Rev. Teri Peterson
Unstoppable
Acts 5.17-39
14 October 2012, Stewardship 2 (ordinary 28B)
The high priest, together with his allies, the Sadducees,
was overcome with jealousy. They seized the apostles and made a public show of
putting them in prison. An angel from the Lord opened the prison doors during
the night and led them out. The angel told them, “Go, take your place in the
temple, and tell the people everything about this new life.” Early in the
morning, they went into the temple as they had been told and began to teach.
When the high priest and his colleagues gathered, they
convened the Jerusalem Council, that is, the full assembly of Israel’s elders.
They sent word to the prison to have the apostles brought before them. However,
the guards didn’t find them in the prison. They returned and reported, “We
found the prison locked and well-secured, with guards standing at the doors,
but when we opened the doors we found no one inside!”
When they received this news, the captain of the temple
guard and the chief priests were baffled and wondered what might be happening.
Just then, someone arrived and announced, “Look! The people you put in prison
are standing in the temple and teaching the people!” Then the captain left with
his guards and brought the apostles back. They didn’t use force because they
were afraid the people would stone them.
The apostles were brought before the council where the
high priest confronted them: “In no uncertain terms, we demanded that you not
teach in this name. And look at you! You have filled Jerusalem with your
teaching. And you are determined to hold us responsible for this man’s death.”
Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather
than humans! The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed
by hanging him on a tree. God has exalted Jesus to his right side as leader and
savior so that he could enable Israel to change its heart and life and to find
forgiveness for sins. We are witnesses of such things, as is the Holy Spirit,
whom God has given to those who obey him.”
When the council members heard this, they became furious
and wanted to kill the apostles. One council member, a Pharisee and teacher of
the Law named Gamaliel, well-respected by all the people, stood up and ordered
that the men be taken outside for a few moments. He said, “Fellow Israelites,
consider carefully what you intend to do to these people. Some time ago,
Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and some four hundred men joined
him. After he was killed, all of his followers scattered, and nothing came of
that. Afterward, at the time of the census, Judas the Galilean appeared and got
some people to follow him in a revolt. He was killed too, and all his followers
scattered far and wide. Here’s my recommendation in this case: Distance
yourselves from these men. Let them go! If their plan or activity is of human
origin, it will end in ruin. If it originates with God, you won’t be able to
stop them. Instead, you would actually find yourselves fighting God!” The
council was convinced by his reasoning.
I tend to organize time in my head by the liturgical
calendar, rather than by the regular calendar—the dates on the Sundays may
change, but the liturgical cycle stays the same. So six years ago today, on the
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, was the first time I stood in
this pulpit as one of your pastors. The scripture reading that day was the
business about the camel and the eye of the needle and selling all you have and
giving away the money. It was stewardship season, and it was my first Sunday
here, when all I wanted to do was find a way to make you all like me. Talk
about a traumatic first preaching assignment. It’s obvious, then, why we
decided to go off-lectionary this October!
Or is it obvious?
Maybe it would be more obvious to spend the month talking
explicitly about money, and about giving of ourselves as an important spiritual
practice, and the reasons why we believe God calls us to sacrifice our
resources for the work of the kingdom, and what it means to live our faith
through the offering. Those are all important themes we can find in the
lectionary texts for October. And they are also themes that many of us have
heard often—and may have even contributed to the idea that many people outside
the church hold: that all we want is your money. But I promise you that God,
and God’s church, and God’s kingdom, wants something much more than just your
money, though of course we can use that as we seek to fulfill our calling, and we don't want you to miss out on the blessings of the spiritual discipline of giving!
And so we’re reading from the book of Acts this
season—stories of the first church, of people filled with the Holy Spirit, of
communities that are so fired up by God that they overcome incredible odds.
They face persecution, they are cast out of their old religious communities,
they are imprisoned and killed and ridiculed….and yet they continue to tell the
story, to witness to God’s love and grace and justice, to live as if Jesus has
made a difference to them and to the world.
This way of living, and this story they tell, is so powerful
that it can’t be contained even in the Jerusalem prison! Finally the council
decides to let them be, hoping desperately that the apostles will just
disappear, like all the others had. It’s a disturbing little window into the
methods of the powerful—whenever someone comes along with a message they don’t
like, that person is killed and the powers that be wait for his followers to
disperse. And they do. But we, the reader, know that this time it will be
different. These followers are on a mission from God, and they are unstoppable.
This isn’t just a power trip or a fringe cult, an impermanent blip on the
Empire’s radar. Nothing in life or in death, no power or person or anything
else in all creation is going to be able to stop this fire.
But did you notice—the apostles don’t decide that since God
can do it, they don’t need to participate. They don’t sit on the couch watching
TV waiting for God to do something amazing, they don’t go to Starbucks and hide
in the corner speaking to no one, they don’t just go through their lives
wondering when God is going to show up. They know that they are the conduit through which the world will be
changed. They stand in the Temple and preach. They go to the street corners and
teach. They gather in community and they pray and share and serve. They reach
out to people, they offer hope and healing and a story more powerful than that
of the empire. And their educational strategy is simple: tell the story. show
the story. live the story. And God will surely speak through you.
I wonder if we believe that?
Do we believe that this story can change us? That it can
change the world? Do we believe that God’s voice can be heard through our
voices? Do we believe that this faith is worthwhile enough to pass on to
others? Or is it just for children, and once we get through confirmation we’re
done learning and sharing, and now we can just go about our normal lives and
show up here occasionally for some good music and to see our friends? And as
for preaching and teaching—isn’t that the pastor’s job?
Or are we all on a mission from an unstoppable God?
If it is true that the story we proclaim every week in this
room is live-changing, and if it is true that God is unstoppable, and if we
really believe that God calls ordinary people to learn and to teach, AND if we
are willing to live that reality rather than whatever reality the empire wants
to impose on us, then we too will be a community that overcomes the odds. We
too will be a community whose Acts of Faith are worth talking about. We too
will be a community that walks right out of our prison—our prisons of
uncertainty, of irrelevance, of financial insecurity, of wondering where the
people are.
The Spirit freed the disciples from their prisons, and frees
us too—if we’re willing to walk out and follow where we’re called. Notice that
the disciples didn’t go home and wait for people to come to them—they went out
from prison to where the people were and taught, prayed, healed, lived. Where
will we go when we walk out of our prisons?
That is the question of church in the 21st
century just as much as it was in the 1st century. The disciples
could have decided it was someone else’s turn to teach. They could have decided
to sit back and hope for the crowds to find them. They could even have listened
to the people with the power and shut their mouths. But instead they acted on
faith, shared the good news, and found that their changed lives also changed
the world.
There is nothing—life or death, power or money or fear,
person or institution or culture or anything else in all creation—that can stop
God’s church. If we refuse to come along, we will die and another part of the
body will arise to take our place. The Word of God, loose in the world, is
unstoppable. Let’s act on faith and be a part of the story.
May it be so.
Amen.
Teri, I think this works well, even the beginning is fine. You can nuance it a bit if you want, but it works as it is too. You have an honest message about our role in the story - do we want to participate or would we rather wait for someone else to do it - in which case we lose out.
ReplyDeleteI think this works just fine. I like the idea of being participants in God's mission rather than watchers.
ReplyDelete