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