“What We Should Do!”

A Sermon Based Upon  Acts 2: 36-47

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Fifth Sunday after Easter,  May 3rd, 2015

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, "Brothers, what should we do?" (Act 2:37 NRS)

Not long after the first Easter, Simon Peter preached the very first sermon from the pulpit of the Christian church.   Peter’s sermon was the first sermon, but not the last.  The church still exists through the preaching and the hearing of the Word through the Spirit. 

At the end of Peter’s sermon, Acts tells us that those first hearers were ‘cut to the heart’ by both the coming of the Spirit and the Sermon.  As a result they collectively asked Peter and the other apostles the single question which launched the beginning of the church.   Their question was simple:  “Brothers, what should we do?”  (Act 2:37).

This is still a good question for the church to consider:  “What should WE do?”  A couple of weeks ago we began to speak from the book of Acts, concerning the birth and origin of the church of Jesus Christ.   In Acts 1, we learned that Jesus left the church on purpose.   His purpose was for us to be witnesses to God’s saving love in the world.  In Acts 2, we considered what it means for the church to be “Pentecostal”.  By being Pentecostal I’m not talking about the denomination, nor irrational tongue speaking, but I’m referring to the spiritual power the church possesses which means that we not only have something to say, but that through when the Spirit’s power is received by us, we also can develop the ability to say it. 

As we come to consider the conclusion of Acts 2, so we can begin to think together about what the church should be and do, not just then, but also now.   We need to keeping asking this kind of question for two primary reasons: First, we need to ask “what the church should do?” because the church means everything to God.  The church is the ‘body of Christ’ and it is the way God reveals himself through his people and continues the ministry and mission of Jesus Christ in the world.  

While we live in a time of anti-establishment, and the decline in many America institutions, including churches, the church is not a mere human establishment, nor is it an American institution.  The church was not born in America, nor did any human being establish the church.   The church of Jesus Christ originated as a gift of God through the energy and power of God’s Spirit released and received through the faithful people of God who now exist ‘to the ends of the earth’.   As long as ‘two or three gather in his name’, the church will continue to be the body of Christ on earth that means everything to God. 

We also need to talk about the church because the church should mean everything to us.  If we believe that God has spoken through Jesus Christ and that Jesus died to save, we must also believe that God’s saving presence and power is mediated through God’s people who are to be ‘salt and light’ in this world (Matt. 5: 13-14).   The church is ‘indispensable’ for the hope of the world because God has called his people ‘out of darkness into his marvelous light’ to ‘proclaim his might acts’ of ‘mercy’ and ‘grace’ (1 Pet. 2.9-10).   As witnesses to God’s saving power, the church has something to say and something to do that no one else can say or do.  We have a divinely given imperative to share God’s saving and forgiving mercy through the witness and work of the church.   

Because God has something special for the church to do, Jesus told the disciples to ‘wait for the promise’ (Acts 1.4) and to wait to receive the ‘power of the Spirit’ (Acts 1.8) before they went out into world.   It was necessary for them to be a ‘sent’ church, so they did not get ahead of God.  This is still important because this is not our church, but this is God’s church.  The witness we have is because of God’s initiative, not mere human ingenuity   It is a witness that focuses on what God’s is doing in us, not what we have done or can do ourselves.

But even though God’s church begins on God’s initiative, we must partner with God so that we keep asking ourselves, in every generation:  “What should we do?   We do not have this story about the how the church got started to gain historical information, but we have these story to learn to be sensitive to the leading of the Spirit now.    This means, every generation should join those first believers and ask:  “What should we do?”

REPENT:  THE GOD WE WANT DEAD     

Years ago, a retiring missionary visited our church in Shelby, after spending 40 years as in ministry overseas.  When we were talking about his calling and long career in South America, I could not help but also ask him about what changes he had noticed as he came home.  I asked: “What distinguishes the church in America today as you come home, from the church you left in America over 40 years ago?”  His answer was immediate:  “The lack of repentance.”

The first word out of Peter’s mouth is the word ‘repent’.   Do we even want to know what repentance is about?   There may be many ways to think about what ‘repentance’ means for the church,as well as the world, but let’s only consider what Peter meant when he used the word.   Peter had just preached a powerful sermon based upon the Hebrew prophecy of Joel, explaining how long-ago the prophet had predicted the outpouring of God’s Spirit so ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (2.21).   Peter especially pointed out that this saving Spirit was now being released into the world through the life, death and resurrection of “Jesus of Nazareth’, whom ‘God has made both Lord and Messiah’ (36).    

It is what Peter adds to his explanation should grab our attention now, as it did then.  This same Jesus that God exalted is the same ‘Jesus whom you crucified’.    His point is that the church cannot get started until we become open and honest about our failures.   Our biggest failure is that we all want God dead, because we want to be our own god.   We all join in with the crucifixion of Jesus because Jesus’ divine way is not our normal human way.  This is why we were all there when they crucified our Lord.  Human sin, selfishness, corruption, and even our own self-righteousness killed Jesus then, and it still kills the spirit of Jesus today. 

Until we realize how we do fall short of glory, we cannot begin to glorify God in life.  In the news recently was the 70^th anniversary of the Holocaust.  Those who commemorated the liberation of that terrible place, where so many lost their lives, said that humanity must never forget what happened there.  We must not forget, because if we do, we could repeat such inhumanity again.  

When Peter confronted the crowd with their part in crucifying Jesus and wanting God dead, we are told that they were ‘cut to the heart’.   This was the moment the people realized they needed to change course.  While there may have been some sadness, and some regret, more than anything else this was a moment of becoming convinced that they needed to turn and go in a different direction.   The crucifixion of God’s Messiah reveals once and for all how wrong we can be, even when we think we are right.  This is why repentance is much more than having a preacher ‘step on your toes’, but it means to change course.  Only when we turn toward God together can the church cannot be the church, and a Christian be a real Christian.  When we have acknowledged that joined with the crowd who crucified Jesus, we then must join with the cloud of witnesses who lay aside the sin that keeps weighing us down (Heb. 12.1).

Let us be clear, as Christians we don’t come to church because we want to, but we become part of the church because we realize that we must.  If we don’t learn how to go in the direction the Spirit is leading, we will end up killing the God who came to save us.   While Jesus forgive those who crucified him the first time, the book of Hebrews says there is no more ‘atonement’ when we ‘crucify’ and kill God again (Hebrew 6.4).  

It is hard to get people to understand their need of repentance today.   We live in a world that thinks it must be fair, politically correct, and non-insulting.   While there is nothing wrong with fairness, correctness, or being polite; the cross is not nice.  We live in a world that cannot do good until it realizes that it isn’t good, and that no one is good but God.  Until we acknowledge our part in the rebellion, the irresponsibility, and in the disobedience, we can’t create the kind of community of faith and hope to learn to love like God loves.

A good example what repentance could mean in our lives could be taken from that last fateful play in this year’s 49^th Superbowl, when the Seattle Seahawk’s decided to pass the ball on 2^nd down when they were on the 2 yard-line and had plenty of time and time-outs for a much more sensible running play.  Why did Seattle’s Coach Pete Carroll make such an unconventional, risky call?  We may never know.  Why do any of us make stupid calls that get us into trouble.  We may never know that either.  But what we do know is that we need to admit our failure, our mistakes, especially our intentional blunders and we need to turn out hearts toward what we should do and who we should become.   This is what repentance always means, especially in our moral and spiritual lives.

BE BAPTIZED:  THE LIFE WE MUST DECIDE TO LIVE

When we repent, freely and fully, then we must ‘be baptized’ every single one of us.  There is no secret church and no individual membership.   To gain life from God, we must become members of his body, the church.  Baptism means taking part with God ‘in the baptism that Jesus is baptized with’.   When you are baptized, you don’t simply become a member of a church, but you become a member of Jesus Christ and his baptism. 

People can get confused about baptism, because it is so very important and we have to get it right.   But what does getting baptism right mean?   Many get confused into thinking that the manner or mode of water baptism is the salvation God brings.  In a class on Baptist Beliefs, the class I was teaching at a Baptist church was convinced that if you were not baptized by immersion, you were not baptized correctly.  This answer was understandable, because this is our Baptist tradition.  In the 15^th century. due to the corruption of the established churches, we had good reason to try to get the church to return to believer’s baptism, which was to move away from infant baptism, and to return to adult baptism by immersion.  But, I went on to add, it was still not about ‘how’ much water, when ‘when’ the baptism was preformed---in response to genuine, adult conversion to Christ.

It was at this time, that a small framed, sweet, sincere elderly lady in the class raised her hand.  She looked troubled by our discussion.  “Preacher,” she asked.  “Does this mean that I’m not a Christian, or that I have to be re-baptized?”  “When I joined this church, after I got married,  I told the pastor I believed in Jesus and was a faithful member of the Methodists.  I had been baptized as an infant, but was confirmed as a teen ager.  Do I not have to be re-baptized?”

Instead of answering, I asked the Baptist congregation what they thought.  Not one of them recommended or required it.  It was then I reminded them of the point of this discussion.  It is not about the water, nor is it primarily about when, it is primarily about ‘who’ you are.

What is saving about Baptism is not what’s in the water, even as that wonderful Carrie Underwood song suggests when she sings,  “There’s Something in the Water”   Again, water is a great metaphor and it is a great symbol,  but it’s not about what’s in the water, but it’s about who has gotten into us---that we are in Christ and Christ has gotten into us.  Baptism should be our entry or initiation into the salvation God has provided for us in Christ, not the completion or culmination of it.   Furthermore, it’s not the mode, the amount of water, or even the timing of it, as long as there is enough water to kill us, metaphorically I mean, so that we give our whole lives to God and that we live his life-giving life.   We can say that our baptism is true when it leads us to God’s new life as God’s people.  

Ironically, as Paul so aptly puts it, ‘by being baptized into his death’ is how we are ‘baptized into his life’ (Roms 6: 1-8).  Only this kind of radical, reversing lifestyle can, as Peter proclaims, ‘save ourselves from this corrupt generation’ (Acts 2.40).   Peter’s point is not that his generation was any worse than our generation, which would also mean that our generation is no more corrupt than his generation.  I know it might look like our times are the worst, especially since we are the ones living in it, but if you will do some history homework, you’ll find that every generation has to decide who’s side it will be on, which way is right, what is wrong, and then they also have to decide whether or not they will give into the temptation to join the crowd and serve themselves, or they will decide to join the eternal way, and to follow him in serving God and in service to others.  You only ‘save yourselves’ when you join in God’s way, revealed in Jesus as ‘the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14.6). 

SAVE YOURSELVES:  BELONGING TO A  DEVOTED PEOPLE

What Peter meant when he told the crowd to ‘repent’ and be baptized’ and ‘save themselves’ from the world’s corrupting influences is finally described in very specific detail.  In Luke 2: 42-47, Luke essentially describes what kind of church real repentance and genuine baptism brings about.  Does, could, or should our church look like this today?

Through the years there have been very strong arguments for and against the kind of church depicted here.  A selfless devotion to Christ’s teachings, the fellowship with each other as a sense of equality and community, is, most say, the kind of committed, caring, compassionate church the Spirit empowers.   Others have warned that we must be careful going too far with this picture, reminding us we are far removed from the ancient world which does not directly relate to our human situation today.   If we did follow this by ‘the letter’, even the literal mined interpreters say, we could end up with something too close to communism, which doesn’t work. 

But what was it that did work?  Can we still get to that?  I think we can and I believe we must.

While we can’t replicate Luke’s church where ‘all who believed were together and had all things in common (v. 44), this spirit led and spirit-filled church can still speak of the essence of what it means to ‘be’ and ‘do’ church.  A church is not only a people who believe in Jesus Christ, but a church is a people who ‘freely’ choose to surrender their hearts to God and then collectively come together to belong to each other, getting close enough to share a common faith, common problems, common solutions, in order to become a not so common community that counters the cruel world around them.  

I don’t think anyone can pin down “exactly” what it takes to establish a church that is a caring, common and saving community of faith in a community.  It could be shaped in many different ways, as it has been through the years.   A church doesn’t even have to have building, but it’s .  hard to be a church without some structure where the body of Christ can come together.  But the greatest lesson from Luke’s snapshot of this New Testament church has nothing to do with a building, does it.  It has to do with what the people were doing.  The church was not made of stained glass windows, but it was made from those who came together be Christ for each other. 

When we look at how alive and inspiring the church was then, we must remember that when the church was first formed there was no health care, no social security, no hospitals, and no kind of social programs which supported the most vulnerable in the world.  There was also no religion that had a positive, healing and helpful influence on the minds and hearts of people.  It was this “church of the Spirit” that God called forth to fill this empty space. 

What ‘empty space’ should the church fill now?   This is the question that every living, vibrant, thriving church will answer.  We too must find ways to bring God’s saving love into the hurts and needs of the world of our own time.   We are in a unique position  to be Christ’s body for the world, being a people who come together not just to talk, sing, or play about God’s saving actions, but to come together to practice these saving, healing actions, beginning among ourselves.  Even an atheist who attends very different kind of church gets it right when he says he comes to church so he can answer one single question with his life: “How can I help?”   That certainly closer to the heart Acts 2 those who just fill pews.  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frida-berrigan/what-should-church-look-l_b_4086273.html).

What it means for us or for any church today to belong ‘together’ and to ‘be there for each other’ will always take some prayer, some interpreting, some deciding, and some sacrifice, but if we if we want to come together to be a church in the spirit, we can be ‘church’ unless we seek to discover what it means to do church, and to ‘practice’ God’s saving acts for each other.   The Spirit is about empowering a community who share in Christ together, before they ever try to share Christ with the world.  Amen.