A sermon based upon Acts 4: 1-20
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 23rd, 2018
(5-14) Sermon Series: Church: Then and Now
It’s amazing how quickly the weather can change. You get up in the morning it’s nice; the birds are singing, there isn’t a cloud in the sky. But by the afternoon everything looks different. First the winds changed, then clouds appeared, the storms come, and you didn’t even bring an umbrella.
The same kind of thing can happen in a relationship. You married this person and everything was fine. You trusted them. They trusted you. You pledged your faith and trust in each other before God and all your family and friends. Without warning, it seems, one morning you get up and it doesn’t seem that you are married to the same person, or perhaps you aren’t the same person. You work at different places. You have different hobbies. You spend less time together. The children are getting older. Words are hurled. Before you know it everything is different. Now, the bond you once knew has broken apart. What happened?
The same kind of thing can happen at church. At first, everyone is excited. The pastor is excited about the church; the church excited about the pastor. As days pass the excitement fades. The crowds settle down. The budget becomes tighter. Life together is now longer a dream, its just real.
Of course, we all know that these kinds of ‘changes’ happen, even when we don’t want them. In our text from Acts today there is an even more sudden, abrupt, less subtle change. Pentecost was over. The Spirit had been speaking through everyone. Now, the main task of preaching has fallen back on the apostles, namely, Peter and John. Just like in the ministry of Jesus, a crippled has been miraculous healed and was seen ‘jumping’ around and was heard ‘praising God’ in the temple. People everywhere were amazed. The gospel is being freely proclaimed and freely received even after Jesus was crucified. But with all this commotion, clouds of as suspicion are gathering, as the temple police and religious authorities, the very same ones who had crucified Jesus, have become ‘greatly disturbed’ that now, Peter and John ‘were proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead’ (Acts 4:2).
Can you imagine ‘authorities’ getting upset at someone talking about Jesus and the resurrection of the dead? It’s not such a stretch, is it? Try to share your faith out in the open, in a public place, or at a public school, to a public meeting, or dare to share your faith with someone outside this church building. Can you do see the clouds of resistance, and maybe your own reluctance gathering in your own mind? Yes, we still worship freely in ‘free’ country, but we all know that freedom only works, as long as we keep our faith personal, private, or discreet. If we would dare proclaim “Jesus” “resurrection” or especially as Peter does, that ‘salvation is found in no one else’, you would lose proper political correctness, become insensitive to the ways of the world, and you too would discover you have over-stepped a line. Yes, you can talk about Jesus as the ‘name…given’ behind ‘closed doors’, but open the door, go outside, make the ‘demands’ of Jesus public, or even try to define Jesus demands at church, on our own lives, and you might, like Peter and John and the early church, get some attention you didn’t intend.
COMMANED THEM NOT TO SPEAK… (v. 18)
What we read in this text today is a reminder that ‘Jesus’ was a trouble maker from the ‘get go’. The message of Jesus has always gotten under somebody’s skin. In one of the gospels, right after Jesus announced his call to preach in his hometown, his own people took him out to a cliff and planned to push him off (Luke 4).
When we actually apply the message of justice, righteousness, and the demands of the gospel, we could still ‘fall’ or ‘get pushed’ off a cliff too, at least figuratively speaking. There are things that you just aren’t supposed to say in ‘polite’ company. There are things, especially in matters of politics and religion, that you must let people decide themselves. If you start saying ‘this is true’ or ‘that is wrong’ or you say ‘you must do this or that’ in any kind of definite way today, which doesn’t go with the flow of those listening, then you could get into trouble fast.
“Stick with the Bible, preacher!” That sounds like good advice until you remember how Jesus just read the Bible one day then said, ‘Today, the Bible if fulfilled in your ears!’(Luke 4:21). It was right after Jesus read from the Bible, that they wanted him dead. His listeners were used to hearing the Bible and then going about their business, but they weren’t used God actually getting into the business of their lives.
In Acts, not long after Pentecost, Jesus is actually ‘getting into the business’ of ‘the way, the truth, and the life’, through the Holy Spirit, just like Jesus was still here. As Methodist pastor Will Willimon once said, “Jesus didn’t just go out and preach God’s salvation, but Jesus actually saved people, and some of the people Jesus saved were people that no one wanted saved.” Jesus reached out and touched untouchables. Jesus welcomed the unwelcomed. ‘God proves his love like this’, Paul said, ‘that even while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us’ (Rom 5:8). Jesus opened the door of ‘respectable’ religion and invited even the most ‘unrespectable’ to come in. Jesus let ‘whosoever will’ come, which included Gentiles, ‘outsiders’ and ‘sinners’ just like us.
It’s hard to realize just how much ‘trouble’ this kind of message caused for Jesus and then his disciples like Peter and John who got arrested, thrown into jail, then were told to ‘stop preaching’ this message. Again, what message? Are we clear about it?
Once at a Methodist Camp, a preacher preached on this same kind of text, where it says that “Jesus” died for sinners, even while they are still sinners.” He told the youth he was going to make his point, by inviting people to pretend they were certain well-known people. “I want you to play ‘Mother Teresa’, and a youth pretending to be Mother Teresa came up on stage and stood on his right. Then he invited others to be “Martin Luther King Jr., then Billy Graham, and some others. They all came up and were standing together on his right. Then, the minister proceeded to call up youth to pretend to be Genghis Kahn, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and all these ‘bad guys’ were to stand on his left.
Finally, the camp pastor invited someone to pretend to be Jesus, and a youth stood up and came and joined all the good guys on his right. The preacher then stopped. “Haven’t you guys been listening to what I’ve be saying. Don’t you get it? What are you thinking Paul meant when Paul said, ‘While we were still sinners, Christ died for us?’ Do you think Jesus only came to die for the good guy?”
Hearing this scolding, the guy playing Jesus started to move over to stand with the ‘bad guys’ on the left. As he moved, the camp pastor concluded: “This is the kind of people the gospel is about saving and welcoming. The good news was not just for the good people like you, but it is primarily about the ‘bad guys’ who are called to repent and come to forgiveness and new life in Christ. Now, when you go out that door, when you go to school, when you go back out into the world, it’s these kind of people that you’re go to and show Jesus’ love! Do you understand?” Do we?
NEITHER IS THERE SALVATION IN ANY OTHER (v. 12)
What we need to understand, as we read and study about the early church, is that the gospel of Jesus Christ was offensive. It was offensive, not only because of ‘who’ they were preaching about: Jesus as the one and only way, but the message was also offensive because of the ‘way’, the ‘truth’ and the ‘life’ Jesus was, and still is, as the ‘way’ of God to love sinners who do
not deserve saving, and do not deserve God’s healing words of life. Jesus dies for them anyway, because God’s love builds this new way, this new truth, and new way of life, not human effort or goodness.
This is this the new, shocking, offensive, challenging kind of love the disciples were preaching as now being fully revealed through God’s son, Jesus the resurrected Christ. Now, this compassionate, healing, and forgiving Jesus the authorities thought they were rid of is back. His disciples were still preaching and passing on God’s love and healing to the most disadvantaged people, just like Jesus did. People who were supposed to be ‘marked’ as unredeemable sinners, are still being given the good news of love and life, contrary to the dominating message of hate, condemnation and evil. Even after Jesus was killed, and even through his death, and the Spirit-filled Church, this loving, forgiving, healing and hopeful message of Jesus was still drawing out the corruption of the world to bring healing and hope.
This gospel, and this ‘Jesus’ that the disciples were preaching about, was not simply a Jewish Jesus, but he was, through the resurrection, that the disciples are now naming Jesus as the ‘universal’ Jesus; not only the Jewish Messiah who could save Jews, but the Jewish Messiah who was rejected by the Jews, so that God could reveal his love to the whole world.
Making Jesus ‘universal’ and big enough for everybody, is exactly what the disciples mean when they said, ‘neither is there salvation in any other (4:12).’ Here is the second reason the disciples were opposed by the authorities: Jesus not only saves and heals people we don’t want save, but Jesus now, Jesus is being proclaimed as the exclusive, only ‘name…given by which humans can be saved (4:12b).
This is certainly the other kind of ‘preaching’ that will get the church in trouble. We not only get into trouble when we offer God’s love to the most ‘undesirable’ or ‘undeserving’, but we also get into trouble when we preach that Jesus is ‘only’ what people can be saved. How can we dare keep preaching such an exclusive and offensive message like this, in a world that has gone ‘global’, where there is so much demand for ‘political correctness,’ and when any kind of exclusive claim like this now seems narrow-minded, short-sighted, and just plain ignorant? Should we dare still say and sing, ‘no other name’ in a world filled with so many ‘truth claims’?
My answer is ‘yes’, but we do have to explain ourselves now, more than ever. We have to explain what we mean by ‘no other name’ because we too have failed in bearing witness to the truth. Just because we are Christians, and say we follow God’s perfect light and love revealed in Jesus Christ, does not mean that we are perfect followers of that light and God’s truth. We do have to take ‘care’ when we ‘preach Jesus’ because, just like Peter, John, and others too, we have not been perfect reflectors of the light of God’s love. Gandhi, the great Hindu lawyer, lived more like Jesus, and respected Jesus teachings of love, far better than those ‘prejudiced’, conceited Christians he encountered on a train in South Africa. When Gandhi discovered that calling yourself a Christian, or a follower of Jesus, didn’t actually make you like Jesus, he decided that he would continue to follow the teachings of Jesus as a Hindu, not as a Christian.
This is why we must be careful when we proclaim Christ today. We must not turn the message of the gospel of love that is for everyone, into a gospel that is only for a ‘chosen’ few. This is what Jesus found to be wrong in the Jewish religion of his day, and we must take care not to make it our religion again today. So, when we preach with Peter and John that ‘salvation is found in no one else’ we must not make this a way shorting, limiting, or confining the power of God to save only within Christian confines. Just as still God speaks through nature, spoke and still speaks through Israel, and now speaks his fullest revelation of the truth of love and healing through Jesus his only Son, when we say that Jesus is the ‘only, true, way’, we don’t have to denounce or fail to respect other religions. All religion, even the Christian religion is a human way of seeking the truth. We all seek God through our religious cultures, but God reveals himself through Jesus, who stands above all religion and above all cultures, who reveals God’s message of healing through ‘faith’ which elevates Jesus to be Lord ‘of all’ and ‘in all things’.
What helps me most, in more fully understanding and proclaiming the exclusive truth about Jesus, is to take more seriously what Peter and John where preaching to Israel, the Jews, before I apply Jesus to me and my world. When Peter says, ‘Salvation is found in no one else’, he was not yet saying to the whole world. Peter doesn’t even think the world of Gentiles can be saved Gentiles just yet (Acts 10). Peter is looking directly at the Jewish people, the same people who crucified Jesus, and the same people who rejected Jesus as the ‘way, truth, and the life.’ Peter was still warning Israel, Jesus as Jesus did, that the only way to avoid the coming catastrophe (Matt 24, Luke 21), is to follow Jesus and his teachings by ‘turning the other cheek, going the second mile, and by loving their enemy.’ Unless Israel find Jesus as the true ‘name for ‘salvation’, they are headed for destruction. This was the ‘truth’ Jesus died for, and this is the ‘message’ that still applied, though it was rejected again and again, until Israel was finally destroyed by the Romans, just a few years after the story of Acts takes place.
But what unfolds, as the story of Acts continues, is that what Peter was ‘preaching’ to these “Israelites” and to ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ became ‘the message’---the one, only, true saving message, that also can bring ‘healing’, ‘health’, ‘wholeness’ to the whole world. This ‘saving message is that ‘this Jesus who was rejected and crucified, God has raised from the dead. By raising Jesus God is at work, in the early church, validating and ‘universalizing Jesus as the ‘way, truth, and life’. Through the power of God and the Holy Spirit, the saving power of Jesus is not just a message for a small, religious, nation on the back-side of nowhere that existed 2,000 years ago, but the ‘truth’, the ‘life’, and the ‘way’ of Jesus can bring healing, saving, forgiving, and redeeming power to anyone, anywhere, regardless of their religion or even their lack of it. Jesus did not come to start a new religion, nor even to start a Christian one, but Jesus came to bring ‘faith’ into the world through the miracle of God’s ‘saving’ grace.
Now, I don’t want this to sound like smart-double talk, when I say that Jesus is the ‘only’ savior, but God is not against other religions or other ways to find truth. But we must turn back the clock and make the universal gospel of God’s love shown in Jesus Christ, into an ‘condemning’, narrow-minded message about a certain religion, even the Christian one, but we must insist that in Jesus, God has uniquely revealed God’s heart of love to reveal the truth, to save, and to heal the human heart with the ‘good news’ for all people. God has uniquely spoken in Jesus, and through the Holy Spirit, God still speaks, still loves, and still saves.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not trying to make Jesus any less a perfect Savior, any less the exclusive Savior, or any less the ‘only name…that saves’, but what I’m saying is we must be careful not to ‘exclude’ people from God’s love, who Jesus came to include. This is the ‘direction’ the gospel flows, to open our hearts toward the people God loves, not to use Jesus to close our hearts, especially toward those others who don’t see, believe, or understand like us.
NOW WHEN THEY SAW THE BOLDNESS….( v. 13)
What was most ‘impressive’ to the authorities, who try to stop the disciples and apostles from ‘speaking’ about Jesus was their ‘boldness’. And this isn’t this what people need to see in us, even in a world of religious, cultural, and political confusion? But how, can we live, speak, or live ‘boldly’ in the knowledge, love, confessing our confidence and hope in Jesus, when the world has so many viewpoints, opinions, and ideas? Can we still preach and live “Jesus” in the midst of all this?
Years ago, a confused young ‘preacher’ went to see a notable pastor in a nearby town. He had just come out of seminary and was facing a world that was much more complex than he had ever imagined. The more the read, studies, and even tried to preach the Scriptures, the more doubts he had about certain teachings he’d grown up with. He confided in the pastor that he was thinking about, even praying about leaving the ministry. “How, can I keep on preaching, when I have discovered so many things, from my childhood, in my studies, and even from the Scriptures, I just can’t easily accept anymore.
After hearing about his doubts, the wise pastor, began to try to move the young man away from the doubts he was having about certain things, toward the things that still mattered: his family, God’s love, and the things in the Bible that mattered most of all, having faith, granting forgiveness, and receiving God’s grace. Do you still believe in these things? Can’t you see that your ‘doubts’ are not necessarily driving you away from the Bible, from God, or from ministry, but that your ‘doubts’ may be moving toward the things that matter most of all? Hearing this word of hope, the young minister returned to his study and to his pulpit, not to preach what he didn’t know, but to begin to focus on the what he did know for sure, and on the message of the Bible that mattered most of all.
What should give us ‘boldness’ even in these days of ‘political correctness’ or religious confusion, is that the things in the Bible that matter most, matter more now than ever before. Having faith matters. Having hope still matters. Showing love matters. The message of Jesus matters too, because Jesus came not only to save those who can find them, but Jesus matters because he, as Jesus himself said, came to ‘seek and save’ and as Jesus himself said in Scripture, that he ‘has sheep that do not belong this this fold’ (John 10:16).
If you get to the core of who Jesus was, why Jesus died, and who Jesus loves, you may just discover that they ‘will listen to (his) voice’ too, and that Jesus can still make us all ‘of one flock and of one shepherd’. We still need to find the things that matter and are common to all of us, even in this confused religious world. And we can still find these ‘healing’ and ‘saving’ truths we all need in the love of Jesus Christ. We can preach with boldness that the truth of Jesus reveals truth that is the same to all people, everywhere. We can preach this with boldness, if we will allow the same Spirit of Jesus to do talking through us, as we do the walking with him. We might still get in trouble for saying this, but we can’t stop, because the truth of God’s love revealed in Jesus, is still the truth that trumps all religion, all politic, and all human ideas. It is the truth that preaches boldly, not only that the world needs Jesus, but we that we still need him too. Now, that’s bold! Amen.
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