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Sunday, May 31, 2015

“The ‘Must’ of the Church”

A Sermon Based Upon Acts 5: 27-42
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Trinity Sunday and Memorial Day, May 31th, 2015

But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority. (Act 5:29 NRS)

When all other British-born Methodist preachers left during the American Revolution, only Francis Asbury stayed behind and continued to plant churches, traveling some 6,000 miles each year by horse.  He is said to have influenced the planting of some of the very first Methodist congregations in northern Iredell County, such as Mt Bethel (1797) Moss Chapel (1799) and Snow Creek (1801).  

One day someone asked Rev. Asbury why he was always preaching on the passage "Surely ye must be born again."  Bishop Asbury is said to have had a simple answer, "Because surely ye must be."  (From a sermon by Alex Stevenson, “Why You Must Give Your Life to Christ”, at www.goodprecher.com).

Perhaps that was the sentiment of the majority of Methodists, the Baptists and  Presbyterians around here at the end of the 18th century, but that’s surely not the most common sentiment now.  Today faith is mostly personal or private matter, only widely accepted as an opinion, an option, or a recreational pastime.   Some of us may have memories of a time when we ‘had’ to go to church was part of everyone's expectation.

WHO’S IN CHARGE?
Why do I have to become a Christian?”  Why should I join or participate in a Church?” or Why should I take Jesus seriously when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me?”   Haven’t we learned that the world is a bigger, a lot more complex and complicated than when Peter first said,  “Repent and be Baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus” (Acts 2.38)?   How could anyone today dare suggest, as the church once preached, that ‘there is no other name given under heaven that has been given among mortals, by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12)?  Aren’t there all kinds of other ways to be saved? 

This kind of exclusive, demanding, or decisive biblical ‘musts’ makes what happens in this text especially interesting.   When Peter and the other apostles went around preaching, healing, and witnessing to the name of Jesus Christ, they came in direct conflict with the prevailing authorities.  Those authorities felt seriously threatened by this outright, non-negotiable, unqualified claim “that there is salvation in no one else… (Acts 4.12).  Even though the message came from the ‘uneducated and ordinary’, the authorities still ‘ordered them’ not to speak of him any more.   But even after they had been ‘put in prison’ (5:18) they would not stop and were being reprimanded again: “We gave you strict orders not to teach in his name, yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching….” (5:28).   Why are these apostles so obstinately and persistently hard headed?  Why were they so insistent?   Who do they think they are?   It is Peter who gives us the answer as he goes from saying ‘we can’t keep from  speaking….” (Acts 4: 20) to saying more forcefully, We must obey God rather than any human authority (Act 5:29 NRS). 

Did you catch that word again?  Must?  Was it really all that serious?  Can the church require that anyone ‘must’ believe such a dogmatic, inflexible, uncompromising concept of salvation or obedience to God?   How dare the church demand anything from me, from you, or from anyone other than what I want to do or have?

Peter’s unyielding words goes straight to the heart of an issue that is still current for us.  ‘Who’s really in charge of my life or in charge of this world?’  Should a certain religious perspective be our ultimate concern?  Is a certain political perspective really what is decisive for our future?  Is a certain scientific proof determinative for everything else we should believe, think, say or do, or is the truth always relative to whatever I decide is true for me?  In a world where truth seems more uncertain than anything is for certain, how can the church preach, teach any kind of truth that would demand to be taken so seriously? 

Besides, who cares?  It’s a free country, isn’t it?   I can decide what I want and who I want to be, can’t I?   Isn’t that where most people are in their thinking?  Aren’t we smarter than to let our lives be controlled by any ‘must’ at all, let alone the commands of a demanding, difficult God who is proclaimed as ‘Lord of heaven and earth (Acts 17.24)?  If God’s really that big, then why doesn’t he come down and say so himself?  Why does he keep making demands on little people like us when we can’t see that he is who he says he is?

On a particular Sunday, the church sets apart for preaching about Christ the King, the former Dean of Duke Chapel,  Will Willimon, tells how he once asked the congregation present whether or not Americans actually need a king to be in charge over their lives?  Do you need a king?  Of course,” he continued, “since we are Americans, democratically disposed, we are averse to monarchy.  Right?   

But he went on to say he wasn’t “talking about some polo-playing playboy who dabbles in architecture.”  He was talking about a real king.  He said he also wasn’t talking about “a pleasant woman clutching a purse, wearing a small hat and sensible shoes.”   He was “talking about a lord who would set things right, somebody’s who’s really in charge.”  In his sermon he went on to talk about the lordship and kingship of Jesus Christ who is the only rightful ruler of all life and the universe.  Can’t imagine to many people at Duke taking such a sermon seriously as they do basketball, can you?

After that service, as people exited, some mumbled ‘nice sermon’, but one lady clutching a purse, wearing a small hat and sensible shoes stopped. “Did it not occur to you that you might have British subjects in the congregation today?  “Our queen is ten times the Christian of your silly actor president,” she shouted. 
 
I wouldn’t put that to a vote here, he responded in jest.”   She didn’t get the joke.   “You’re not funny, and I intend to report you to your superiors.”  Willimon answered that  since he was a preacher from South Carolina, he had no idea who his superiors were.”    “Stuff like that is why we broke away from those people” someone commented.”  The strange thing, Willimon added, is that this lady really did understand his point, maybe better than anyone.  The question we all must answer is: “Who is on the throne?  Who rules?  Who’s in charge of our lives?  (From W. Willimon’s sermon, “Who’s In Charge Here” in The Collected Sermon of William H. Willimon,  WJK Press, 2010, pp. 159-160).


WHO’S REALLY NOT IN CHARGE?
What ‘s most remarkable about the story of the church in Acts is not just that it settles ‘who’s in charge’ or what we ‘must’ believe, but Luke also takes great pains to show us how these people who thought they were in charge, really weren’t. 

Isn’t it amazing how threatened these very powerful Jewish leaders were by these ‘uneducated and ordinary’ (4.13) men who were preaching about a rejected, betrayed, denied and crucified man, whom they now claimed has been raised from (4.10)?  Do you see just how ridiculous a claim like that would be, if it wasn’t true?  Who would believe this?   Why were these controlling, dominating, leaders worried?  Why didn’t they just laugh their way back to their seats of power and relax? 

Well for one thing, Luke shows us that they were worried because ‘a lame man from birth’ was now walking around praising God ‘in the name of Jesus’ (3: 6-10).    They were all worked up and worried about a movement, no one really knew yet what to name.   Even the angel who commanded them to preach ‘the whole message about this life’ (Acts 5.20) didn’t know.    But it kept growing (5.14) beyond anyone’s control as a ‘message’ and a ‘movement’ that seemed to have a life of its own.

Also, the people who were in charge were worried because Peter and the apostles grew even bolder in their sermons and speeches (4.29, 31).   ‘A great number of people’ were gathering even from the towns around Jerusalem (5:16) as rumors about all kinds of ‘signs and wonders’ were circulating among the people (5: 12, 16).   Most of all, they were worried because when they had to call the ‘whole body of elders of Israel’ together to bring charges against these they had already locked up, when the guards went to retrieve them, they found the prison doors still closed and locked, but the prisoners were all gone.  Guess where they found them next?    Standing in the temple’ teaching the people (5:19-25), preaching the same message that had put them in prison in the first place.   It is a bit humorous to revisit how ‘out of control’ the situation was for the temple police (5. 22,26).   They must have looked something like the ‘Keystone cops’, for even when they brought Peter to stand before them, reminding him of ‘strict orders not to teach’ (5:28), he started preaching straight in their faces!    

Do you see just how unnerving the whole situation was for the power people?  The people who think they are in control have their hands tied behind their backs, so to speak, and the people who were put in chains and cells, keep going free.   And when the lest they could do was ‘order them not to speak in the name of Jesus (40) ever again, it was like laying a match to gasoline, for  now,  every day in the temple they did not cease to teach and proclaim Jesus as the Messiah’ (5.42). 

Yet there is something else, even more startling and perhaps alarming for us.  Before you take your hat off to these apostles, thinking they were about to take world by storm or single-handedly change of the course of Israel’s history, think again!   The Spirit that was leading them was leading many of them straight into the crosshairs of even greater challenges,  more persecution, and even greater problems that were attached to all these new possibilities.    Whatever this story is, it is certainly not some fly by night, winner take all, happy ending fairy tale story.   Jesus had promised that the Spirit would fill them and send them out, but he also promised it would be something they would have no complete control over.   He not only ordered them to ‘wait on the Spirit’ (Acts 1.4) to empower them to “be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1.8),  but he also told them that ‘it was not for (them) to know the times or periods when or how the Father would restore Israel (1.6) and he also implied that they will sometimes get more than they bargain for, as this word ‘witness’ also means ‘martyr’! ‘They will bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities.   Do not be anxious how or what you are to answer or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very our what you are to say (Luke 12:11-12) .  Jesus not only promised the Spirit would give them the words ‘to say’ but he also promised that if they were true to Jesus, they would, in some shape or form, lose their life, if they truly wanted to find it (Mark 8.35).  

However we interpret what really happened in the early church, we must not get the picture that the lives of these ‘spirit-filled’, dynamic and adventurous apostles were some like some fictitious Hollywood lives thrown on the screen of our religious memory filled with glamour and material success.   This ‘must’ they were obeying and the ‘must’ they were following would eventually bring them as much fear, trembling and suffering, as it would also bring adventure, purpose and meaning into their lives.   Could it be that the ‘great fear that seized the whole church’ (5.5) came not just because of what happened to Ananias and Sappharia, but because of what would happen to many of them as they obeyed the ‘must’ of this demanding Holy Spirit?  

Truly, the things that were happening to them, or even happening through them, were dangerous and endangering powers that were beyond their control.   Even though, as this text says, these apostles were released after they were ‘flogged’ (40), one commentator was right to remark that: “39 lashes has killed many a prisoner.  Furthermore, the  ‘rejoicing’ (41) they did was not because they had received a free ticket to glory, but it was because of the pain they were ready and willing to endure to tell the truth they could not avoid  (From “Acts”: Interpretation, a Bible commentary for Teaching and Preaching,  William H. Willimon,  2010, p. 58, location 1211, Kindle Edition).   
 
It’s intriguing that this God who sprang prison bars open will just as easily close some of those doors, allowing the spirit-filled Stephen to be killed by stoning (Acts 7),  or to permit the head of the Jerusalem church, James, to be killed by the sword (Acts 12) or even to let Paul, his most daring missionary to be beaten, stoned, shipwrecked and imprisoned many times (2 Cor. 11.25) and finally to be beheaded in Rome, although he had prayed and planned to go on to Spain (Rom 16.24).   Perhaps even Peter himself was wondering how his own situation would soon change, since Jesus had promised him ‘you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go."   After getting Peter all worked up about his own mortality,  then Jesus challenged  "Follow me." (John 21:18-19).

Is this ‘must’ of full, unwavering, life-demanding obedience any way to call a disciple or build a church?  Wouldn’t people stay away from it?  Perhaps, this is the only way call a true disciple of Jesus.  You can manipulate a person to join a church or you can try to get people to sign up for heaven with all kinds of tricks, but there is only one way to call a person to follow Jesus Christ.  It requires that they hear, heed some fully engaging  musts’ in their lives.   You must be born again (John 3:7)!  We must obey God rather than mortals (Acts 5.29)!   Even when someone has sinned against you 7 times or 7 times 70, and then repents,  You must forgive (Lk 17.4).   Each of us must please our neighbor  (Rom 15.2).  When God calls a (disciple), God calls them to come and die!   The one who said this was hung for following his ‘must’ (Bonhoeffer).  We would all wish to ignore ‘musts’ like that.

It would be nice to think we could have the Christian life another way, without all the daily musts we have to do to remain faithful each day, without giving anything up.  We’d like to think that the power, the miracles, the healing, the growth, and all the other wonderful things that happened in that early church could fit into our shrinking church budgets or be stuff into our own church tool boxes, so we can decide whether to adopt or how to adapt them for own plans.   But that’s not what happened then, nor is it what really happens now. 

If we learn anything in the Bible about the God of the Bible, it is that we, you, nor I, nor any Christian, Church or person, can ever put God in any kind of box.   That’s why the Jews never wrote down his ‘name’, nor let anyone go near him, if they could help it.  You can’t put the true God is a Jewish box, a Roman Catholic box, a Baptist or Methodist box, nor any other box, be  it contemporary, traditional, for that matter.  If you think you have this God pegged or cornered, he is the God who keeps breaking loose, springing out, stirring things up, and then releasing new ‘fiery tongues’ to burn up whatever words and ways we have devised to try to control or bottle him up.  

Besides, haven’t you noticed that what happened in the early movement of Spirit in the church, for the most part, seldom happens today?  If something like that does happen, as it has from time to time, no one has ever been successfully able to control or manipulate the miracles of the true God.   No one can control where or whether the ‘signs and wonders’ will happen, nor have they been fully prepared for when they won’t.   There is no safe place to hide or reside away from this God, except for placing ourselves under the shelter under his mighty wings.  Have you ever tried feeling safe and secure under the wings of a high flying bird?   

Recently I read how a Texas pastor, a Baptist preacher, entered the pulpit and told his congregation that, if they really wanted to be Christian, they needed not to have any of symbol of allegiance in their sanctuary other than the cross.   He then recommended that the children stop pledging allegiance to the American flag at VBS, since this our land is not really a Christian country, and then he, as their spiritual leader, saying he was inspired by the Holy Spirit, advised they should take the flag out of the church once and for all and not lift up anything alongside of this truly invisible, truly demanding God.  Do you know how well that went over?  Today he’s a Mennonite pastor in Virginia. 

Or maybe you’ve heard about the other Mennonite pastor in Virginia, Kenneth Miller, who was recently convicted for and jailed for aiding an international Kidnapping scheme.  A woman from Vermont came to his church in Virginia seeking a new way of life in Christ, renouncing her former life, and wanting to take her daughter away from the court order to share custody with her former Lesbian partner.  The pastor helped her arrange to move to Canada, and then to Nicaragua, stating that God’s law trumps Federal law, adding that the government has no business redefining marriage   (http://news.yahoo.com/va-pastor-gods-law-reigns-same-sex-dispute-074138627.html).

I told obeying the ‘must’ of a demanding and decisive God could get you in trouble.  However you come to understand what you must or mustn’t do, the only guarantee I can give you in your obedience to him is that you will never control your own destiny ever again.   Just like in Luke’s picture of the early church, when the Spirit is obeyed,   the powerful nor the faithful were in control, nor were they assured of what would happen next.    

THE GOD WHO RULES
So, how can I dare preach that we ‘must obey God’ when there are no guarantees or when the question of control will demand that you release your own control of what happens next?   What might encourage any of us who are still holding on, or holding out, to obey God or even to rejoice, if we too might have to ‘suffer dishonor for the sake of the name?’ (5.41).   
Strangely enough it was a wise and respected Pharisee of the Jewish council named Gamaliel, who Luke offers as encouragement for obedience and trust.  Gamaliel was a Jewish rabbi, and not even a member of this new movement, but he was a very smart man—a man who understood very well just what the stakes are, and just how dangerous it would be to go against the God who will always be bigger than your plans or my plans, our desires, our wants, wishes, or to any predictable human hope. 

Knowing from Isaiah that God’s ways are not human ways, or that God can be just as indiscernible as he is demanding, Gamaliel reminds these leaders who might just make their next wrong move, just how dangerous it could be.   ‘Fellow Israelites’  ‘consider carefully’ what  you propose to do…” (5.35).   Could he be talking to me or you?  If all this “activity” (NIV) or ‘undertaking’ (NRSV) or ‘work’ (KJV)  is only of human energy, it will eventually fail.   But, then he cautions, “but if  this does come from God, you will not stop it (NIV) and if you go up against it, and it is from God, you will find yourself  fighting against God….” (5: 38-39).  This line of reasoning is what persuaded them to stop, to think, and to wait.  

But what line of reasoning was this?  What got their attention about ‘going up against God’ that doesn’t get people’s attention today?   What moved them to realize with Paul, that God would be true and  liars could be made out of each and every one of us? (Rom 3.4)?   Isn’t this eternal, unresolvable, irrevocable possibility of error where the ‘must’ of the church always comes from?   Isn’t this why I must be born again, and again, and again?   Isn’t this why I must obey God rather than mere mortals?  Isn’t this why I must forgive 7 times 70, even when I don’t want to or don’t know how?  Isn’t this why I must live to please my neighbor, and not just please myself.  I must, and the church must, and we all must, because we could end up on the wrong side of a gulf that is fixed and cannot be reversed.   

Isn’t this the day for you to realize that the ‘right side’ is the place where you must let God decide?  With the rest of the church, and with Gamaliel too, we must decide to stand together and find God’s side?  Is there any other logical option?   Let this  be our logic, wrote John Calvin, “that which is of God must needs stand, though all the  world say nay!”  (From Calvin, John (2012-08-26). The Complete Biblical Commentary Collection of John Calvin (Kindle Locations 420887-420888).  . Kindle Edition).  

Have you decided what you must do with or for God today?   Remember Gamiliel’s logic:  You are not as much in charge of what happens next, as you think you are?   Amen.

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