“What Church Has to Give”

A Sermon Based Upon  Acts 3: 1-10
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Mother’s Day,  5^th Sunday after Easter,  May 10th,  2015
 

“I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk” (Acts 3: 6).

 

The second chapter of Acts ends with a very cozy picture (2: 44-47).  

Luke’s church in the Spirit is a church that has ‘all things in common’, spends ‘much time together’, shares meals, and ‘praises God ‘in a way that they have ‘the good will of all the people’.   It’s a wonderful picture of a fellowship no one wants to stop.  It’s filled with so much goodness, so much gladness, and so much generosity, people desperately want to join.  ‘Day by day the Lord adds to their number…’,  Who wouldn’t want to be part of a church like that?

Luke’s portrait of the church might remind us of that old gospel song, “Sweet Hour of Prayer, Sweet Hour of Prayer, that draws me from a world of care….”    How good it is that we can have a place to call ‘sanctuary’ where we can create an alternative “world” away from the worrisome and sometimes wicked things around us?    We need such a place to call home, but is being ‘chummy at church’ all the church is to be about?

If I understand what happens next, Luke wants us to see what’s happening just outside our church doors .    Maybe he wants to remind us that the church does not exist for its own sake, but the church exists for Christ’s sake, and as the gospels remind us, Christ did not come ‘ to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45).   Jesus said this right after his disciples were arguing about who among them was the greatest.  This is the kind of thing that seems to always happen the church only looks inward to be mostly concerned about itself.   Acts wants us to see how the Spirit sends the church beyond church doors.

 

A CARING CHURCH

It all starts with a Peter and John headed to church for afternoon prayers and encountering a ‘crippled man’ on the temple steps.   This fellow was carried their ‘daily’ so he could beg for ‘alms’ or offerings people were used to giving to him.  The place where he was placed was called the “Beautiful gate” but there was nothing so beautiful about having the ‘beautiful’ scenery messed up with needy, sick, and handicapped people lying around everywhere. 

I grew up in the city, but the church I grew up in was blue-collar and hard-working, so the poor and disadvantaged knew better than to come to ask ‘working poor’ for a hand-out.   The first time I ever saw poor, homeless people hanging around on the church grounds was the first time I visited First Baptist Atlanta.  I’ll never forget the signs on the lawn that said it was ‘illegal’ to be ‘trespassing’ on the church grounds.   It put a new twist on the prayer I learned in church that said,  “Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Recently, Atlanta has made it to the list of the ‘meanest cities in America’ where it is illegal to be on the streets or the church steps asking for help. http://nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/meanestcities.html).
 

It’s not the kind of thing we want to think about.  Sometimes it happens here too.  I think it was just before Christmas that a man showed up on our door step asking for some financial help, which we said he would try to pay back.  A couple of deacons and our church treasurer helped him and we didn’t expect him to pay it back.  Most of you come and leave the church without ever having to see something like that.   It’s sad that people out there in the world get into some bad situations.  It would be even worse if they people like that didn’t think that anyone cared, especially at church.
 

What grabs me when I read Luke’s account is that when this crippled man saw Peter and John and asked them for help, it says “Peter looked intently at him, as did John…”.   Other translations make it even stronger, saying they both ‘fastened’ (KJV) their eyes on him.   In other words they could not take their eyes off the fellow.  What do you think was going on in their minds? 
 

What would go on in your mind, if you came to church and some ‘crippled’, handicapped, or disadvantaged person was sitting on our church steps asking for a hand out?   It doesn’t happen that much at our churches, but it does happen in the cities, even our small towns around us.   What do you do?  Do you turn your eyes away, as if not to see them, or do you turn and look ‘intently’ at them, as did Peter and John.   It’s quite a different , even difficult approach, is it not?   Looking straight into the face of poverty, pain, and disease is not pleasant.  

Ask anyone who’s been in a wheelchair, about their experiences.   Ask anyone who’s go through a difficult financial crisis.  Ask anyone who’s been down and out, even only for a while, and ask them how many people will turn and look the other way.   But not Peter and John, and the church shouldn’t either, Luke seems to be reminding us.   The church is not supposed to be so chummy with each other that we forgot who’s could just out there on the other side of the door.  Luke wants us to see what we also see.  He wants us to not only see, but to stop and look so that we might show just people just how ‘different’ we are and just how much we do care. 

I’ve told this story before, but I must remind us of it again.   It is a story that is forever etched in my mind, as we were just settling into our work as pastor/missionaries in our assignment in eastern Germany, just after the fall of the Berlin wall.   We were having a time of prayer right after Sunday worship and we heard someone crying outside.   “It sounds like a child,”  my wife interrupted the prayer meeting.   The chairman of deacon’s wife said, “Oh, it’s nothing.   We hear those sorts of noises all the time”  she responded.   My wife and I did not know the culture nor the sounds.  This was one of our very first Sundays, so what did we know.  We went on with the prayer meeting but the cries got louder and louder.  “Oh, someone needs to go out and check.  It’s sounds like someone is really hurt.”   “No really, the church leader said!”  It’s fine.  About that time the noised ceased.   We went on with the prayer meeting.  The next day, when I was looking over the paper, I couldn’t believe that at the very time we were in church praying, a child had been struck by a car.  No one from the church went out to help.  I thought to myself, and they wonder why nobody ever comes to this church.  

A SHARING CHURCH

I’ve had people come up to me and wonder why the church is dying, why visitors never show up, or why we can’t seem to grow.  I’ve also had groups get together to discuss just what the church really does have to offer a world that doesn’t need God.   Well, what is it?  What can Luke tell us?

Part of the answer to that question might be in what happens next.  Peter and John look intently into the eyes of the crippled man as he ‘expects to receive something from them….”  (Acts 3.6), but doesn’t get exactly what he came looking for, does he.  He doesn’t get the hand out, but he gets ‘healing in the name of Jesus’.   This crippled fellow is like a lot of people who come to church for help, they already have in mind what they want or need, and they don’t know what else the church might have to offer.   

Once I had a man passing through our community in Shelby and he stopped by the church office with a Guitar to sell.   He said his mother had just died in Florida, but he didn’t have enough gas money to get there, so he was wondering if I would purchase his guitar.  I told him that I would be glad to, if he would just tell me which Funeral Home had his mother’s body.  When he heard the question, he angrily walked out.   He didn’t even give me time to get another word in edgewise.

What if we do have time to get other words in ‘edgewise?”  Do we have something to share with the world which is more than the money, the healing or the help they are seeking?  

It seems Luke’s agenda is for us to do more than just social work, more charity work, or more than give handouts.  Luke wants us to know that the church of Jesus Christ has a unique gift no one else has to offer:  “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk” (3: 6).

It’s an unforgettable moment and it’s an unforgettable memory, but is it just this?  Is this magical healing on demand?  Do we really have something tangible to offer the hurting, the depressed, the disadvantaged in world around us?  What good is the church, really?   Of course we have salvation to offer them, which is at the core of our message, but does the message get through?  How do you walk up to a hungry man and say, “I’ve got Jesus, but give them no bread?  How to you walk up to a homeless person and say,  “I hope you stay warm” but have no clothes to offer or no shelter to give”?  

Recently, I received the monthly magazine from my power company.  On the outside there was an advertisement which said,  “Be a Hero…Give Back!”  That is the message of our world, from Movie Stars, to businesses, to average people on the street or the internet.   What do we in the church have to ‘give back?”

While listening to BBC News to catch up on European events, I heard about how a London beautician Katie Cutler, heard about how a disabled retired man was mugged and left injured.  She went online and set up a donation page with the aim of raising just £500 - but the cause went viral and she ended up raising over £300,000  pounds.    In another story about,  it told of a 30 year-old by the name of Claire Squires who was a Marathon runner who died.  She had set out to help raise 500 pounds for a Samaritan Charity in the London Marathon in 2012.  Sadly, she collapsed and died on the final stretch of the race.  The 30-year-old hairdresser had decided to donate to Samaritans because her mother had volunteered there for 24 years.   Miss Squires' story appeared in the national press and news of her online donation page went viral on social media networks Facebook and Twitter.  Within days of her death, donations to Samaritans on her Giving Page had exceeded £600,000.   Her death led to a grand total of more than £1m being given to the charity.  More than 600 people attended her funeral (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31092090) .

There were other stories, and perhaps you’ve heard of them too, how people take up the needs of others, then go online make appeals, it goes viral and all kinds of money comes in, much more than was expected.   People respond.  People want to help.  It goes around the world, something like the “Ice Bucket challenge for ALS” last year in the US and the results of such viral events can be amazing and inspiring. (http://mainlinemedianews.com/articles/2015/02/02/people/flair/doc5425a512d10c3489268383.txt)   

But what does the church have to offer in a world that has the capacity to give back or respond in so many other practical and inspiring ways---with social programs, hospitals, hospice, and other charities and of course personal concern that goes viral?   What does the church have to share or offer that only can only be given in the name of Jesus Christ?

A DARING CHURCH

Denna Thompson is the daughter of a Lutheran pastor in St. Paul, Minnesota.   She was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer not long ago.   About six months after the diagnosis, she and her husband were waiting anxiously in a room at the oncology clinic.   The oncologist came to give the report on the Big Tests she’d recently undergone.   After six months into life with stage IV cancer, she wondered she’d have to weather more bad news.    The oncologist reviewed the bone scan and reported on the healing beginning to occur in the two vertebrae fractured by cancer.  Then she said, "The news from the MRI is perhaps the best news of all.  The images of the place where your tumor was, no longer shows anything there.  It appears the treatment has taken care of the tumor.  It's gone.  You're doing really, really well."

Shortly after she received the news of the tumor's disappearance, her pastor father preached a sermon about our family's journey of dealing with my cancer diagnosis.  Her dad  acknowledged how she was carried to the feet of Jesus by the constant prayers of friends and my family.  "Miracle" wasn’t too strong a word to describe what happened.  Hundreds and hundreds of people prayed for healing; and a profound healing took place.   

Just as interesting as her story about her ‘healing’, is what came next.   Shortly after she got the news of her miraculous healing, she learned how the husband of her friend died of cancer.  Diagnosed in November, just weeks before her own diagnosis, this fine, fit, fifty-something man was struck down with cancer and the ferocity with which it hit him didn't let up.  Just months after the diagnosis, he was dead.   She wondered to herself,  “How could she proclaim her miracle to her friend who lost her husband.  They had prayed just as hard and where just as devout, but no miracle came.   Her Father preacher even acknowledge in his own sermon that for reasons beyond our ability to grasp, many who are sick, many who suffer, do not survive.  Everyone who brings their loved ones to feet of Jesus or pray in the name of Jesus are not miraculously or physically healed”  (From Denna Thompson’s article,  “The Trouble with The Miracle,  found at: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2076).

It’s one thing to proclaim the message and healing of Jesus to a world that already has so many other ways, maybe even more immediate ways to be saved, healed or helped, but how do we care and share, when we can’t promise, but only believe what will come out of it?  Of course, we do have something to share, to give, even if we are only able to look straight into the faces of those who hurt and offer them our care, our love and our help.   That’s still a lot to offer, because so many will only look the other way. 

But Luke wants us to know more than this.  He wants us to look beyond the money, even beyond the immediate healing, beyond the caring and the compassion.  Luke wants us not only to see that we have something to share in the name of Jesus, but he wants us to be daring and bold in how we share it.   He wants us to proclaim that ‘in the name of Jesus’ that brings ultimate healing for our bodies and souls.   But how can we communicate or dare to preach something like, especially when the healing doesn’t come, or we have nothing else to bring, but our prayers, our care or the hope that we have in Jesus Christ? 

My Aunt Nettie was an Oral Roberts contributor.  When I would visit her home, she would have little small items that she was sent in exchange for her financial support.   She didn’t have much to give, but she’d send him something for his uplifting messages and promises of healing.   Some of your recall that Oral Roberts was a charismatic preacher who offered specific answers to people’s prayers, if they would write him, pray with him, support him.   It sounded phony baloney to me, but it meant a lot to her, so I never questioned her about it.  I let her believe what she wanted to believe.   This kind of magical, money-back guaranteed kind of faith never made sense to me.   It was like the time, a woman in a Christian book store told me that if I would pray, and get others to pray with me, God would certainly heal the damage in my foot.  She told me how a former Miss America prayed and God lengthened her leg and it a mighty miracle and great testimony to the power of God and to the power of prayer.   I didn’t dispute what happened to Miss America, but I had something to say to this woman who suggested I could only be healed, if healed completely with my foot restored as it was before the accident.  

What I said to her was similar to what was expressed in a wonderful prayer that went something like this:    Oh, God: I asked for hope, you gave me a challenge; 

I asked for healing, you gave me patience;

I asked for riches, you gave me friendships;
I asked for friendships, you gave me opportunities to be a friend;
I asked to be useful, you required of me my riches;
I asked for love, you taught me to give;
I asked for peace, I found myself sorting my way through trouble;
I asked for rest, you gave me energy.
I asked only for solace, and you brought resurrection.
Lord, your giving answer seems always to be ahead of my wisdom in asking.
The things I ask are too small, or too selfish, or too far beside the point of my own life’s calling—you seem to know.  You seem to grant me what I need rather than what I want. Teach me to only want what I need, and to need you most of all.   Amen.
(As quoted by Robert J. Elder, First Presbyterian Church, Salem Oregon). 

My point to that woman was that sometimes, the greater healing comes in ways beyond getting everything back to the way it was before.   Sometimes the greatest healing comes when something completely and radically new breaks through into our lives.   While firmly believe in ‘healing’ through the name of Jesus, the healing Jesus gives is never on my terms, but it is always on God’s terms, not being limited what we want to have happen now, whether it be physical or spiritual.     Consider this analogy from Colin Humphreys comparing how God works in our world to how music works:

“Suppose you are watching a pianist play a classical piece. You will notice that there are certain notes that he plays, and certain ones that he never does. The choice of notes is constrained because the music is being played in a particular key signature. But then, occasionally he may break this rule and play an unusual note. Musicians call these accidentals, and a composer can put them in wherever she likes (although if there are too many the music would sound strange)….      ….If he is a great composer, the accidentals will never be used capriciously: they will always make better music. It is the accidentals which contribute to making the piece of music great.  The analogy with how God operates is clear: God created and upholds the universe but, like the great composer, he is free to override his own rules. However, if he is a consistent God, it must make more sense than less for him to override his rules (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/05/09/a-miraculous-creation-rjs/#ixzz3QhqUA010). \
 

 When Peter dared to speak healing to the crippled man, it was not just about the physical healing of his crippled body, but it was about bringing the message of salvation to his crippled body and soul, not just for now, but for forever.   There were many others practicing ‘healing’ in that day, and even the unbelieving authorities did not dispute the reality of the healing.  It happened.  But still, the physical healing of the man’s body was not what this ‘healing’ was about.  It was a sign that beyond him, to the greatest miracle of all.  One day this crippled man would get old and die, so only the name of Jesus, whom “God has raised from the dead” (3:15) could heal him from this coming death.   This is what Peter was daring to preach.   He was not preaching a Jesus who gives ‘miracles on demand’ but he was preaching that ‘there is salvation (healing) in one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved’ (4:12).  
 

“In the name of Jesus’ the church has something to offer the world, beyond the handouts, beyond the emotional helps, and even beyond the physical healings that are being offered today through caring medicines.   Of course, these healings are wonderful and just as miraculous.    But still, the church has something that no one else can offer.  Only ‘faith though Jesus’ (3.16) brings the kind of hope, the kind of help, or the kind of healing that will raise us up into the life beyond.  Amen.