The Day the Church Became the Church (Acts 2:1-21)

There were three great Jewish festivals to which every Jew who lived within 20 miles of Jerusalem was bound to journey to Jerusalem to attend. They were Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Pentecost is a Greek word meaning “the fiftieth,” but the Jews never called this festival by that name. To them, it was the harvest festival of Shavuot, which commemorates God giving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, according to tradition, fifty days after the Exodus. Another Jewish name for it was the Feast of Weeks, because it came a week of weeks--7 times 7-- after Passover. It revolved around giving thanks for the first fruits of the harvest, which were cereal grains. One of the votive offerings specified for expressing gratitude to God in the temple was two loaves of bread.
A harvest festival in late May or early June? Yes, this was the time of harvesting winter wheat, which was planted in the autumn and harvested in the early spring. It is an accepted farming practice even today in some parts of our own country to plant winter wheat in the autumn, harvest it in May and follow that with the planting of another crop, such as soybeans, to be harvested in the autumn.
Among Christians, Pentecost commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus as described in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles during these Jewish "fiftieth day" celebrations in Jerusalem. For this reason, Pentecost is sometimes described as the "Birthday of the Church.”
I.
Traveling conditions were good at this time of year and there were large crowds of people in Jerusalem. If the infant church, which at this point existed only in the hearts and minds of a handful of people, were ever going to break out, this was a propitious time for it.
We may never know exactly what happened at this Pentecost festival so long ago, but we do know that it was a supremely great day.
The text is not that clear. Luke, who wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, was writing about things he did not witness, but which were told to him. They may well have been told to him by Paul, whose physician and traveling companion Luke became, but Paul was not there either.
Fire and wind figure largely in the account, and both of these are often used in the Bible as symbols of the presence of the Holy Spirit of God. It is interesting to note that in both the Old Testament and the New, the Hebrew and Greek words we translate as spirit literally mean wind.
But whatever happened that day, the Spirit began to be understood by the church as God in every age revealing God’s truth and will…empowering the church…making people bold and courageous and determined to tell the world how God had acted in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
This was the day the church began to be the church…the day when the power of the Spirit flooded through a handful of believers and they stopped being a furtive little band, hiding out and meeting in secrecy and fear…and became a world-changing force.
This was the day when the light of the Gospel was no longer discussed in secret around a tiny lamp in a room with the shutters closed, and the gospel light was first held aloft as a blazing torch to light up the whole world.
II.
On that day, people began to hear what the little band of believers was saying. And if they did not believe it, they at least wondered about it.
Apparently, there was some speaking in tongues, which we call glossolalia, and which in my opinion is totally meaningless jabbering by people whose emotions have overcome their intellects. Paul did not like this at all, remember, and said in I Corinthians that if a stranger came into such a gathering, he might think he had arrived in a company of madmen. This seems to fit the scene here in the Book of Acts. And to someone unacquainted with this phenomenon, it might have seemed to be drunken babbling. Some thought so.
It really would not have been necessary to speak anything except Greek or Aramaic to the crowed. Nearly everybody in the Mediterranean world spoke Greek. And since this event probably took place in the outer precincts of the temple, and since the text describes the onlookers as devout men, that is Jews and God-fearing non-Jews, they would all have spoken Aramaic, the everyday dialect of the Jews.
But no matter--on that day, people began to hear and to know that something new was loose in the world. For the first time in their lives, diverse people began to hear the word of God in a way that struck home to their hearts. And it did so because it so plainly, so evidently, had so much meaning to those people who were telling it. They could not be ignored, because of their conviction and courage, and because they so obviously cared that other people learn what they had learned. They cared. Read the rest of this chapter of Acts and you will see how their caring caused the church to begin growing immediately and rapidly.
And the people were amazed and wondered about these Christians, the text says. And it goes on to have them saying they hear these Christians telling in their own tongues the mighty works of God. How is that people are going to hear the Good News in their own tongues today? They will hear it through the deeds of the Christian church. They will hear it through the compassion of believers.
I thought again of the saying of Mahatma Ghandi that for millions of the world’s hungry people, the only form in which God dare appear is bread. And I thought again of the one who said, “Feed my sheep.”
III.
This was the day the church started to be the church. And the people were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
People may well ask this question today about much of the language used by some segments of Christianity today. At the south entrance to Lake Arrowhead, where Janell and I live, sits a Baptist church that this week had the question on its prominent sign marquee, “Are you washed in the blood?” Can you imagine that? There are very few people in the world today who do not experience that kind of language as a complete turn-off of anything else a church may have to say. But let us remember that it was not so many decades ago that Presbyterians sang from their hymn book one that said, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.” Indeed.
Many people hear nothing they want to hear from churches. They have heard from some churches and from some Christians what they believe they will hear from all churches and Christians: messages of judgment and condemnation and censoriousness. They will not stand still to listen to our words.
But they will observe our deeds. They will observe our deeds. And they will ask, “What does this mean?” And they will decide, perhaps, that those Presbyterians are not like some of the others, those who say things people don’t understand and who just talk a good game.
IV.
Dear hearts and gentle people, I know you to be a kind and compassionate company of Christ. There is great love in this little church. It is that love that slowly brings others into this fellowship and that will make an already powerful little church into a larger and more powerful force for God and for good. Your love can change the world. Let us pray constantly that the Spirit will lead us to show to the world, not the dry bones of dead preachments, but a lively, loving fellowship.
The day of Pentecost, in the year that saw the culmination of Jesus’ earthly ministry, is rightly considered the birthday of the Christian church. Until that day, the believers Jesus left behind were nothing more than a frightened, confused, dispirited, doubtful little band of people who were quite literally hiding out for fear of arrest.
But the living, acting Spirit of the God who was explained in Jesus of Nazareth took them over and they became a living, breathing, courageous church. They stopped doubting the power of God--and the rest is history. They changed the world.
On March 12 every year, we celebrate the anniversary of the chartering of Faith Presbyterian Church. We have not exactly sung “Happy Birthday, dear Church” on those occasions, although last year we did have a 20th anniversary party. Birthday parties are fun, but I don’t think that this church was born on March 12, 1989. I don’t even think it was born on the day that a handful of you gathered to pray together for the first time in someone’s home.
I believe that Faith Presbyterian Church was born in the mind of the God who stands outside of time, and that in God’s own due time, you were called together by the Holy Spirit to play a specific part in working out God’s purposes in Cherokee County, Georgia, USA, and to play a general part in working out God’s purposes in the world through the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a part of the universal church.
Let us continue to commemorate the anniversaries of the chartering of Faith Presbyterian Church while remembering that it existed in the eternal mind of God for ages before those who signed the charter were even born. But let us at the same time see those birthdays in the light of Pentecost, when a little band of people perhaps no bigger than this little congregation proceeded, step by step, to change the world.
Let our vision for this church match God’s vision for it. Let us remember the words of Daniel Burnham, who said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work…. Remember that our (children and grandchildren) are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
God makes no small plans and God has no small plans for Faith Presbyterian Church. Dear hearts and gentle people, let us make no small plans for God--or for his church.

{Sermon preached by Chuck Swann, Faith Presbyterian Church, May 23, 2010}

Do You Want to Be Made Well?

Do You Want to Be Made Well?

John 5: 1-9

Sermon preached by Chuck Swann, Faith Presbyterian Church, May 9, 2010

The pool at Bethzatha (or Bethesda or Bethsaida, as it has been variously called) had been made as comfortable a place as possible. It has been rediscovered and excavated by archaeologists. Shady porches surrounded it. It was a pleasant place. The Crusaders had built some buildings over it during their reign over Jerusalem, but when the rubble of these old buildings was cleared away, the pool was found beneath the structures, still being stirred occasionally by surges in the springs that fed it. In Jesus’ day, the people believed that this troubling of the waters was caused by an angel, and the first sick or crippled person to get into the pool after the troubling of the water would be cured.

I.

This was the scene that Jesus came walking into--and he still does so. Then and now, he comes walking into people’s lives and asks, “Do you want to be healed? Made well? Do you want life more abundantly? Or do you want to settle for something less, because you have found less to be right comfortable, like an old pair of shoes?”

Now, some bodies cannot be put back together again and some people get things wrong with them that we cannot cure. I know that the arthritis in my back and hip is not going to go away, and I am not going to have youthful, supple joints again, and my artificial knee joint is going to continue to set off the metal detectors every time I go to catch a plane. But the body is not the person inside that body--and it is that person inside the body who is the ultimate concern of Christ.

So…what about the person inside your body? Does it ache and hurt and wish for something better? Is the real you happy and healthy all the time? Most of us are not. We may be able to be cheerful some of the time--even to think we are happy and having a good time…mostly. But in our unguarded moments, we know we are not the persons we want to be.

Into the midst of our life and times, Jesus comes asking, “Do you want to be made well? Do you want to be healed?” It is necessary that this question be asked of us, and that we consider it carefully. For we must realize and face the fact that we do not always want what we say we want

It must have seemed like a cruel, callous question to that poor fellow at the pool. Yet, it was necessary that the question be asked of him. He had become a victim, waiting for someone else to rescue him. If the man wanted to be healed, he had to quit focusing on waiting for someone else to help him and hoping for a miracle cure and direct his heart and mind to go in a different direction. He had to be led away from the thing that was giving him false hope.

But we have been conditioned to believe that a pill exists for every ailment and too many people remain fixed on the miracle cure. They are the natural prey of such predators as Oral Roberts, who is now retired and succeeded by his son Robert. Oral once offered his TV viewers a vial of “healing oil.” They were very careful not to make any claims for it that would result in prosecution or a lawsuit, but it could be yours for the asking--and by the way, please help us by sending a donation.

Jesus is saddened by all this charlatanism. He is saying to us that we need to quit focusing on the things in life that give us false hope and a false sense of security. He says to us, “Stand up.” And, too often, we reply, “But I can’t.”

We believe we mean what we say. But as Blaise Pascal said, we often mistake the imagination for the heart. Because, while leaving some aspects of our lives behind and moving on to some new way of being does seem attractive when we are a little distance from doing so, on a nearer view we are not so sure. The imitation of Christ would overturn some of our dearest habits and most pleasant comforts and, frankly, be something of a bore. And so we do not extend our hands to take what Christ is offering.

II.

When pastoral counselors are alert, they sometimes hear surprising answers to the questions they ask. It is many times the answer you did not expect that gives insight into the counselee’s real problem. By real problem, I mean the deep-down concern that is really hurting that person, but which he or she can’t name because people very often, unconsciously, keep the deepest, darkest, most painful parts of themselves obscured by something more respectable.

Jesus asked this man by the pool if he wanted to be healed. He didn’t reply either “yes” or “no.” He said instead, “Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool.”

This could have meant either of two things.

It could have been a politely phrased, softly spoken scream for help. It might have been a quiet mask for the desperation being felt by a man who had lain helplessly for 38 years and watched the world go by him. It might have been the final flicker of the flame of hope that was about to die in a crushed personality.

Or…it could have been something much more insidious. It might have been the well-disguised confession of a man who had long ago stopped wishing to be well and had begun to enjoy his poor health. He could have been saying, “Well, it’s not bad here. This is a pleasant place. I’ve made quite a few friends among the regulars here. Several of the town’s leading citizens pass by and give me a coin or two from time to time. My family brings me here in the morning, brings me lunch, and takes me home at night. I don’t have to work and I have no responsibilities to worry about. All in all, this is not a bad life.”

There was something to be said for the porches at Bethzatha. In time, one could grow quite accustomed to that way of putting in the days. It was not unpleasant to lie there in the shade while others were toiling in the sun.

We--you and I--can see clearly that wholeness and fullness of being is the gallant mode of life. But to get it, we have to give up some things that we have come to value. Selfishness is a disease; yet it does bring us a bigger share of things than we could get without it. Temper is a childish ailment; but we know how to make it pay. Folks give us what we want to escape from our noise and disagreeableness. Self-pity is a horrid kind of self-crippling, but it does relieve us of some of the responsibilities of life.

So…Jesus asks, do we want to be healed? In theory, yes. But in reality, we often decide that the price is too high.

III.

We cannot know what this cripple at the pool was saying in his heart, in the recesses of his mind. What we do know is that Jesus saw something worth saving. And Jesus suddenly thrust the responsibility of the whole matter onto the crippled man’s shoulders.

“Stand up! And walk!”

This is not a command to heal oneself. We cannot heal ourselves. But we can decide to release our white-knuckled grip on our brokenness, on our ill health, and reach out for and grasp for something new.

Christianity and medicine have made a joint rediscovery about the healing of mind and body and how they are inextricably linked, joined together. We cannot heal ourselves, but we can be willing to plug ourselves into the forces that do heal.

Medical doctors have always known the value of an outside stimulus to the healing process. Those who to get well are the most likely to respond to treatment; those who don’t want to get well usually don’t.

One of our preacher jokes asks the question, “How many pastoral counselors does it take to change a light bulb?” The answer is only one, but the light bulb has got to really want to change.

At this point I could share with you the sense of utter waste and tragedy I have experienced at the bedside of people who never got well because they had no intention of getting well--and for no other reason. They were saying “no” to life and accepting in its place the shallow substitutes of self-pity and sympathy.

I have had the same experience with people whose illnesses were not of the body, but of the emotions, the spirit, the heart. They did not want to give up the hot water bottles of their self-pity. They wanted the world to give them a long, continuous pity party.

On the other hand, I have known and admired people who overcame tremendous adversity in their physical bodies: the loss of limbs, paralysis, life sentences of immobility and confinement to wheel chairs--but whose leaping, laughing, blazing spirits lifted mine and inspired me to push aside my own petty aches and pains.

“Stand up and walk.” In this command is the outside stimulus so many of us need so often, but from which we shrink back. For this is the command to stand up and be counted, to take upon one’s shoulders the responsibility of a new life. Jesus always--always--calls us into responsible relationships, not into some lifelong spiritual retreat. He calls us to stand up and be men and women in the world in which God has placed us…to have the courage to rise again when we are knocked down. And if we are knocked down again--to rise again, and again, and again.

Wherever you are, you are there because God has placed you there. In that situation, your situation, Christ says to you, “Stand up and walk.” Be a responsible, whole person, with an upright spirit, serving God and humankind right there where you are.

The man at the pool had two alternatives. He could have just continued to lie there, staring in disbelief at this man who had just told him to do the impossible. And he would have remained a cripple. We, too, have that option. We can say, “No, it’s not for me. It does sound good, but, no, it’s not for me. Someday, perhaps, but not now.”

As a matter of fact, it is hard to give up being a cripple. It is hard to give up being waited on and catered to. It is hard to give up all that delicious self-pity and tender sympathy. It is hard to give up the rewards of selfishness, temper and self-centeredness.

The other option, of course, is to believe. To accept the offer of new life. To have the courage, if you will, to assume responsibility for our selves insofar as it is possible. To be willing to be totally new persons in the eyes of God, and in our relationships with our families and our fellow human beings.

I cannot promise you healing for your body. That is not really what is offered in the gospel. But in the name of Jesus Christ, I can promise you healing and wholeness in your innermost being. You can have a new life. You can literally be born again into a different kind of life and new kinds of personal relationships

Your case has not been closed. The issue of your life has not been definitely decided. You do not have to sink into the lethargy of a dull, crushed acceptance of what you are--if you don’t like what you are. You can plug yourself into resources of which you may have only dreamed.

Jesus says to all of us, “Stand up. Take up the bed of your uselessness and personal futility, and walk.” More importantly, he says to those who want to stand up, who decide that they will, “Give me your hand.”