Audio Recording
“With great power the apostles gave their testimony
to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all” (Acts
4:33). What a marked difference from the
picture that we have of the apostles in our reading from John’s Gospel. What happened that powerfully transformed
them from cowering in fear behind locked doors to being a well respected
community of people who not only boldly proclaimed the message of Jesus’
resurrection but they also embodied it to the extent of sharing all things in
common and effectively eliminating poverty in their midst. Something huge happened.
Just to recount the story, several days prior to our
reading in John’s Gospel the “Jesus Movement” was huge. Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem like a
king to the accolades of a massive crowd only to have the same crowd nearly
overnight shouting, “Crucify him.” The
Romans did indeed do that. They beat him
to the point that he was unrecognizable and then crucified him. And so we find
the Disciples, a very small group, the Twelve and the women, cowering behind
locked doors for fear that the same would happen to them. In fact, they really didn’t know what had in
the end happened to Jesus. His body was
gone from the tomb. Mary Magdalene, Mary
the mother of James, and Salome had gone there that Sunday morning and found
the tomb empty as did Peter and John.
Some mysterious angel-like men told them that Jesus had been
raised. Mary Magdalene said she had
spoken to Jesus, but at first she thought he was the gardener. Then there were two of them who met Jesus on
the road to Emmaus. Luke reports that
after seeing him they hurried back to Jerusalem and it is while they were
telling the others what had happened that Jesus shows up there in the midst of
them behind the locked doors and says ‘Peace, be with you” and showed them the
scars and eats some fish.
Then over the next forty days Jesus appeared to the
Disciples several more times and Paul attests that at one point over 500 people
saw Jesus. He does many things to prove
he was really alive and all the while he continued to instruct them on the
Kingdom of God just as he had done prior to his death. The last time they saw him, Jesus told them
to go back to Jerusalem and wait until the Holy Spirit would come upon them
with power and he disappeared into some clouds.
Two men in white said he would return one day in like fashion. The Disciples then went back to Jerusalem and
spent a lot of time praying… a lot of time praying. There were 120 of them.
Jesus’ ascension was forty days after his
resurrection. Nine days later came
Pentecost and the power came. Pentecost
was the day the Jews celebrated the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai and so there
was again a great crowd in Jerusalem.
The 120 followers of Jesus were gathered together in one place and the
Holy Spirit fell upon them like tongues of flame. They began to speak in the languages of the Jews
who had pilgrimaged to Jerusalem to worship on Pentecost and so they went out
into the streets and began telling what God had powerfully done there in
Jerusalem forty-nine days earlier, that God raised Jesus who had been crucified
from the dead.
Peter then stood up and answered the accusation that
they were drunk by saying that what was happening there was what the prophet
Joel had prophesied about; that the Holy Spirit would be poured upon God’s
people. He testified about Jesus, how he
was the Messiah, how the Jewish authorities had had him crucified, how he had
truly been dead, and that God had raised him from the dead and he had ascended
to the right hand of God. The Jesus whom
they had crucified, God had made both Lord and Messiah. (Lord was what the Romans called Caesar and
yes, Peter is beginning to take on the Roman Empire here.) 3,000 people that day welcomed his message and
were baptised. They began to share their
possessions in common, selling stuff and sharing with those among them who had
need. Day by day they went together to
the temple to pray. They met in each
other’s homes for meals and to study the Scriptures. The fellowship must have been incredible and the
Lord continued to add to their number daily.
One day on the way to the temple Peter and John
healed a man born lame and they did it in Jesus’ name. The man leapt around praising God and Peter
again testified that Jesus whom they had crucified God had raised from the dead
and it was by Jesus name that this man was healed. Then the Temple authorities had Peter and
John arrested and brought before the High Priest, the chief priests, and the
elders. Peter testified again to Jesus’
resurrection, the one whom they had crucified, and that this man had been
healed in Jesus’ name. All that these “powerful”
men could do to them was order them not to speak in the name of Jesus
again. And so Peter answered them saying:
“Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you
must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and
heard.” Keep in mind, Peter and John
some fifty days earlier had been cowering behind a locked door in fear of these
very same men whom they were now standing before boldly testifying to the
resurrection of Jesus whom they had crucified.
“We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen
and heard”! which is the testimony of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Whenever I read these first chapters of the
Book of Acts, which I just summed up for you, I stand back with my jaw to the
ground in wonder and then I scratch my head in bewilderment as to how the
church as I know it today compares. The
early church went from cowering in fear behind locked doors to being unable to
keep from boldly proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus the crucified one and
his Lordship and reign; a reign which they embodied in their communities to the
extent that they virtually eliminated poverty among themselves. The fellowship was so deep and rich in their
communities that they daily got together in each others homes to pray and eat
and study the Scriptures. In comparison,
yes, they had seen, touched, and
talked to Jesus risen. Yes, Pentecost
was a very real and powerful experience for them. But for us, we’re the ones about whom Jesus said, “Blessed are they who have
not seen and yet are faithful.” Blessed? We look more like the Disciples when they
were fearful and behind closed than when they were emboldened and unable to
keep from boldly testifying to the fact that Jesus had been raised from the
dead.
Let me say something about this but first let me make
it clear that the last thing I want to do is blame the people in the pew for
the state of the church today. For truly,
in this day and time if you are in church on a Sunday morning you are one of
what could be called the faithful remnant.
It is not for your/our lack of faith that the churches struggle as they
do these days. So, just shy of 70
percent of all Christian fellowships in North America particularly those in the
Mainline traditions have less that 60 people at their worship services and they
are all worried about their institutional survival because they are encumbered
with the buildings and salary packages of a church that in its hay day in the
1950’s and 60’s really was what we could compare to a market bubble. Active participation in Mainline churches
today statistically resembles what it was pre-World War II. We have undergone a market correction so to
speak. There have been times over the
last 300 years that the church has bubbled but it has always returned to
smaller fellowships.
Our particular challenge today is that we are very
heavy on the Senior Citizen side of the spectrum in comparison to the young
family side of the spectrum. The faith
needs to be passed on and this is problematic when, and I hope I’m not out of
line on this, when most to all of us oddly grow mute when it comes to speaking
about our resurrected Lord whom we know lives and has indeed been personally
faithful to us each in a steadfastly loving way. Again, I do not want to blame us for this
muteness for indeed it was God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit who
raised Jesus the Son from the dead whom the Disciples saw and it was the God
the Father and Jesus the Son who poured out the Holy Spirit on the Disciples
and empowered them to speak. If we have
mute tongues, weak hands, and lame knees when it comes to proclaiming Jesus
risen and reigning, then we must not blame ourselves rather we must look to the
Triune God of grace for the words, the strength, and the joyful leaping in
praise to be able to give our testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
Fearful and behind closed doors, believe it or not, is
a good place to be for it is here that we realize the church is not in our
hands. It belongs to Jesus Christ. We must turn it over to his will and care. Yet, there is something we should be doing
here behind these doors – prayer-filled, Bible study-filled, sharing our
burdens-filled, sharing a meal-filled, loving one another-filled fellowship
around the tables back there, around your tables at home, and even with our
folks at the nursing homes is what we need to be doing. It is in this kind of fellowship that Jesus,
alive and in the power of the Holy Spirit, becomes evident, just like the
Higher Power works powerfully among the folks in the AA fellowship that meets
here Wednesday evenings delivering them from the compulsion to drink and
healing their broken lives. It is in
this prayer-filled, Bible study-filled, sharing our burdens-filled, sharing a
meal-filled, loving one another-filled fellowship that the Holy Spirit begins
to overflow. When we get together and
share our lives and pray for one another and we begin to see those prayers
answered, the more this happens the more we will find ourselves unable to keep
from giving our testimony to the fact that Jesus is risen and reigns.
One last thing to say, this prayer-filled, Bible study-filled,
sharing our burdens-filled, sharing a meal-filled, loving one another-filled
fellowship needs to happen and your ministers cannot do it for you. I would be tickled pink and I believe Timothy
would be as well, if it just started to happen that you folks just started
getting together regularly just to share your burdens and to pray for one
another, or just to open the Bible and read a paragraph or two and start
talking about it (simple as that), and share a pot of soup and some homemade
bread or just a cup of coffee (food always helps). This needs to happen. It does and you know what? It works.
Amen.
