to lose what has been life-giving.  We are frightened and protective of the vulnerable Emmanuel church. Many of us are convinced that if our location changes, if our ministry changes, we will lose something life-giving, we will lose our community and the embodiment of God’s commitment to us. 

I hope that we can hear what was essential to the early church, what is probably most essential for us:  being of one heart and mind, together in purpose and trust and mutual care.  Today we offer financial pledges, our gifts to God in support of this community because it is here, among these saints, that we are most keenly aware of God’s presence and call and nurture. Our financial support is important, but it is part of a deeper, wider, all-encompassing commitment to God and to each other.  We embrace the change and transformation of the next year together. 

We are all here. 

 

 

[1] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church: The Book of Acts for a New Day, (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2006), p. 79

[2] Justo L. Gonazalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2001) p. 77.

[3] Matthew L. Skinner, Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel:  Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts, (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2015), p 32.

[4] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church, p. 141

[5] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church, p. 80

[6] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church, pp. 80-81

[7] Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017), p 50.

[8] Skinner, Intrusive God, p. 36

[9] Skinner, Intrusive God, p 37

10/20/24 - Conversion - Acts 9:1-20

Conversion 

Acts 9:1-20 

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

October 20, 2024 

Photo by Ronaldo de Oliveira on Unsplash Used under Unsplash license

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQqAwHg_-OM

Last Sunday, we read together from Acts 17, where the apostle Paul was preaching to the Gentiles in Athens.  Today, we back up to a time when he was called Saul, a time when he held to a rigid boundary between Jews and Gentiles, with his body and soul planted firmly on the Jewish side of that boundary. 

The very first time Saul was mentioned was in chapter 7, when he guarded the coats of those who stoned Stephen to death.  After Stephen’s death, the persecution got so bad that the new disciples fled from Jerusalem.  You remember the church in Antioch which came about in part because of this great scattering. 

Saul is no longer content with just driving the believers out of Jerusalem.  He tries to pursue them all the way to Damascus, which is more than 100 miles from Jerusalem.  The story begins with Saul breathing threats and murder, but that is a mild translation.  It would be more accurate to say that Saul is snorting.  He is riled up. 

Saul has the authority to take life through imprisonment or execution.  Biblical scholar and theologian Willie James Jennings says, “No one is more dangerous than one with the power to take life and who has already mind and sight set on those who are [perceived to be] a threat.  Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their own logic.” [1]

“Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their own logic.” What a great way to describe an echo chamber.  Perhaps you know some individuals who are stuck in an echo chamber. It often seems that no appeals to logic or facts will change their mind.  We are familiar with this phenomenon.  We see it politically – the other party is the enemy.  We see it in the church where one faith stream is pitted against another.  Protestants against Catholics, mainliners against Evangelicals.  We plant body and soul firmly on our side of the boundary. 

This is more than difference of theology or worship style.  Saul is downright dangerous. It takes a blinding light and a disembodied voice and three days of an intense spiritual experience to change him.  His reversal is amazing.  He goes from fully sighted to being blind.  From being a person on a clear self-appointed mission to someone who has to wait for days in order to learn what to do next.  He starts out intending to lead captives back to Jerusalem and ends up being the one led into Damascus by others.  By the end, his position is flipped.  Instead of persecuting the followers of the Way, he joins them.  We might call this a conversion. Ananias is a disciple who lives in Damascus.  He knows who Saul is. He knows that Saul is the dangerous enemy.  Ananias does not readily accept God’s instruction to go to him, to help him.  Saul kills people like him.  Ananias needs some reassurance that the risk he will take is really what God wants.  But he becomes convinced and he does what God asks.  The Bible does not say that he acts without fear.  His hands may shake as he lays them on Saul, whom he calls brother, but he still does it. We might also call Ananias’ experience a conversion. 

We will come back to Saul and Ananias.  First, let me introduce you to two people I met this summer.  They were born on opposite sides of a great divide.  This divide was so intense that people were regularly killed or imprisoned by people on the other side.  Everyone knew who the enemies were. I’m speaking of Northern Ireland where it may be easiest to describe the two sides as Catholic and Protestant, although it is more nuanced than that.

Tom was Catholic and he also served as General Secretary of Sinn Fein for several years.  Lesley was on the other side.  She is a Presbyterian minister.  Tom and Lesley and a few others met secretly to work for peace because it was dangerous.  No one trusted the enemy.  If you trusted the enemy, then you were a traitor.  Lesley was serving her first church.  If the church had discovered her role in the peace talks, she would likely have lost her job, possibly her ordination. She was ordained about 7 years before me. I cannot imagine summoning that kind of courage in my first call.  She had been warned against those people from childhood, the people with whom she was now sharing homemade pizza because they couldn’t meet in a restaurant or pub.   Tom had suffered legal discrimination and imprisonment by the folks on Lesley’s side when he was a young adult.  He had every reason to be angry, to hate her and her kind.  Somehow, they allowed their minds to be changed.  They were converted to the cause of peace.  Their meetings were part of the background that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, ending about 30 years of violent conflict. 

We had the privilege of hearing some of their stories one holy afternoon in Belfast.  You could tell that their shared risks developed into an incredible friendship.  Lesley is still ordained in the Presbyterian church. Tom is still an Irish Republican, but he no longer identifies as Catholic or even as Christian.  Near the end, Lesley told my favorite story.  She said that not long ago, she had been ill for a long time.  While she recuperated at home, many people came to see her.  Lots of her Presbyterian colleagues, some church members, family and friends dropped in to encourage her with food and good wishes.  Of all the many people who came over the weeks of her illness, Tom, the non-Christian, was the only one who sat down, pulled out a Bible and read scripture to her.  To have changed your mind so completely about who the enemy is or how you are to relate to them – I would call that a conversion. 

Many of us are not really comfortable talking about conversion in the religious sense.  Mainline Christians have largely subscribed to the notion that if you steadily nurture a person within the faith, they will naturally and consistently identify as Christian, so conversion is never necessary.  Other Christian streams have emphasized the importance of an individual commitment to follow Jesus, a pivotal moment.  Many of those conversions involve turning away from addiction or sleeping around or gambling or some other immorality.  The stories include lines like “I was a complete loser until I found Jesus.  Jesus saved me from all the bad things I was into.” 

Neither one of these approaches really works in America today.  Generations of people have neither been nurtured in faith nor made a personal decision to follow the way of Jesus. [2]  We need to rethink the whole notion of conversion.

Rev. Anthony Robinson writes that in Acts, conversion is not primarily a moral turnaround.  “Conversion means crossing boundaries and barriers and reaching a whole new way of seeing and understanding life.  It is more about putting an end to ignorance than to immorality.”[3]

Saul and Ananias, Tom and Lesley each experienced conversion.  They crossed boundaries and barriers and reached a whole new way of understanding life.  They took calculated risks and gained an expanded vision of what is real and what is possible. 

When Saul fell to the ground on the Damascus Road, he heard the voice say “Why are you persecuting me?”  He could not imagine at first that it was God’s voice.  He was not persecuting God.  He was serving God. . . or that was his sincere intent. 

“Why are you hurting me?”  God asks. Saul’s conversion begins with that question.  African-American theologian Willie James Jennings writes “In our world, this genre of question flows most often out of the mouths of the poor and women and children.  The question casts light on the currencies of death that we incessantly traffic in, and it has no good answers.   . . . But now”, Jennings writes, “ this is God’s question.  It belongs to God.  It belongs with God.” [4]

I wonder if we could ever hear that question directed at us.  I wonder if we might be the ones in need of conversion.  It is hard for me to ask that, hard to imagine how it might be true. 

It is always easier to see the speck in someone else’s eye, so let me tell you about another church.  This church only uses a small part of their large building. They are sincerely concerned about social justice, have been active on major issues for many years.  Not long ago, they were asked to make their building available for asylum seekers.  They are politically supportive of that idea.  The request was that about 24 asylum seekers would shelter overnight in the church for a month.  They would shower and eat meals elsewhere.  Cots and blankets would be provided.  The guests would arrive in the evening and leave by 7 the next morning.  The church was on board with this idea.  The guests could have free reign of the second floor rooms that the church wasn’t using anyway. 

But then the fire marshall noticed that the second floor rooms only had one exit.  That was not safe.  However, he pointed out,  the rooms on the first floor all had two exits.  There were enough first floor rooms to accommodate the needs of all 24 asylum seekers who would be leaving by 7:00 every morning.  But one church member said, “One of those rooms is the toddler’s room.  You know how much children hate other people touching their stuff. They can’t use that room.”  Someone else said, “One of the rooms is the lounge where we have coffee hour.  They can’t use that room, even though they’ll be long gone by the time of coffee hour.”  And so, the church may close their doors to those folks and this opportunity.  

It’s not hard for me to hear God saying to them, “Why are you hurting me?”  It is more difficult to allow myself to hear that question directed at me and possibly at us.  Surely God isn’t asking us that, right?  We are faithful and sincere – but so was Saul. We know the Bible and we understand how church works – but then again, so did Saul.  We want nothing more than for everyone to know the deep love of God.  We want nothing more than to see more people in church on Sundays.  It is outrageous and offensive even to suggest that we might be hurting God,  I know, but what if we are? 

Could you and I be hurting God when we insist on offering the good news only wrapped up in the forms that we’re familiar with?

There’s a loneliness epidemic in our world.  Can we be converted to the idea that God is among the lonely and despairing, calling us to abandon our comfort and security within these walls and learn how to befriend strangers?

Could we be hurting God when we assume that the spiritual practices, the forms of worship and discipleship, which have been vital and life-shaping for us will also be so for the next generations, and therefore must be defended and maintained for all time?

Instead of staying firmly within the boundaries of what has been, of what we were born into, could we entertain a conversion of our imagination? Is it possible that the Spirit is beckoning to us, urging us across boundaries and barriers to a new way of being and doing?  A path that is only being revealed along the way as we start doing it.

This is the power of conversion – crossing boundaries, changing minds, increasing understanding, and taking action leads to an expanded, bold vision of what is real and what is possible.  May God make it so for you and for me.  Amen.

 

 

 

[1] [1] Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017), p. 90

[2] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church: The Book of Acts for a New Day, (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2006), p. 140

[3] Robinson and Wall, p. 141

[4] Willie James Jennings, p 91

10/6/24 - Conflict and Resolution - Acts 6:1-7

Conflict and Resolution

Acts 6:1-7

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

October 6, 2024 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBtuTxIe_p8

I was at physical therapy this week when I became aware of a therapist who was speaking quite loudly.  I had never noticed this therapist before.   I just continued doing my exercises, counting more deliberately in my head because he was also counting sometimes.  I noticed that his patient was having a hard time following his directions.  When he told her to lie on her side, she went on her back first. When he said to bend her knee, she held it straight.   Pretty quickly, I realized that English was not her first language.  And I wondered if he was repeating his directions loudly in the hope of overcoming a language barrier.  Because that’s a thing we do, isn’t it?  A few minutes later, I noticed that he had a second patient.  The second patient seemed to be very comfortable with English, but the therapist spoke just as loudly.  I concluded that the volume on his inside voice was just turned up high.

One of the first recorded church conflicts seems to have involved a language barrier.  On one side were the Hebrews.  These are folks who spoke a Semitic language, most likely Aramaic.  On the other side were the Hellenists.  They spoke Greek.  The Hebrews were from Israel, possibly from Jerusalem itself, but also from Galilee and other parts of the country.  The Hellenists might have been from anywhere in the Roman empire – from Syria, Cappadocia, Rome or Egypt, just to name a few examples.  They are people whose families had had to migrate and live outside their homeland for the same reasons that people migrate today – economics, natural disaster, war. But these particular folks have returned to their ancestral home, to Jerusalem.  So the Hellenists are not necessarily a unified group.  They all speak Greek, but they may represent different ethnic or racial heritages.  Latino is a contemporary broad term. It refers to a person with ancestry in any one of 21 Latin American countries.  Hellenist is a similarly broad term. 

One important point – the people in conflict in Acts 6 are all Jewish people who have come to believe Jesus is the Messiah.  They are not divided on religious lines, but ethnic and cultural ones.

A complaint arises. The Hellenist widows are being neglected.  This is serious.  From the time of Deuteronomy at least, widows have been seen as one of the categories of marginalized people for whom God’s people are to take special care.   The Jesus-followers in Jerusalem are organized enough by this time that Acts 4 says they share all their possessions and there is not a needy person among them.  But now, the Hellenist widows are being neglected, in the daily distribution of food.

What does this mean?  It might simply mean that the Hellenist widows, the foreign widows, are not getting the food they need. That would be a problem. But the word that is translated as daily distribution could also mean “everyday ministry”.  It could also refer to financial administration. So the problem may be that the Hellenist widows are being denied the opportunity to serve in the distribution of food themselves. They may not be recognized as leaders in the same ways that Hebrew widows are.  They may not be  trusted with the community cash.  

Something has been lost in translation.  It is not clear to us, as twenty-first century readers what the actual problem is. And that makes me wonder how clear it was at the time. There was a language barrier. Is it possible that the Hebrews, who were in charge, didn’t even completely understand the Hellenists’ complain?  Confusion about the real problem is often part of conflict, isn’t it?  A whole lot of times, we rush in to fix it, and our fixing does no good because we didn’t address the real issue.  Then when the complaint arises again, we say “What more do they want?  You just can’t please those people.”

In some way, the foreign widows are being neglected. The word translated neglected means to overlook or disregard. It is not a deliberate, malicious action.  It is unintentional.  The Hebrews are probably not even aware that they’re doing it. 

The Hebrews have the home field advantage. They represent the dominant culture. They are the citizens; the Hellenists are outsiders. They are the true Israelites; the Hellenists carry with them foreign ideas and habits.  In today’s terms, we might say that, in comparison, the Hebrews have privilege.  It is all relative, isn’t it? Because all of them live under Roman occupation.  To say that the Hebrews have privilege is not to say that they don’t struggle.  It is to say that their viewpoint, their way of life, is considered normal, while the Hellenists deviate from the norm.

To their credit, the Jerusalem community takes the Hellenists’ concern seriously.  They decide to appoint a task-force to resolve this.  The community deliberates and names seven respected, wise men to do this work. If we read carefully, we notice that the men all have Greek names.  The implication is that the power to resolve the problem is being handed over to those who best understand it.  This is a countercultural solution in its own time and I would say, even in our time. The Seven are not being put in charge of distribution just to the Hellenists, but to everyone.  The foreigners are being entrusted to use the community resources for the good of all.  That’s a pretty big step. 

Kudos to those first-century folks for figuring that out.  Well-done.  I mean that sincerely, and yet . . .

They still are a bit clueless, aren’t they?  I mean the original complaint is about Hellenist widows. Their solution is elegant in addressing the Hellenist part, but it disregards, it overlooks the fact that the widows are women.   The church’s solution is to appoint seven men and zero women to address what is first and foremost a woman’s concern.  (Gee, I’m so glad that two centuries later we don’t do that any more.) 

Women are recognized with leadership authority equal to and even surpassing men in other parts of Acts, so we can’t blame it entirely on first century culture.  As radically inclusive, as boundary-breaking as this new faith community is, sometimes, they just don’t get it.  They just lapse into well ingrained patterns.  Luke reports this conflict and resolution with no hint of awareness that in a story about women, he only reports the names of seven prominent men.

What does this story have to do with us?  Or maybe, what can we do with this story? 

First, we might understand it as a call to listen with humility.  Especially to listen to the voices of those in the minority, those whose life experience is not well represented by the dominant culture.  If you are a person with privilege, listen extremely carefully.  Deliberately open yourself to understanding a viewpoint that is not yours.  Some of us don’t recognize our privilege.  If the shampoo and soap you use is in the health and beauty aisle and not in the section labelled “ethnic”, you enjoy dominant culture privilege.  If you can move through life without being racially profiled or stereotyped, you enjoy dominant culture privilege.  Those of us with that privilege can easily overlook or disregard the needs of those in the minority.  If we sincerely want to follow the God of radical inclusion, we have to be more intentional about listening without getting defensive, listening without leaning into our own viewpoint, but listening with openness to someone who tells us the real problem. 

Second, this story is about shared power and shared resources.  Working together, trusting each other, for the good of all.

Lastly, for today at least, this story underscores the fact that racial diversity does not equal racial reconciliation.  Just because a community might contain people from multiple ethnic backgrounds with varying skin colors does not mean that community is anti-racist.  It can easily be a community that claims to be color-blind instead of recognizing and celebrating color-diversity.  Or it may celebrate diversity in its speech while subtly continuing to exercise white dominance with every fiber of its structural being. 

Diversity by itself is not enough.  Deliberate, full inclusion and empowerment is the work and purpose of God.

The church in Jerusalem hears the concern and responds.  The story ends by saying that the word of God continued to spread.  We might notice that Luke’s accent is not on the growth of the church, but the word.  “The word of God is not something the church hears or announces, the word of God is what the church lives or manifests. . . . the church’s vitality is the vitality of God’s word.  . . .If the conflict between the Hellenists and the Hebrews is not resolved, it will hamper the church’s ability to live authentically according to its identity.” [1]

If we do not confront and combat racism or ethnocentrism or religious nationalism within our own community, it will hamper our ability to live out our calling and identity.  That is just as urgently true now as in the first century. 

What is also true is that we will never get it all right at the same time.  And so we continue to celebrate, to struggle and to serve in the ever widening circle of God’s grace.  Amen.

 

 

[1] Matthew L. Skinner, Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel:  Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts, (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2015), pp. 41-42

9/29/24 - Blessing of the Animals Reflection - Psalm 104:10-15,27-30

Blessing of the Animals Reflection 

Psalm 104:10-15,27-30

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

September 29, 2024 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3xFiZLdbYE

I’ll start with a few stories.  They might seem random. Bear with me.

One day last week, when I had been sitting with my laptop for too long, I took a break to go out and play fetch with my dog Memphis.  I threw the ball for him and then I remembered that about 30 minutes earlier, I had heard the awful thunk of a bird flying into a window. Going to investigate, I found a bird sitting quite still in a puddle of water.  She looked at me and blinked her eyes, but didn’t attempt to move away.  She wasn’t bleeding that I could see. I took a stick and offered it to her as a perch.  She wrapped both claws around it and seemed steady, so I gently lifted the stick. She was fine, but made no attempt to fly. I moved her out of the water and to a place under a shrub with a bit more protection from any predators.  I don’t know who her predators might be in my backyard. Memphis wasn’t interested in her.

I’m not very good at bird identification, but looking at my backyard bird guide, I think she was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet.  She’s the kind of bird I often see foraging in my holly bush.  She was still under the shrub 15 minutes later, but an hour later she had disappeared.  I choose to believe that she recovered and flew away. 

Sometime in the 1800’s, a woman named Mary MacDonald wrote a Christmas carol in the only language she knew, which was Scots Gaelic. She set it to a traditional Scottish folk tune.  After her death, the carol was translated into English and the tune was named after a village near where she lived.  The village is called Bun-es-san, so that is the tune name.  The Christmas carol associated with that tune is Child in a Manger. Another, more well known song which was later set to that same tune is Morning Has Broken. 

Bunessan is a small fishing village on the isle of Mull. Bunessan means bottom of the waterfall.   We rode through it on a tour bus this summer.  Our real destination was somewhere else, but our tour guide was smart enough to give us fun facts every where he could.  So, before we got to the village, he told us about Mary MacDonald and her Christmas carol and then we rode through this village of about 100 people, listening to Morning Has Broken over the bus speakers.  It is going to be a long time before I will hear that song without picturing the stone sea wall, the white croft houses,  the boats bobbing at anchor, the blue sky that I saw there. 

You all know that Jim and I have attended the Wild Goose Festival several times.  For almost two decades, the festival was held in a campground in Hot Springs North Carolina, always in July or August.  The campground is on the French Broad River which is wide and deep. Many times, I would slip down to the river between sessions and take off my shoes and wade in, unbelievably grateful for the refreshment of the cold, flowing water on an oppressively hot and humid day. In the last few days, my Facebook feed has been full of images of the French Broad River well past its banks, flooding the campground and the town, the streets and the restaurants.  You have undoubtedly seen similar videos of homes and businesses, roads and bridges completely washed away in North and South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.  The devastation is incomprehensible.   Power is out.   The only road off of a farm or into a town may not exist anymore. Clean drinking water is in short supply.  Communication with family and loved ones including students at college is cut off.  Anyone with any connection to these places is keenly feeling the urgency and the loss.

Baba Dioum is a forestry engineer from Senegal.  He famously said something like this:

“You can’t save a place that you don’t love,

You can’t love a place that you don’t know

And you can’t know a place that you haven’t learned.”

Some of us call that Watershed Discipleship –knowing and loving the place where everyone and everything drinks the same water. 

The Oxford Junior Dictionary is a children’s dictionary, aimed at 7-year-olds. Every so often, the publishers update it.[1] They remove some lesser used words in order to add new ones which are more relevant to current living.  You can imagine new words related to technology being adding, words like cut and paste, broadband and analogue. Fifty nature words were removed in 2007 and another 20 in 2012.  Words like acorn, dandelion, hamster and otter. 

In their defense, Oxford University Press said that the Junior Dictionary is a very slim children’s dictionary containing less than 5,000 words in total. 400 of those words are about natural world. I am not blaming Oxford.  I’m not blaming the rise of new technology which we all need words to describe. 

Older versions of the dictionary had more nature words, more examples of flowers for example. That was because more children lived in semi-rural environments and saw more plants across the changing seasons.  In a way, the dictionary is simply responding to the lives we are living. So again, we can recall

You can’t save a place that you don’t love,

You can’t love a place that you don’t know

And you can’t know a place that you haven’t learned

For many of us, our pets are our closest expression of relationship to the rest of creation. Our animals experience the places we live differently than we do. They can teach us about the created world that exists beyond human comprehension and how to love it better. Attending to animals for an entire Sunday worship service might seem frivolous to some, but we can understand it as one piece of watershed discipleship. 

One of the Biblical accounts of creation says that God the task of naming all the animals to the first human, Adam.  Naming is a way of remembering, of paying attention, of determining what has value in our lives. We can keep on naming acorns, dandelions, otters and Ruby-Crowned Kinglets even if the dictionary doesn’t. We can remember places like Bunessan and Hot Springs.

Carrie Newcomer has a fun song called A Crash of Rhinoceros. It is her playful take on the story about naming the animals in Genesis.  I’m not going to sing it; but I invite you to listen to the lyrics.

When Adam when out to name the animals

He sat on a rock and he figured

A horse and a cow and a goat and a sheep

Were the best names that he could deliver

 

But Eve looked around at all of that glory

Said, "Hon, I think we should consider

Something a bit more unique and refined

For each and every critter"

 

It's a crash of rhinoceros, a pomp of pekinese

It's a gaggle of geese and a swarm of bees

A parliament of owl and gam of whale

A pandemonium of parrot and a watch of nightingale

A huddle of walrus, company of moles

Exultation of lark and a murder of crow

A simple flock of sheep and a herd of deer

It's a bask of crocodiles, sleuth of bear

 

Adam looked shocked and he scratched his head;  

Eve stood there, happy and beaming

The animals gathered in close to their feet

With roars of delight, barks and singing

She's on a roll and just getting started

The birds and the beasts held their breath

What fine appellation would they receive

And which one of them would be the next?   

 

It's a team of oxen and a mob of kangaroo

It's a charm of finch if there are more than two

A troubling of goldfish, cluster of cats

A bloat of hippopotami, a cloud of bats

Ostentation of peacock, a barren of mules

An army of ant, nursery of raccoon

A parcel of penguin and a dray of squirrels

A bed of oysters with or without the pearls

 

All of that naming lasted into the night

Until even the insects had groupings

Eve was still bright eyed and willing to finish

Though her shoulders and fig leaves were drooping

Adam said, "Darling, I'm proud and amazed

You're really one heck of a woman

So let's go to sleep and tomorrow we'll rise

And start naming rocks, plants and woodlands"

 

It's a tittering of magpie, company of mole

It's a pride of lions and a tribe of goats

A plague of locust and a pack of dogs

A leap of leopard, an array of hedgehog

It's a caravan of camels, a drift of swan

A sulk of foxes and the list goes on

It's a prickle of porcupine, a battery of hen

A cohort of zebra, now once again

It's a colony of rabbit and a sounder of boar

An ambush of tiger, now just a little more

 

It's a business of ferret, a swarm of eels

A covey of quail and a pod of seals

It's a parade of elephant, a dole of dove

A bale of turtles and all of them I love

And she kissed the horde of hamsters

On their furry little heads

Sighed with satisfaction and she went to bed.[2]

 

Amen.

 

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/13/oxford-junior-dictionary-replacement-natural-words

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Vq9iWOUfI

9/22/24 - Three Ways to Hear the Spirit - Acts 11:19-26, 13:1-4

Three Ways to Hear the Spirit

Acts 11:19-26, 13:1-4

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

September 22, 2024 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B62X2EWqmBc

During sabbatical, I went to Iona. This island off the coast of Scotland was the site of a monastery from about 563 AD.  It was raided by Danish Vikings, seized by the King of Norway and then reclaimed by the Irish monks, but a monastery of one kind or another survived there until the Protestant Reformation reached Scotland in the 16th century.  Then it was dismantled and abandoned, along with many other formerly Catholic abbeys in Britain.  The building stood open to the elements for hundreds of years until it was rebuilt and restored in the 19th century. 

At some point, the Abbey walls became home to some rare sea-loving ferns.  They live on the light that filters in through the windows and on moisture absorbed through the mortar between the stones.  Their presence is taken as evidence that the building, now enclosed, is still breathing.

I love this image of life that has endured and continues to thrive in an ancient place. It is a great image to hold in mind as we read the book of Acts.  In our time, historical forces are once again dismantling religious institutions. Churches are being abandoned, with some church buildings literally left standing open to the elements. Great sweeping changes like this have happened before.  In those times, the most resilient, most adaptive Christian disciples have returned to our origins, to our formation story, to find the life that still breathes there.   

The earliest Christian communities did not have a lot of traditions or policies to uphold. They did not know about stained glass windows or online giving or lilies at Easter or New York Religious Corporation Law.  They did not even have our Bible.  The gospels were not written down until decades after Jesus.  At first, they looked to the apostles, those few remaining followers who had known Jesus first-hand, for their knowledge of Jesus’ teachings. Over time, other teachers and leaders arose who had received the teachings from the apostles.  But truthfully, sometimes it seems they’re figuring out the what and how of church as they go along.

The main character in the book of Acts is the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes, we see the Spirit blessing the decisions of the leaders and at others, the Spirit has to raise the same issue again and again, as if to say “get it right this time.”  Latino scholar, Justo Gonzalez writes, “the book of Acts becomes a call to Christians to be open to the action of the Spirit, not only in leading them to confront values and practices in society that may need to be subverted, but perhaps even leading them to subvert or question practices and values within the Church itself.”[1]

If we return to our beginnings, we find groups of people engaged by the teachings of Jesus who want to live out those teachings in a daily way across their life span.  And they do that together under the direction of the Spirit.  Today I want to lift up three ways that they tried to hear God’s voice because I think that we can also listen in these same ways.

One way that God speaks is through outward events. One of those events in Acts is conflict and persecution against the disciples in Jerusalem.  After Stephen is stoned by an angry mob, other believers flee up the coast to places like Phoenicia and Cyprus, Antioch, and Samaria. Wherever they go, they fulfill their mission to bear witness to Jesus.

Some end up in Antioch, a cosmopolitan city very important to the Roman Empire. Antioch’s population is estimated between 500,000-800,000 while Jerusalem’s population ranges from 25,000-50,000 in the same time period.[2]   Jewish people have been part of Antioch’s history for a long time. There is a well-established, beautiful synagogue that has already engaged a number of Gentile seekers as converts to Judaism.  Some un-named disciples from Cyprus make connections with Gentiles, likely through this synagogue. Remember that Jesus had told them “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  That is no longer theoretical, but reality. 

There is an intersection between the words of Jesus (witnessing all over the world) and the migration they undertake to avoid persecution and the people they relate to as they migrate.  Within that intersection, we may perceive the working of the Holy Spirit.

Looking back at Albany’s history, we don’t know exactly when Chinese people began to settle in Albany, but by 1886, the city directory listed nine laundries with Chinese surnames. In 1920, there were 24 laundries and 3 Chinese restaurants[3]. Starting in 1887 and continuing for decades, Emmanuel Baptist church offered space for a Chinese congregation and a Chinese language Sunday School.

A global food crisis happened in the early 1970s.  The FOCUS Food pantry opened in 1976. A decade or more later, many Emmanuelites participated in an AIDS Buddy Ministry in response to the spread of HIV/AIDS and the suffering it inflicted. The list of examples is long.  Most of you know it better than I do. 

Willie James Jennings is a Baptist who teaches at Yale Divinity School. His commentary on Acts is one of my very favorites. You’re going to hear his name often in the next few weeks. About this text he writes, “The Spirit speaks to us of what afflicts the world.  This too is our birthmark.  This too is our inheritance.  We are those who from the very beginning are always caught up in what destroys life and threatens the world.  . . . The Spirit always bring to the church specific knowledge of the world and the specific sites of divine concerns.  A church that knows not the particular needs of its time and place is a church that has not heard the Spirit speaking.” [4]

One important way that we hear the Spirit is by attending to the events happening in our time and place. Another way is within our own relationship with God.

Eventually the folks in Jerusalem learn about the mission in Antioch.  At that time, we might say that Jerusalem functioned like headquarters.  So, they send one of their own to check things out.  They send Barnabas.  Barnabas is originally from Cyprus.  He will likely relate to the men from Cyprus who were involved in the start of this mission.  He is also a Levite, which is the Jewish priestly tribe.

One of the questions that we will see repeated in Acts is about just what it means to take the good news to the whole world.  Just how welcome are the Gentiles – those who have historically been outside God’s chosen people?  How much of their identity will they be allowed to keep if they join this Jesus movement?  Barnabas is thoroughly Jewish.  He comes from the Jerusalem church, which at this time, is conservative, in the sense that they want to maintain all the traditions around spiritual practices and identity in the midst of receiving new folks.  This is the ongoing tension which we’ll discuss in a later sermon. 

That tension is not present in Antioch.  They are already welcoming and affirming towards Gentiles.  When Barnabas arrives in Antioch,  he sees what is happening and his immediate response is joy.  Remember, he is a Levite.  His tribe is responsible for providing all the priests and worship leaders for Israel.  He knows all the traditions, all the liturgical rules.  He likely has memorized huge passages of Scripture, including the passages that could be used to exclude Gentiles or include them only under special conditions, but he does not lean into that.  Instead he recognizes the work of the Spirit within the people in Antioch and he yields to it with joy. 

Barnabas’s birth name was Joseph, but the apostles gave him the nick-name Barnabas which means “son of encouragement.”  He is an encourager, a bridge-builder.  And he can handle newness.   He puts those personality traits, those gifts, to work as he bears witness to Jesus.   In that on-going relationship with God, he hears and responds to the Spirit.

 

Three ways to hear the Spirit

1)    Outward events – the trends, shifts, events happening in our time and place;

2)    Attending to our own relationship with God – including our own gifts and desire to join where God is at work; And, the last one for today is

3)     the discernment of the faith community.

In chapter 13, there is a short list of the leaders of the Antioch community.  The list begins with Barnabas.  It ends with Saul, known later as Paul.  After Barnabas understood the scope of the work, he went to get Saul and brought him back to Antioch to help . For a year, they have been teaching the people what they probably don’t fully understand themselves – how to unite a faith community which is so different from the one in Jerusalem but also follows the same Lord. 

There are 3 names between those of Barnabas and Saul

Simeon, probably from northern Africa,

Lucius of Cyrene, perhaps one of the original church planters?

Manaen – who was a childhood friend of Herod Antipas and served on his court either previously or currently on his court. This tells us that there is at least one person in this community of high social standing and political connection.  Herod Antipas is the one who beheaded John the Baptist.  Luke doesn’t tell us how Manaen can be a friend of Herod and a leader in the Jesus movement. 

The short list of names does convey a lot of diversity within this church.  There are differences of culture and language, of faith background, of social status.  We can extrapolate that this is a community where real differences endure.   “[Here] the Spirit speaks, or is heard, in a diverse collection of human beings.”[5]

Together, the Antioch church discerns that God is calling Saul and Barnabas to work somewhere else. Remember that this is a young church, still writing its by-laws.  Saul and Barnabas have been their guides for an intense year.  Sending them away might have been seen as voting against their own interests.  Somehow they manage to hear the idea as a real possibility and to stay open long enough to see it as the Spirit-led option.  They relinquish Saul and Barnabas to the wider mission.  No faith community exists only for its own sake.   We participate in the unfolding of God’s work for God’s purposes.

The church relinquishes their claims on two key leaders at the urging of the Spirit. It reminds me that when our Emmanuel church began, another church, First Baptist, relinquished their dynamic and visionary pastor and about one-third of its members to move to a different neighborhood and plant a church. It reminds me of what I’ve been told about Ralph Elliot when he was Emmanuel’s pastor in the 1960’s.  When someone visited from another part of the city, he would follow up with them after church.  He would welcome them to Emmanuel, but also he would say, “Would you like to hear about the Baptist church in your neighborhood?  I can help you connect there if that is a better fit for you.” 

A faith community does not exist for its own sake. Emmanuel does not exist for its own sake. There is a bigger mission to be part of, and we labor together to follow the Spirit’s call. Communities of faith can often see gifts or deficiencies within individuals that the individuals don’t recognize within themselves. Minority voices within the group may call attention to needs or possibilities that the group has not perceived.  Sometimes a new idea might come from the pastor – I believe that it was pastoral leadership which led to the formation of FOCUS churches.  But just as often, it is the voice of a lay person, as when Larry van Heusen courageously identified himself as a gay man, a gay Christian in 1975 and Emmanuel heard the call of the Spirit in his voice which spoke the truth even as it probably shook. That was the beginning of our calling to receive our LBGTQ siblings with joy.

 

From chapter 13 on, the center of the action in the book of Acts moves from Jerusalem to Antioch.  One scholar says that this happens, “not because the church at Antioch was the most ancient, or the richest or the most powerful, but because it was the one that heard the Spirit’s whisper and responded to the new challenge of the time.”[6]  And so, I repeat what I have said before, may it be so for you and for me.  Amen.  

 

[1] Justo L. Gonazalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2001) p. 8

[2] J. Bradley Chance, Acts: Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary, (Macon:  Smyth and Helwys, 2007), p. 185

[3] https://considerthesourceny.org/using-primary-sources/legacies/chinese-legacies/capital-district/capital-district-chinese-history

[4] Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017), pp.122-23

[5]Matthew L. Skinner, Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel:  Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts, (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2015), p 99.

[6] Justo Gonzalez, p.141

9/15/24 - Waiting for Power - Acts 1:1-11

Waiting for Power

Acts 1:1-11

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

September 15, 2024 

 Note: A recording of this worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqBaRIJPx04

The book of Acts begins with a recap.  Luke, the author, reminds Theophilus, who might be his benefactor, that there is a prequel to this book which contains a lot more details about what Jesus did and taught.  The prequel is the Gospel of Luke. He wraps it up his summary by saying that Jesus spent about 40 days showing that he was alive, demonstrating the truth of the resurrection and talking about the reign of God.  This book is about a time of huge disruption and transitions.  Transitions so momentous that much of the world now orders our calendars around the before and after of these changes. 

 

As Jesus is preparing to depart, he spends his time talking about the reign of God which is what he talked about at the beginning of his ministry.  He is transferring leadership, putting his life’s mission into the hands of his disciples.  His mission will become their mission.  Their mission will be passed to the next generation and the next and the next until it reaches us and becomes our mission.

Jesus reminds them about the big picture, about God’s intention for deep peace and well-being for all of creation.  He shows them the scars of his suffering, which signify both the terrible cost of this mission and the victory of resurrection.  Maybe he repeats some favorite parables, answers a few more questions,  but eventually he says “I’ve got to go. And you have to be my witnesses, here, there, and ultimately everywhere. It’s in your hands.”

I was reading Acts a few weeks ago, at the time of the Olympics.  And I thought about the pressure on Olympic athletes . . .  the fear, the excitement, the unbelievably high expectations.  Maybe it was something like that for the disciples.  This was what they trained for for so long.  This is what was set in motion when those fisherfolk dropped their nets and followed Jesus years ago.  Just like for first-time Olympians, it is familiar and also brand new.  They’ve never been here before.  What if they fail?  What if they succeed?

There’s a viral Tik-Tok video which shows a young girl being picked up by her Mom after school.  She opens the back door and immediately buries her face in the seat of her carseat.  She says, “I done so much at school, I just need to take a second.” 

Her Mom says, “Are you tired?”

Yeah.

What did you do at school?

The girl says “I just do too much at school.”

The Mom asks again, “What do you do?”

The girl takes her head out of the car seat and looks at her Mom.  She says, “Like I go to lunch. . . and I. . . It’s a lot for me.”[1]

I imagine the disciples and all that they’ve been through, especially most recently.  The abject terror surrounding the crucifixion and then the unreality of resurrection, Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and of all of them and then his death by suicide.  And now, Jesus wants them to fill his shoes, to keep telling his story, to do all the teaching and healing and loving enemies without him.  I could understand if they were overwhelmed and said “That’s a lot for me.” 

But maybe something else happened.  Maybe in the 40 days they shared after resurrection, they had time to process and come to terms with the incredible experience of knowing Jesus.  Maybe in touching his scars, they recognized the One who had defeated death.  Maybe they had time to say I’m sorry and be forgiven, time to hang out and laugh, to hug and share some memories.  And maybe in that time, they accepted and embraced their mission.

Jesus announced their mission – Be my witnesses.  It’s a fairly open-ended job description.  And then he said, “But first . . .wait.  Before you do anything wait for power.” 

Tony Robinson is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.  He does a lot of writing and lecturing.  One time he was teaching a class on leading change to about 40 mainline pastors. In one exercise,  each student had to choose from three possible answers what motivated them most, what got them into ministry and keep them going. The most popular answer was affiliation.  These pastors, 26 of the 40, were motivated by forming and attending to relationships.  A second group of about 12 identified as achievers.  These were people who wanted to produce visible results with projects or programs.  The third group was the smallest, only two or three pastors, who said that their major motivation was power and influence.  They wanted to change hearts and minds.  So, the motivations were 1) relationships, 

2) achievements

and then, in last place,  3) power and influence. 

Tony invited the class to reflect on those results.  The first responses were self-congratulatory.  Several said, “It’s good. We care about people, not power.”  The comments went like that for a bit, but then one student said, “I’m not surprised that so few indicated an interest in power and influence.  After all, our denomination has been telling us for years, in all sorts of ways, that power is bad.”  Someone else agreed, pointing out that when power is unacknowledged or suppressed usually goes underground and pops up in unhealthy ways. Finally, Tony concluded the discussion by saying that he would be concerned for a church organization where only 5 percent of the leaders wanted to change hearts and minds, wanted to influence people and communities to be more healthy and Christlike and functional by exercising their power.[2]

I wonder if we can put ourselves into the place of those first Christians.  Can we imagine Jesus telling us to wait for power?  Can we imagine receiving power from the very same source as Jesus – the Spirit of God?  Can we?  I don’t think we claim our power or even the promise of power very often. 

Maybe it is because we have seen too much publicity around churches or church leaders that abused their power.  Some of us have been harmed by those churches.  We don’t want to be lumped in with those power-mongers and we definitely want to avoid inflicting that harm.  Rather than harness power for good, we prefer to see ourselves as powerless.

Jesus said that we are to be his witnesses.  Witnesses are those who tell the truth. Someone has said “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”  Maybe we do not claim the power of the Holy Spirit because we are afraid of being odd, afraid of paying too high a cost for speaking controversial or inconvenient truths. 

Maybe it is low self-esteem. We do not recognize the power that we have or the difference we are already making.  Not long ago, I heard from a friend in her 80’s.  She had just received some bad news.  A friend of hers, a young person in his twenties, had been diagnosed with cancer.  He was fine one day and seriously ill the next.  The news was a gut punch. She said, “There’s nothing I can do about this.”  Before the conversation was over, I realized that she was helping him with his medical bills, which, as you might expect, is no small thing.  The next time I talked with her, his treatment had started and she was feeling a bit of hope– I think in part because she recognized that she was doing more than she had given herself credit for. 

Or maybe we don’t think in terms of power, as a church, because we believe our best days are behind us. We know that thousands of churches close every year. Denominational resources have shrunk and keep shrinking. Clergy are not seen as public moral leaders as they once were.  A 2023 Gallup poll found only 32% of Americans described pastors as having high honesty and ethical standards.  Clergy did rank higher than members of Congress though. A mere 6% thought they were honest and ethical. [3]  We are caught up in a narrative and a reality that doesn’t lead us to feel powerful at all.    

But consider the religious scene in Jerusalem in the first century.  The civil religion, the Roman pantheon of gods, seems robust. It is enforced by local custom and by the sword of empire.   Judaism was already divided by the theology and practices of groups like the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes, but now there is growing conflict between Jewish people who believe Jesus is the Messiah and those who don’t.  By the time the book of Acts is written down, the magnificent building that was the Temple will have been torn down to the ground and the worship and pilgrimages that it supported will have been destroyed. 

So, if we are hesitant to accept the notion that we might have access to the Power of the Spirit of God, the power of life and death, the power to change the world, we might stop to recognize that it would have been hard for those folks waiting in Jerusalem to think of themselves that way too. They were a decided minority, marginalized in so many ways, small and weak in the eyes of Rome, in the eyes of Israel’s religious authorities and perhaps in their own estimation. But to them, Jesus promised power. 

He told them to stay in Jerusalem and wait.  I never like to be told to wait.  And in our case, at Emmanuel right now, there is an urgency, a sense that the window in which we can meaningfully take action is closing.  That urgency is creating momentum.  Surely the time for waiting is past. The book we’re studying is called Acts, not Waits.  It is full of action.  Our take-away today cannot possibly be that we are to just wait for God to do something.

There’s a whole genre of short videos circulating on social media.  They all begin with a voice or words on the screen that say “wait for it.”  It’s a cue to the viewer to pay attention, be ready because something is going to happen that you might not otherwise expect. Someone is going to have a funny accident or a wonderful surprise.  A child is going to utter one line of wisdom beyond their years. A bear will suddenly appear next to the person in the middle of the screen. A parachute will open just in time.  “Wait for it” means “Watch carefully or you’ll miss it.”  “Wait for it” means “Don’t look away, don’t shut off the video, because it’s not a long wait and it will be worth it.”

That’s how I hear Jesus speaking to us.  “Wait for power” means “anticipate it”.  It means “it is really close and it will be so worth it.”   

Having those instructions from Jesus, they did what he said. They stayed together. They prayed.  They talked and listened to each other.  And when the power fell, there was no mistaking it.  With the arrival of the Holy Spirit, the disciples had the power and the courage to take on the specifics of the mission which became clear.

This is my take-away from today’s reading. We have access to the same gift of power, the same Divine Spirit that empowered Jesus.  Can we claim that, lean into it, act like we believe it, until we really do?  We are waiting for specific guidance. We  are really close.  Wait for it. . .

We are waiting together.  We are praying together and individually.  If you aren’t already doing that, then please start. We are talking and listening to each other.  Next Sunday evening, we have set aside time with a skilled facilitator to be together, to talk and listen carefully, to discern our Emmanuel’s specific mission. Anticipate that the Spirit will be present with us too. Please do everything you can to be there. If you need transportation, if you need child-care, please share those needs with me today.

I love the way that Barbara Brown Taylor describes this scene in Acts 1  She says, “No one standing around watching them that day could have guessed what an astounding thing happened when they all stopped looking into the sky and looked at each other instead. On the surface, it was not a great moment: eleven abandoned disciples with nothing to show for all their following. But in the days and years to come it would become very apparent what had happened to them. With nothing but a promise and a prayer, those eleven people consented to become the church, and nothing was ever the same again, beginning with them.

The followers became leaders,

the listeners became preachers,

the converts became missionaries,

the healed became healers. The disciples became apostles, witnesses of the risen Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit, and nothing was ever the same again.” [4]

 

Oh friends, may it be so for you and for me. Wait for it . . .

 


[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@ehuber_192/video/7209300272957623598?lang=en

[2] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church: The Book of Acts for a New Day, (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2006), p. 123

[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/608903/ethics-ratings-nearly-professions-down.aspx

[4] https://www.christianitytoday.com/1998/05/day-we-were-left-behind/